TV aiming to avoid election mess-ups

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — With Election Day just hours away, this much is clear: In spite of endless polling and punditry, no one has the foggiest idea who is going to be the next president.

"If you try to predict this thing, you're a moron," says CBS News correspondent Jim Axelrod. "There's no way you can tell."

Which is why networks expect more Americans to tune into television for election coverage than ever before.

And what viewers see will be markedly different than four years ago when the networks committed the mother of all mistakes by declaring Al Gore the winner, then George W. Bush, then no one.

At the time, NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw told viewers, "I not only have egg on my face, I have have an entire omelet all over my suit."

This time, Brokaw, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Jim Lehrer, Wolf Blitzer and Brit Hume say they're not going to screw up. Slow and steady is the name of the game.

The networks and cable news outlets will have the usual raw vote totals and exit polls, but the system for gathering that information has been changed. The five networks and the Associated Press dissolved the Voter News Service used in 2000 and 2002 and hired Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International to handle exit polling, turning over actual vote counting to the AP.

And when the time comes to declare who will win the White House, the TV news stars promise to err on the side of caution.

CBS says it won't even use the word "declare" when calling the race. "We're not the ones to declare a winner," explains Marcy McGinnis, senior vice president of news coverage at CBS. "The states do that. What we want to say is we are estimating that this will be the winner. We're just getting very particular with our language."

The best-case scenario calls for a clean and smooth election, culminating with a clear-cut winner as early as 9 p.m.

The nightmare scenario envisions not one but five Floridas that are all too close to call, leaving the nation without a clear winner for days, even weeks.

Most political analysts agree that President Bush will take the early lead.

"The earlier states are generally the Republican states," says CBS's McGinnis. "If you tune in at 7 or 8, you might think it looks like Bush is running away with it," she says.

"Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace, who'll be focused on exit polling election night, breaks it down this way:

At 7 p.m., five states — Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Virginia — should go to Bush, while Kerry takes Vermont. "If there's any change from that, that'll be the first tell-tale sign," he says.

At 7:30 p.m., Ohio and West Virginia close. "Whoever wins Ohio is the odds-on favorite to win the presidency," he says.

At 8 p.m., there's the "big casino" — Florida, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. "If New Jersey, traditionally a Democratic state, goes red (for Bush), the night's over," Wallace says. "Bush can't afford to lose Florida. Kerry can't afford to lose Pennsylvania."

"If necessary, we'll do it the old-fashioned way," says CNN's Blitzer. "We'll actually wait until they count the ballots before we declare the winner."