how do the networks project a winner before a single vote is counted?

[spanone]

msnbc and cnn both called it for newt at 7pm.


exit polls?

hunch?

[onehandle]

1. Exit polls. nt

[Yavin4]

2. Exit Polls

Which is why Gore won Florida in 2000. All of the media's exit polls showed that Gore won.

[JI7]

3. exit polling , they use to show them throughout the day until November 2000

[RandySF]

4. Exit polling

An election exit poll is a poll of voters taken immediately after they have exited the polling stations. Unlike an opinion poll, which asks whom the voter plans to vote for or some similar formulation, an exit poll asks whom the voter actually voted for. A similar poll conducted before actual voters have voted is called an entrance poll. Pollsters – usually private companies working for newspapers or broadcasters – conduct exit polls to gain an early indication as to how an election has turned out, as in many elections the actual result may take hours or even days to count.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_poll

[Trekologer]

5. The numbers must be showing a significant victory for Newt

To have the media calling the election at the close of polling, the exit polls must be saying that the margin is pretty large.

[sce56]

6. The Evil Overlords gave them the corrected election results

http://www.theonion.com/video/diebold-accidentally-leaks-results-of-2008-electio,14214/

[NWHarkness]

7. It's a little more complicated than just exit polls.

They identify key precincts to focus on. So, in a general election, they will exit poll and track turnout in a certain number of strongly Dem precincts, a certain number of GOP strongholds, and a certain number of swing precincts. From those results they extrapolate.

I worked on the Clinton campaign in '92. Somehow, they found out what the CNN key precincts were. On the morning of election day, they shifted extra GOTV efforts into the key Dem precincts in the early morning, figuring that if CNN saw a huge turnout there, it could positively affect the coverage all day.