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Once upon a time, most people were satisfied to wait until they got their morning newspaper the day after an election to find out who'd won. In the early years of America, it could take months before the final tallies showed up in Washington; nobody seemed harmed by the delay.
That won't do these days. The news media wants to know now, because they assume we want to know too. It's even better if you can report the winner before the election is even over, though the TV networks generally won't come straight out and do that because that might discourage people from voting.
Besides, they have a better way: the exit poll. Actual vote tallies may not be reported until the polls have closed, but for decades now, news organizations have sent pollsters to talk to people on their way out of polling places to ask them about their vote. Add up these numbers, and you should have a good idea of what the final result will be.
That's the theory anyway - a theory so widely accepted that, when exit polls differ from actual final results, many people instantly suspect fraud. Cheaters may be able to pack the ballot box but they have no control over what voters tell pollsters out on the street.
In recent years, however, there have been more and more examples of exit polls being wildly different from actual vote results, with no evidence of fraud anywhere. Gov. Walker's recall victory in Wisconsin provides merely the most recent example:
Exit poll numbers released to subscribers just before polls closed in the Wisconsin recall election Tuesday dangled the possibility that Milwaukee Mayor Tommy Barrett (D) could win.
The numbers seemed to pop off the screen — 50 percent apiece for Barrett and Republican Gov. Scott Walker, the subject of the recall effort. Walker had a clear lead in independent pre-election polls, so the tie score sent analysts scrambling and buoyed Democratic hopes when the numbers were widely reported elsewhere minutes later at the official poll close time.
Just a half hour later, the exit poll shifted to 52 to 48 percent, tilting in Walker’s favor. (The final margin appears to be seven percentage points.) A potential Gov. Barrett era had ended before it started, and a fresh round of bash-the-exit-poll commenced.
Unlike vote totals, exit polls are statistical samples and always have a margin of error. Being off by 7 percentage points, though, is so bad as to be worthless. Barack Obama beat John McCain by much less, and that was called a landslide.
It's ridiculous to suppose that Scott Walker's team could somehow steal 7% of the vote with the entire nation and a rabidly leftist media looking on. The vote must be valid; if there were the slightest shred of suspicion against Walker's Republicans, we'd be hearing nothing else on the news from that day to this.
There's only one other possible explanation: people are lying to the pollsters. This tells us something well worth knowing.
In 1982, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley was running for governor of California against Republican George Deukmejian. Bradley, a Democrat, was black; Mr. Deukmejian was white. Polls leading up to the election showed Mr. Bradley winning by a fair margin, but the actual results had Mr. Deukmejian winning in a close race.
The same questions were asked of pollsters then as now, and they had an answer: Californian voters are racists! The voters knew that voting for the black Democrat was the right and decent thing to do, and told the (human, in those days) pollster that so as not to be thought a bigot. In the privacy of the voting booth, however, their baser instincts took hold, and they pulled the lever for the retrograde conservative white guy. This is known as the Bradley effect.
Aside from the bare fact of the polls being wrong, there is absolutely no evidence for this theory. Still, there's a kernel of potential truth: we all hold preferences and views that we know are controversial, and most of us are wise enough not to wear them on our sleeves around strangers. Why start a fight when there's no need?
We've all heard ten million times that the only possible reason not to vote for a black Democrat is racism. Would it be any wonder if people didn't want to waste their time trying to explain their perfectly rational reasons to a pollster who, being a member of the liberal media, almost certainly won't listen? No, easier just to lie and move on with life.
Neither Gov. Walker nor his Democrat opponent were black, but the point is the same: the media has banged the drum for union "rights" for so long, why bother telling them a truth they won't like? Just tell them what they want to hear no matter what you did in the voting booth.
If Mr. Obama's political analysts are smart, this will make them very nervous. American politics has run on polls for decades now. What happens when respondents start lying to the polls in such numbers that the results become meaningless? How can you run a campaign if you have no idea what people think or how they'll really vote?
You have to run on your principles or on your achievements, that's what. Mr. Obama's crew knows that will be disastrous for them: the Left thinks he hasn't got any of either; the Right thinks he has and that they're treasonous. Neither view is particularly helpful to him which is why Mr. Obama's campaign is depending on everything but his record of what he's done, why, and how well it's worked.
Having the media overwhelmingly on your side has helped Democrats for many years. But like any crutch, eventually you come to rely on it. When it stops working you're in bad trouble because you've lost the ability to stand on your own two feet.