Thanks for the comment, Valerie. I should have mentioned this in the story. You’re right, early voting has really revolutionized everything, and I think the day is coming when we will all vote early.
But to answer your question, this year, exit pollsters dealt with early voting by doing telephone surveys of early voters in 18 states before the election. The phone survey had its own problems (it only included landline phones, for example), but it was in other ways easier to control than physically surveying people at polling places. The data was then merged with the data from…
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I was planning to refuse to read any exit-poll data tonight, since they are always wrong. Then I got assigned to write about them.
I did my best not to look, really. Here is a story so bloated with caveats that it almost can’t stay afloat.
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OK, I spent the past week looking behind the voting booth curtain, and it was scary. I had no idea just how much we rely on chance, faith and volunteers to get an election done in this country. Incredible. I have new respect for poll workers. I have new doubts about the result in a close race. I haven’t seen anything this homespun since I went to Amish country. And it’s significantly less charming when your vote is in the balance.
Check out my Time.com story on how your polling…
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I’m headed out to Virginia today to attend a training class for poll workers. Until I started working on this story about the logistics of polling places, I never realized just how much we rely on volunteers (read: senior citizens) to carry out elections. They really take care of everything, these guys.
On Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of volunteers will appear at polling places at 5 a.m. (!) and manage what is expected to be a record turnout. They will look up your name, direct you to a voting booth, delicately explain that you can’t wear your Obama button…
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One of the deadliest fires in American history happened on the night of May 28, 1977, at the Beverly Hills Supper Club outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. I wrote about this fire in my book because it was a case study in how groups behave in disasters. People struggled to stay with the people with whom they had arrived. The guests became largely passive and obedient, while the waiters and cooks did the vast majority of life saving. Darla McCollister, who had her wedding at the Club that night, was kind enough to share her…
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What makes Warren Buffett’s brain different?
I just got done talking to Greg Berns, a neuroeconomist at Emory University Medical Center. Fascinating guy, and he has a new book out called Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently. Worth a look. And by the way, when are we going to get some neuroeconomists working for the government—or for cable TV? These people understand how the brain makes decisions in times of anxiety. Turns out to be very different from what we might expect… More on that coming soon.
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Here’s a story I wrote for Time.com about one reason why American voters did not back a bailout with the same fervor as American leaders. Putting aside the more important (and much harder) question of whether the bailout was a good idea, this is a case study in how we perceive risk.
Note to European politicians: If you want people to support a dubious legislative bailout, you have to get very specific and personal with the public.
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I was in the National Press Club lobby this afternoon when the news broke that the House had failed to pass the bail-out package. I sat there staring at the wall of TV monitors with a group of stunned reporters, no one sure what to do next. One screen showed the Congressional vote tally going up; the one next to it showed the Dow going down, down, down.
Despite the sense of foreboding in my office here in DC, I am still not convinced the bail-out package was the right response. The whole thing reminds me too much of…
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