Ever wonder how a network projects winners in state and national elections? CNN comes clean with its methods, which rely heavily on a company called Edison Media Research. The company sends interviewers to randomly selected precincts where they snag every third or fifth voter exiting the poll and ask them to complete a two-minute survey. The information is collected and sent back to CNN for analysis. If a race looks like a blowout, they call it right after the precincts close. If it's tight, a projected winner could take hours to emerge. According to Edison's client list, it looks like all the networks are being fed the same information.Here's our question: If the precincts are randomly selected, can unusually high voter turnout-which could happen in some heavily black areas this year-end up screwing up the projections? And do the networks all go down together?
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