Sam Feist, head of CNN’s Washington office, believes the media will not have enough information to predict the winner of the election by 08:00 Moscow time on 4 November.
Leading U.S. media on U.S. General Election Day on 3 November will start publishing the results of the exit polls shortly after polling stations close, but will not be in a hurry to overtake each other with their voting forecasts. This opinion was expressed by Sam Feist, head of the Washington bureau of CNN TV, who covered eight presidential elections in the USA.
“It is much more important not to make a mistake than to be the first”, – he said. – “I can assure you that those who make decisions in television companies do not compete with each other. They complement each other to a great extent”.
Traditionally, the results of exit polls – surveys of voters at the exit of polling stations – together with data on the processing of part of the ballots will give the very first impression of each candidate’s performance in a particular city, county or state. Based on this, preliminary conclusions will be drawn on how likely it is that the current US President, Republican Donald Trump, or his rival Democrat Joseph Biden, will win the election.
Gentleman’s Agreement
By mutual agreement, the American media have imposed an embargo on the publication of the first results of the exits, which will be filmed all over the country at 17:00 U.S. East Coast Time (01:00 Moscow time on November 4). In reality, however, they will continue to follow a rule established back in 1980, according to which data for a particular state can only be made public once all polling stations have been closed. As explained by ABC television, in practice this means that in the state of New York, for example, the results of exit polls will only be broadcast after the polling stations close at 21:00 local time (05:00 Moscow time on 4 November). On the West Coast of the USA, this will be a few hours later respectively, depending on the time of site closures in a state.
The coronavirus pandemic, which has forced elections to be held in unprecedented circumstances, has also affected the organization of exit polls. The sociological services staff involved in voter surveys commissioned by the media will be required to wear masks, keep away from the interviewees at a distance of two metres, provide them with disposable pens and use a table to fill in the questionnaires, which will be regularly disinfected. According to the ABC, this procedure was successfully tested earlier this year in the primary elections (party primaries).
The results of the exit polls are transmitted from the seats at certain times three times on election day. The organisers of the survey emphasise that such data is, firstly, unofficial and, secondly, cannot be considered absolutely accurate. They only give an approximate picture of the voting and may change during the day.
In recent decades, it has happened several times that incorrect conclusions were made about who would win the presidential election on the basis of exit polling data. This was the case, for example, in 2004, when exit polls initially showed that John Kerry, rather than George W. Bush, should win. This was also the case in 2016, when the original exit polls mistakenly signaled that Hillary Clinton would likely defeat Donald Trump.