The Exit Polls...

were not the only polls that mattered on election day:

The incorrect (or incomplete) data on November 2 had a significant impact on the outcome of the election. The impact was much more subtle than fewer or greater numbers of voters turning out for one candidate or another.



Throughout the afternoon and well into election night, the Kerry people thought they were winning. If they were winning they could not complain about how the election was being conducted. The thousands of lawyers the Kerry campaign had deployed to the battleground states could not file challenges because they didn't want their own people to call into question the legitimacy of the process.



By the time it became clear that President Bush was likely to win, it was too late for the Kerry campaign to go back to the news media and complain that there were problems with the election.