Friendly Fire Polls

Remember those Dem-friendly exit polls that overstated the Kerry lead, promised a Dem victory, and have since been thoroughly discredited, not just by the election results themselves but by subsequent revelations about the methodology, or lack thereof, by which they were taken?

Reading the blogs, seeing the news, and observing the inaugural, it seems to me that the only lasting effects of the attempted poll-rigging were both negative for the Dems:

• Their supporters were crushed by the real election results. You can see their pain: to think they had done it, had won, then to have victory snatched away after they had already begun to celebrate. I may disagree with their politics, but can empathize with the heartbreaking nature of such a loss.


• Coming on the heels of the 2000 debacle that many claim cost Bush the popular vote that year (a plausible, though unprovable theory), it further undermines the ability of the Dem-friendlies in the media (that's most of them) to push-poll an advantage for the Dems in the future. And in a closely-divided electorate, the Dems - now a minority party in decline - needed every advantage they could muster.

The only poll that counts is the vote itself; geez, the old truism still holds, now more than ever.