Reply #4: exit poll data is suspose to "help reporters and editors plan stories". [View All]

[rodeodance]

uumm.....So what reporters do with it is none of their concern?

From your link:

....Edie Emery, a spokeswoman for the consortium, said the group did not want to comment on Conyers' request. She said that, as after past elections, much of this year's data "will be archived at the Roper Center and the University of Connecticut in early 2005."

In addition, she said, the firms that produced the exit polls are reviewing this year's results and will submit a report to the AP and networks "in mid- to late-January."

The information Conyers wants typically isn't made public. He's looking for the late afternoon or early evening rough estimates of who was ahead. That data are only supposed to be used to help reporters and editors plan stories.

The reason the data may not be of much help to Conyers, said Joan Konner, dean emerita of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, is that the margin of error is just too large — especially if the information is sliced into smaller and smaller "subgroups."