Nate silver chimes in on media narratives and the exit poll
The Exit Poll And The Media Narrative
One bit of wisdom from my experience covering American elections: The media narrative about the election is often established fairly early, based on exit poll results and the first handful of results that trickle in, even when the vote-counting goes on all night.
And even when the results evolve over the course of the evening, the media often sticks to the narrative it established early on. If initial results show the Republican beating the Democrat by 12 points, for example, it might be portrayed as a landslide victory the next day even if the Republican eventually wins by only 4 points once all votes are counted.
How could this matter in the U.K. election? The exit poll from the BBC shows a larger-than-expected victory for the Conservatives, with 316 seats to 239 for Labour. That’s already affecting the tone of the coverage we’re seeing.
But the exit polls have been wrong before, and the odds are that the actual results will come in somewhere between the exit polls and pre-election forecasts. Suppose, for instance, that the Conservatives end up with 290-295 seats to 260-265 for Labour — that would be within the range of uncertainty common to both the exit poll and the pre-election forecast.
Labour just might be able to form a government under those circumstances. Both the exit poll and the pre-election forecast project 50 or more seats for SNP. With SNP’s consent and some help from very small parties, like those in Northern Ireland, Labour wouldn’t be that far from the magic number of 326 seats.
Such a coalition would be tenuous, however. And that’s where the media narrative could matter. Labour leader Ed Miliband might have trouble claiming the moral authority to form a government if the results were widely perceived as disappointing for Labour, as opposed to being a “messy” outcome in which neither of the major parties had done especially well.
In other words: The exit poll may not be right. But even if it’s wrong, it may make for some poor morning headlines for Miliband and make his task harder as a result.