By 10 a.m., the online magazine Slate was posting the first leaked numbers and the fallout began. Reports surfaced that the Kerry campaign was ecstatic and President Bush was nervous. Conservative talk show host Sean Hannity urged Bush supporters to get out and vote in Florida, Ohio and other swing states.

By 6 p.m., with additional exit poll data available, Ana Marie Cox predicted a Kerry landslide of more than 300 electoral college votes on her blog, Wonkette.com.

Meanwhile, the networks, which were burned in 2000, chastely held back the poll results. For that, they were chided by many, including noted political author Bob Woodward, who appeared on CNN and said network executives must have been on Valium to remain so restrained.

That restraint created such a market for any news on how the election was progressing that servers at several of the Web log sites slowed or even went down as traffic spiked.

Patterson said the public's insatiable desire to know who's leading a race creates an environment conducive to leaks.

"My guess is that the polling organization was being as careful as it could with the data, but in such a hyper-competitive environment, somebody learned something, and once it got outside the inner circle, it spread like wildfire," he said.

Jones pointed out that the poll results are what draw viewers.

"Look at the ratings," he said. "Which stations did the people watch? The ones that have projections."

But exit polls are designed to analyze why voters voted the way they did, not necessarily to project winners. Patterson said news consumers want immediate results and look to polls for answers hours before the votes are counted.

"The people see political contests as a race between two horses, and everybody wants to be able to say who's going to win," Patterson said.

Political science students from colleges around the state have conducted the KBYU/Utah Colleges Exit Poll under the guidance of professors for years. This year, their information was used by most of the local networks, while KSL-TV employed Dan Jones & Associates, as it has since 1982. Neither organization releases any numbers until after polls have closed at 8 p.m.

"We're very, very careful with our data throughout the day," Patterson said. "Only a certain number of people have access to it. I always chuckle about the many long-lost friends that call me on Election Day, asking me how I'm doing."

Jones won't take those calls either. "I won't accept any calls until the polls close, because I'm out there, and I don't want to leak the information," he said.

Both Patterson and Jones were quick to agree that exit poll data shouldn't be released until the polls have closed and the information is complete.

"The problem is there may be problems with the poll, so there may be adjustments that need to be made," Patterson said. "And that (early leaks) could affect the ability of the individuals doing the polling to actually make adjustments when they need to. Not everyone is going to understand the caveats, and not everybody's going to understand the complexity of the sample design."

Exit polling is a powerful if inexact science when the methodology is correct and the information is used appropriately, Patterson said.

"The polls themselves are quite accurate in estimating voter attitudes and behavior," Patterson said. "What they're not designed to do is precisely call a race, because polls work within a margin of error."

---

E-mail: mdecker@desnews.com, twalch@desnews.com