Florence man analyzes exit polls for CBS
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NORTHAMPTON - On election night, L. Timothy (Tim) Vercellotti will be one of the first people in the nation to know who will be the next president of the United States.
Vercellotti will know the expected outcome even before newscasters.
Come Tuesday, Vercellotti, a 47-year-old Florence resident, professor and co-director of Western New England College's Polling Institute, will be analyzing poll data for television network CBS in New York City, breaking down voter data by gender, race, religion and education for the live national broadcast.
"As giddy and excited as I am, I'm also very serious about it," said Vercellotti. "This is the Super Bowl for pollsters."
Vercellotti will be working behind the scenes getting a live feed on poll data from the "quarantine room," a sealed area where exit-poll data is compiled throughout the day. No cell phones, personal digital assistants, land lines - or, he says, "carrier pigeons" - are allowed in the room, and information doesn't leave until 5 p.m.- the hour when Vercellotti really jumps into the action and election predictions start filling the airwaves.
"My wife keeps saying, #I want to be able to talk to you on the phone," said Vercellotti. Though she's keenly interested in politics, he said, "I tell her I'm not allowed to do that. You'll have to watch CBS, and I promise you, you'll get it all there."
With a hearty breakfast of an omelette, home fries and umpteen cups of coffee, Vercellotti will break down the data for fast-paced news cycles. He'll be writing data nuggets for broadcasters, who tap Vercellotti to tell them how various demographic groups voted.
"They'll say things like #We need 20 seconds on why women voted for Hillary Clinton,'" said Vercellotti, recalling his work with CBS in the presidential primaries. "It's like deadlines on steroids."
Vercellotti is is wary of the worldwide implications of his work.
Inaccurate poll data reporting in the last two presidential elections has led to a "crisis of confidence" in the validity of U.S. elections, Vercellotti said. Much of the exit-poll information will be provided by a league of media outlets that band together to share the cost of the data: ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and The Associated Press.
In 2004, pollsters predicted Democratic candidate John Kerry had won Ohio, but upon further calculation it was discovered that President George W. Bush had captured the state. Suspicions of voter fraud followed.
In 2000, many media outlets predicted Bush had won the election, but then had to withdraw that statement when problems arose in tabulating Florida's vote count. Immediately following Nov. 7, the election was too close to call. But because Bush had already been named the winner, many people saw the ensuing six weeks of vote counts and legal challenges as Democratic candidate Al Gore's attempt to steal the election from Bush, Vercellotti said.
"It changed the mind-set of many, many people, and it really framed the debate in very different terms," Vercellotti said. "If it truly had been too close to call and a winner was never declared, Gore would have had an easier time in the court of public opinion pushing his various legal remedies."
Finding election's story
Vercellotti's job on election night is to follow the election's "story lines" and to break down how people voted and why. He'll be looking to answer questions including:
· Will white men without a college education vote for Democrat Barack Obama?
· Can Republican candidate John McCain take Pennsylvania?
· How will Latinos in the West vote?
· Will Democrats fill 60 Senate seats, reaching the magic number that could effectively block any potential Republican filibusters?
It is unclear how many people will be collecting exit-poll data on Tuesday, but the goal is to get more than 100,000 voters from across the nation to fill out the double sided, anonymous questionnaire, according to Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.
Questions included on the exit-poll questionnaire ask voters to identify themselves by race, gender, age, religion, whether they belong to a union and level of education. The questionnaire also seeks information about who they voted for, what issues are important to them and when they made their decision on how to vote.
In between a couple of bites of a sandwich and sips of coffee, Vercellotti will spend his night crunching numbers, checking and rechecking his math, comparing his figures to those of colleagues backstage at CBS and reviewing his list of story lines to make sure he's following them all.
"There will probably be some surprises," Vercellotti said. "You can't have a national election without some surprises."
Vercellotti doesn't like to make pre-election predictions, unless he's expecting a "blowout." It's a pretty safe bet that Massachusetts U.S. Sen. John Kerry will remain in office, Vercellotti said. Kerry is ahead in the polls by 25-30 points over his challenger, Jeff Beatty.
Preparing for the election
Vercellotti's preparations for election night began weeks ago. In addition to "voraciously" following election coverage over the last year and a half, Vercellotti was sent a package of current and historical election information from CBS. The package CBS sent him for the primaries was nearly 3 inches thick.
On Thursday, Vercellotti went to New York City to participate in three days of simulated election coverage. Dummy information will stream across a closed-circuit Web site for Vercellotti to interpret, just as it will Tuesday.
"It helps them work out any technical glitches and gets you into the pace of what the night is going to be like," Vercellotti said. "It really puts you on the hot seat."
On Election Day, Vercellotti will arrive at CBS headquarters on West 52nd Street in the afternoon. He'll reacquaint himself with the equipment, review the day's story lines to see if he's missed any, settle in with a cup of coffee that he'll place nowhere near his keyboard ("I don't want to short out the network equipment while I'm on deadline," Vercellotti joked) and wait in excited anticipation for exit-poll numbers to start pouring in at 5 p.m.
"I have a feeling I'm not going to get a whole lot of sleep Tuesday night," said Vercellotti. Election coverage is slated to dominate the network until at least 2 a.m. "I'll be thinking about and preparing and reporting and occasionally looking around and saying, #Wow, this is really cool.'"
