How did news networks get every presidential race projection correct in the 1990s?

[Plankton5165]

They nearly didn't with Georgia '92, NH '92, NJ '92, and Tennessee '96.

While they incorrectly projected Maryland '80, Massachusetts '80, and Illinois '88 in the 1980s, and Florida '00 in the 2000s.

[Orwell]

Florida in 2000 is pretty easily explainable, Gore improved on Clinton by a ton in the now Democratic areas of the state, for example, Orange County that they thought Gore was going to win the state by a solid amount, what was not expected was the massive surge in support for George Bush in the panhandle of the state that is why the miscall in 2000 was made.

[kcguy]

I remember hearing some stories about bad data on election night in Florida in 2000.

A Google search turned up this report from 2001.  https://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/c2k/pdf/REPFINAL.pdf

Here are some highlights.

• The exit polls of 45 survey precincts suggested Gore was winning by 6.6 points.
• In the first 6 survey precincts to report, Gore did 1.7 points better than the exit poll.  When all 45 eventually came in, including Miami and Tampa, Gore actually did 2.8 points worse.
• The absentee vote later turned out to be historically high, at 12% of the total vote, rather than the estimated 7%. Bush carried the absentee vote statewide by 24 points.
• In order to figure out statewide patterns, CBS chose the 1998 gubernatorial race (Jeb Bush's) as its baseline, which turned out to be a bad predictor.  In retrospect either the 1996 presidential or the 1998 senatorial results would have produced a better model.
• After the call was made, a keypunch error for Duval County gave Gore an extra 40,000 votes, making the networks even more confident of their call.  It wasn't for another hour that the mistake was noticed.

• By 2:00am EST, Bush was up statewide by 29,000 votes with 96% of precincts reporting.
• Shortly afterwards, the numbers for Volusia and Brevard Counties were added, giving Bush a 51,000-vote lead.  However, both results included computer errors, and Bush's lead should actually have been closer to 27,000.
• The error was quickly noticed and corrected by the Associated Press, but none of the networks were getting their numbers from AP.
• By now, the number-crunchers were estimating that there were only about 180,000 votes left uncounted, but the votes were coming from the most Democratic parts of the state.  In actuality, the number of outstanding votes was nearly double, partly due to Palm Beach County counting its absentee ballots and its largest precincts last.
• Half an hour after Florida was called for Bush, the networks were reporting that the official results had Bush with a 55,000-vote lead.  At the same time, the AP had his lead at 14,000.
• Eventually, the networks discovered their error.  By the time the networks retracted the Bush call, his lead was less than 2,000 votes.

[MT Treasurer]

^Thanks for this excellent summary.

re: the OP's question, they obviously got very lucky with GA/NH/NJ in 1992 (shouldn’t have been called at poll closing time) and TN and arguably even KY in 1996. They didn’t get as lucky with some of the Senate races, e.g. NH-SEN 1996 (projected for Swett [D] instead of Smith [R]) and GA-SEN 1992 (projected for Fowler [D] even though Coverdell [R] would later win the runoff).

I also stumbled upon this (Wikipedia article on the 1992 FL election):

Florida held an election for president of the United States on November 3, 1992. The race was extremely close – so close in fact that some news networks mistakenly reported that Democratic challenger Bill Clinton had won in the state, although incumbent President George H. W. Bush was eventually declared the winner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_presidential_election_in_Florida

There doesn’t seem to be any evidence for this, though, and given what would happen eight years later, I think someone at least would have brought it up if this really happened.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

They called Florida for Bush because Gore was given -16000 votes in one precinct. This was fixed in the results available for people like me who were wondering if that was a safe call, but not fixed in the numbers used to make the call.

[Mr.Phips]

They nearly didn't with Georgia '92, NH '92, NJ '92, and Tennessee '96.

While they incorrectly projected Maryland '80, Massachusetts '80, and Illinois '88 in the 1980s, and Florida '00 in the 2000s.

Didn’t they also call New Hampshire relatively early for Bush in 2000 when he only won by a point in the end?