Blaming the Bloggers – epilogue

Exit Polls Legacy blog posts

Yesterday’s "Real Time" column by the Wall Street Journal‘s Hanrahan and Fry made essentially the same point I did about the exit poll/blogger controversy.

My point, for those who may have missed it, was less about defending "the likes of Wonkette" (whatever that means) than acknowledging that the existance of bloggers makes the rapid proliferation of highly sought after information (or raw data or whatever you want to call it) inevitable and automatic.  Here is how Hanrahan and Fry put it:

The reaction to this whole controversy is so 1997 — a predictable volley of off-target shots by chin-waggers who either haven’t figured out that the world’s changed or refuse to admit that it has…

What’s changed is that once you had to be a media or political person of a certain minimum altitude to be let in on the secret; now, all you need is a Net connection and rudimentary typing skills. Those who used to have the clubhouse all to themselves have found the door wide open to anyone and everyone. And some of them don’t like it.

Which, come to think of it, really is so 1997: Information formerly reserved for a cadre of insiders now spreads more quickly than those insiders can control it. In other words, the middlemen have been eliminated. (If you spent 100 large at business school, you call that "disintermediation.") Just took a bit longer to hit the Election Day carnival, that’s all.

Well said.  I am told the Wall Street Journal Online is free to non-subscribers this week, so read it all

P.S.  Say what you will about Ana Marie Cox, in addition to the leaked exit polls, she also posted (at 5:40 p.m. Election Day) the following leaked disclaimer that the National Election Pool officials had shared with the network honchos: “problems with exits in the following states…could be tipping numbers toward kerry: MN, NH, VT, PA, VA, CT, DE.” Not that it mattered. This was the same disclaimer that the editors of the Post and the Times either did not hear or discounted like everyone else.

Mark Blumenthal

Mark Blumenthal is political pollster with deep and varied experience across survey research, campaigns, and media. The original "Mystery Pollster" and co-creator of Pollster.com, he explains complex concepts to a multitude of audiences and how data informs politics and decision-making. A researcher and consultant who crafts effective questions and identifies innovative solutions to deliver results. An award winning political journalist who brings insights and crafts compelling narratives from chaotic data.