EXIT POLLSTERGEIST
Tuesday’s election was marked by some of the most outrageous
spinning seen in recent years. “The level of disinformation out
there early on was remarkable,” says a Republican political
consultant in Washington. “Both sides were doing it, but I have to
say the Democrats and their operatives did a remarkable job of
shaking things up.”
Across D.C., consultants were emailing notices to their clients,
both political and business, attempting to spin an election day
that was barely hours old.
Take political consultant Michael Frisby’s
email to clients around 11 a.m. Tuesday:
Latest news development is the unprecedented decision
by the Bush campaign to add two more Election Day appearances in
Ohio. (They had surprisingly scheduled one yesterday). The Kerry
camp says the President is responding to election morning reports
of heavy voting in Democratic areas of Pennsylvania and Florida,
which may make those states difficult for him to now win. By their
account, President Bush appears to be making his last stand in
Ohio, which he must now win if Florida and Pennsylvania fall to
Kerry. One development has occurred in President Bush’s favor: it
is raining in Ohio. Republicans, particularly former Ohio Gov. Jim
Rhodes, repeatedly pulled out close statewide races in Ohio after
rain depressed the Democratic turnout in Northern Ohio. The Dems
need to come out of the Cleveland-Youngstown area with close to a
150,000 to 200,000 vote lead if they hope to withstand the heavy
Republican vote in Southern Ohio. The heavy morning voting in
Democratic areas in key states is also spooking the pollsters;
traditionally the morning vote trends Republican because that is
when white color workers vote; the late afternoon and evening
voting has traditionally been more Democratic because that is when
blue collar voters come out to vote.
Frisby served as Gen. Wesley Clark’s spokesman
during his primary run.
In fact, Bush made only one stop in Columbus, Ohio, the single
stop that had been on his schedule for at least a day. That stop
was intended to balance the rally the Kerry campaign held in
Wisconsin on Tuesday morning. There were no two additional stops.
Nonetheless, Frisby’s memo, which was furiously being emailed about
Washington during the lunch hour, fed into the coordinated Kerry
and Democratic leaking that was about to take place.
A little after one o’clock, early polling numbers, purportedly
from the pool exit polling consortium, began to pop up on the
Internet and in e-mails in Washington and around the country.
The early polling numbers are some of the most eagerly
anticipated, if highly inaccurate, data on election day, and are
widely distributed. Perhaps that was what the Kerry campaign was
banking on.
According to at least three sources, one inside the Kerry
campaign, and two outside of it, but with ties to senior Kerry
advisers, some of the “early polling numbers” were in fact direct
reports from Kerry campaign or Democratic Party operatives on the
ground in such critical states as Pennsylvania, Ohio, North
Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
According to a Washington lobbyist with knowledge of the numbers,
the numbers were packaged together so as to appear to be exit poll
results. They were then scrubbed through several sources to land in
the lap of sympathetic bloggers who these operatives believed would
put the numbers up with little question.
Some of the numbers claimed to be exit polling data that showed
Kerry with a 8-1 voter ratio. As soon as the numbers hit the
Internet, panic set in.
“It was awful,” says a Republican House staffer. “You just felt
sick when you saw the numbers.”
Within an hour, the real exit poll numbers began to leak out,
and while they were considerably better for Bush, they continued to
show him lagging three to four percentage points behind the
Democrats across the major electoral map, with a two-point
disadvantage in the national, popular vote.
“Actually when the real numbers came out, they made us feel a
bit better,” says the House staffer, who was on the road in Nevada
working for the Bush campaign. “Compared to what we had seen
earlier, it made us think we had a clear shot, since we knew the
early numbers tended to be bad for Republicans in the past.”
Still, the disinformation campaign spread a pall over
Republicans in Washington for several hours. By 3 p.m., senior Bush
campaign operatives were putting out word that things were looking
considerably better for Bush in Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Florida.
By 6 p.m., some Washington insiders were already hearing that
Florida and Ohio were winners for Bush, based on campaign
internals. From there, the road to victory was much smoother.
APPOINTMENTS REQUIRED
With the Catholic and Hispanic vote coming up big for the President
across the country, there are expectations that both groups will be
given greater voice in a second term. Already, there are rumblings
that Catholics are looking for senior administration appointments
should slots open up on the Bush Cabinet or in Cabinet-level
departments. Cabinet secretaries Tom Ridge,
Tommy Thompson and Spencer
Abraham are well liked by the Catholic constituencies, but
RCs may be looking for more.
Hispanics likewise will be looking for a greater voice and
higher visibility. Should Attorney General John
Ashcroft decide to step aside, White House Counsel
Alberto Gonzales’s name continues to float to the
top of lists of potential replacements. But there is a sense that
there are other names to be floated in the coming days for other
positions before Gonzales’s name crops up.
THUMB’S UP
With Sen. John Edwards now nothing more than a
thumb-thumping memory, Republicans are wondering who will take his
seat on the Judiciary Committee. With Republican gains in the
Senate, it is believed the GOP will have an additional seat to fill
on that, and other committees.
One name that will surely pop up regularly is Sen. John
Thune’s. Given his success in knocking of Sen. Tom
Daschle, Republicans will want to give Thune as much help
as possible to reinforce the message back home that Daschle’s loss
in fact will be South Dakota’s gain.
