Subject: 2000 Election Florida polls closed simultaneosly Date: 21 May 2001 04:10:12 GMT From: john0714@aol.com (John0714) Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if Tenessee like Florida is in both the Eastern and Central Time Zones. On election days the polls close at 8:00 EST or whatever all over the state regardless of local time. What if the polls had closed at 8:00 EST all over the state in Florida, how would that have affected Florida's popular vote? Would it be different if the close was 9:00 EST? I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will defend until YOUR DEATH your right to say it! --Austin 3:17 JOHN A. MONTGOMERY Subject: Re: 2000 Election Florida polls closed simultaneosly Date: 21 May 2001 15:05:55 GMT From: dtenner@ameritech.net (David Tenner) Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if References: 1 John0714 wrote in <20010521001012.13822.00001246@ng -ch1.aol.com>: >Tenessee like Florida is in both the Eastern and Central Time Zones. On >election days the polls close at 8:00 EST or whatever all over the state >regardless of local time. What if the polls had closed at 8:00 EST all >over the state in Florida, how would that have affected Florida's >popular vote? Would it be different if the close was 9:00 EST? > There have been some studies on the effect of election projections on voters in areas where the polls have yet to close. (The Democrats complained in 1980 that the networks' early calling of the election for Reagan may have led to the defeat of a number of Democratic Congressmen in close races on the West Coast.) These studies purport to show that the effect is minimal. The Konner-Risser-Wattenberg independent committee to investigate CNN's handling of the election included an abstract of one of these studies in an appendix. But the report adds: "Whether, and how much, such calls affect intrastate voter turnout in the remaining minutes is not known, nor is the impact of calling a winner upon voter turnout and behavior in other states where polls have not closed. Allegedly conclusive studies usually refer to how small the impact may be. (See Appendix 2) But presidential elections are too sacred a part of our democratic system to take such a risk. And as Florida showed, a few votes can mean a great deal." http://www.polisci.wisc.edu/users/kmayer/Lectures/cnn.pdf Or if you don't have Adobe Acrobat Reader: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:f42fd425737d9b18:www.polisci.wisc.edu /users/kmayer/Lectures/cnn.pdf APPENDIX 2 Early TV Calls In 1984: How Western Voters Deplored But Ignored Them William C. Adams George Washington University Prepared for presentation at the annual conference of the American Association for Public Opinion Research; May 1985 ABSTRACT On election day, November 6, 1984, between 8:00 and 10:00 p.m. PST, 638 non-voting registered voters were surveyed. These telephone interviews were conducted with people in northwest Oregon who were verified as registered to vote but who had not voted (according to official poll books). Early TV verdicts of Reagan's victory did not depress turnout anywhere near the extent critics had predicted: only 2.6 percent of the non-voters blamed TV for their failure to vote ­ roughly less than one -quarter of one percent of the entire electorate. Most non-voters had not heard the TV projections. Political preferences of the tiny handful of TV -discouraged voters resembled the electorate at large ­ further minimizing the chances of early projections transforming the electorate enough to change election outcomes. The same conclusion was reached in eastern Oregon where a natural experiment allowed contrasting turnout and time of voting in Malheur County (MST) with that in Grant County (PST). The counties were demographically similar, but Grant received an extra hour of projection news before the polls closed at 8:00 p.m. However, turnout after 5:00 PST was actually higher in Pacific-Time Grant County than it was in Mountain -Time Malheur County. -------- OTOH, John Lott (yes, the same one with the gun study...) claimed that the network projections had caused a loss of 10,000 Bush votes in Florida. For CBS' critique of his study (which also contains a review of the prior research), see http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/c2k/pdf/REPFINAL.pdf Or if you don't have Adobe Acrobat Reader: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:f1c0fda542d9d94a:www.cbsnews.com/htdo cs/c2k/pdf/REPFINAL.pdf -- David Tenner dtenner@ameritech.net