Exit-pollsters seek disaster-free Election Day

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When Americans head to the polls to pick a president on November 4, Michael McDonald will have armed guards stationed outside his workplace. His supervisor will confiscate his cell phone and Blackberry, and he'll get an escort when he needs to visit the bathroom.

McDonald is no criminal -- he's a pollster.

As he digests more than 100,000 interviews with voters from across the country, the George Mason University professor will be among the first to get an inkling of whether Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain will end up in the White House.

And the company conducting the survey wants to make sure the results don't leak.

"We are on a short leash," McDonald said.

Exit polls help news organizations predict winners, often as soon as voting closes in a particular state. They also help pundits determine why people voted the way they did.

But they sometimes play a less constructive role.

In the 1980 election, NBC used exit-poll results to predict victory for Republican Ronald Reagan while voting was still under way on the West Coast, prompting some voters in those states to stay home.

Television networks blamed exit polls for their bungled coverage of the 2000 election, when they prematurely called the race for Republican George W. Bush.

In 2002, a computer system meltdown prevented exit-poll data from reaching media clients.

And in 2004, numbers leaked in the afternoon seemed to indicate victory for Democrat John Kerry, prompting his campaign manager to utter the words: "Can I be the first to call you Mr. President?"

Bush, of course, would retain that title for another four years.

BETTER LUCK THIS TIME

The companies that now run the poll, Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, say they've taken steps to minimize problems this year.

They've recruited older canvassers, to counteract the reluctance of older voters to answer a college-age questioner.

They've revised their random sampling techniques, to account for the fact that Democrats seem to be more willing to talk about their vote than Republicans.

They'll survey 10,000 early and absentee voters.

And on Election Day, analysts like McDonald will be sequestered in a secure, undisclosed location as they scour the data for anomalies.

"I call it a bug hunt, because we've got to look for every creepy, crawly critter that could possibly throw off the numbers," he said.

But hurdles remain. Roughly half of those approached by the canvassers decline to participate, forcing analysts to guess their vote by age, race and other demographic factors.

"There's no 'D' or 'R' stamped on someone's forehead," said Joe Lenski, an Edison Media Research co-founder. "People need to know that exit polls are a survey just like any other."

The first wave of data will be released at 5 p.m. EST (2200 GMT) to the poll's underwriters -- the ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, and CNN television networks and The Associated Press -- and other news organizations that pay for the information.

Any numbers circulating on the Internet before then are probably fraudulent, McDonald warned.

"If you do see a leaked number, more than likely it's people trying to influence political trading" on Internet betting sites, he said.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

(To read more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online at blogs.reuters.com/trail08/)