It looks very much as though Fox News broke the rules of exit poll reporting – and did so to help their former colleague and current Republican senate candidate, Scott Brown.
As Vox reported, at 6:07 PM, Fox’s Martha MacCallum reported on the results of exit polling in New Hampshire (where Brown is running) before the polls had closed.
The media outlets running the exit poll want to be able to describe who’s voting, and who they’re voting for, to the public as early as possible. But they don’t want to have any influence on who ends up voting — they don’t want anyone deciding not to vote because they’ve already seen what the exit polls say, and they don’t think their vote will matter. (There’s some evidence that this happened back in 1980, when some outlets projected that Ronald Reagan would win the presidential election before polls closed on the West Coast.)
But in this case, it looks like Fox broke the rules to get Brown voters to the polls while there was still time.
Media Matters reports:
Just after 6 p.m., MacCallum reported that Republican Senate candidate and former Fox News employee Scott Brown needs Independents to vote for him and highlighted exit poll results showing that 50 percent of Independents voted for Brown, while 49 percent voted for incumbent Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen.
Fox has been doing a lot to boost Brown’s candidacy. Why would they stop on Election Day?
Btw, there’s a reason that Daddy Doocy didn’t read from (which automatically made me suspicious) the actual “bombshell” letters that he so gleefully touted on yesterday’s F&F. The reason is because there’s no there there – the Daily Caller was desperately grasping for anything and they ended up with egg on their face. LOL!
http://www.politifact.com/new-hampshire/statements/2014/nov/04/daily-caller/jeanne-shaheen-hit-last-minute-attack-over-lois-le/
