Voter News Service
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The Voter News Service was an
exit poll An election exit poll is a poll of voters taken immediately after they have exited the polling stations. A similar poll conducted before actual voters have voted is called an entrance poll. Pollsters – usually private companies working for n ...
ing
consortium A consortium (plural: consortia) is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments (or any combination of these entities) with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for ...
formed in 1990 by six major U.S. news media organizations. Its mission was to provide results for
United States presidential elections The election of the president and the vice president of the United States is an indirect election in which citizens of the United States who are registered to vote in one of the fifty U.S. states or in Washington, D.C., cast ballots not dire ...
, so that individual organizations and networks would not have to do exit polling and vote tallying in parallel.


Members

The VNS included major
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
television network A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or multichannel video programming distributo ...
s and
newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...
s: * Both parties, Republican and Democrat *
ABC News ABC News is the news division of the American broadcast network ABC. Its flagship program is the daily evening newscast ''ABC World News Tonight, ABC World News Tonight with David Muir''; other programs include Breakfast television, morning ...
*
CBS News CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio service CBS. CBS News television programs include the ''CBS Evening News'', ''CBS Mornings'', news magazine programs '' CBS News Sunday Morning'', '' 60 Minutes'', and '' 48 H ...
*
NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...
*
CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...
*
Fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...
* The
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
ABC News scooped its partners all night in reporting outcomes of the 1994 US elections when it hired an outside firm to do exit polling and was able to make earlier calls with that data.


Role in the 2000 presidential election

A possibly unwritten secondary mission of the Voter News Service was to provide election results as quickly as possible on election night—a point which came to haunt the VNS in the 2000 presidential election.


Election night in Florida

The VNS received intense criticism for its 'flip-flop' calling of the state of
Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
in that election. During the course of the evening, it first called the closely contested state of Florida for
Al Gore Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic Part ...
, then
George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
, and then as 'too close to call'. Critics argued that the state should never have been called until the state's fate was clear. The Voter News Service also received specific criticism for calling the state of Florida for Al Gore before the polls closed in the Florida panhandle, which was located in the
Central Time Zone The North American Central Time Zone (CT) is a time zone in parts of Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, some Caribbean Islands, and part of the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Central Standard Time (CST) is six hours behind Coordinate ...
and heavily Republican. In addition, criticism also came because of the call for Bush which occurred before precincts in Broward, Palm Beach,
Volusia Volusia County (, ) is located in the east-central part of the U.S. state of Florida, stretching between the St. Johns River and the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2020 census, the county was home to 553,543 people, an increase of 11.9% from the 2 ...
, and Miami-Dade Counties reported their results to the state which occurred after the networks called the state for Bush well after 2 AM eastern standard time.


''Bush vs. Gore''

The next day it was discovered that 'bad data' resulted in the confusion of the previous night. Due to the Bush margin of victory being less than 0.5% of the total number of votes cast, an automatic statewide machine recount was ordered. In Palm Beach County, a
butterfly ballot A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in secret voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16t ...
was used to conduct the election in some precincts. On election day, voters intending to vote for Al Gore instead voted for
Pat Buchanan Patrick Joseph Buchanan (; born November 2, 1938) is an American paleoconservative political commentator, columnist, politician, and broadcaster. Buchanan was an assistant and special consultant to U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, an ...
, and the Reform Party ticket. Buchanan received 3,407 votes or 0.8% of the total compared to 0.29% of the total statewide. As a result, unwilling Buchanan voters in Palm Beach county reported votes for Gore in exit polling which resulted in flawed data.


2002 attempt and disbandment

In 2002, the VNS intended to make calls in the November 2002 U.S. Congressional and Senate elections. It attempted to use a computer system designed for VNS by
Battelle Memorial Institute Battelle Memorial Institute (more widely known as simply Battelle) is a private nonprofit applied science and technology development company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. Battelle is a charitable trust organized as a nonprofit corporation u ...
to do this. A system failure occurred in this computer on election night, making quick delivery of data impossible. In fact, collecting and delivering the data took ten months to complete. In January 2003, the Voter News Service was disbanded largely because of failures in 2000 and 2002. Murray Edelman, VNS editorial director, criticized the decision as making the VNS a scapegoat.


National Election Pool

In the 2004 presidential election, the news organizations that had comprised the membership of the Voter News Service set up a new organization called National Election Pool, utilizing consultants Edison/Mitofsky for exit polling and Associated Press for official returns. However, the NEP had controversies of its own for 2004 when it released exit polling data early that was significantly different from the final results.


References

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External links


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