The Effect of Early Media Projections on Presidential Voting in the Florida Panhandle

The media incorrectly called Al Gore the winner of Florida at 7:48 p.m. eastern time with 12 min still remaining to vote in the 10 Central time zone counties in Florida. In addition, the media reported that polls “close in Florida at 7:00 p.m. eastern time,” which may have misled some panhandle voters into thinking their polls closed at 6:00 p.m. central time. Given the closeness of the popular vote in Florida, and the degree to which the outcome in the state was contested, these media miscues could have been decisive in the election. When Bush was behind in the recount, his supporters adamantly claimed their candidate suffered a loss of votes because of these media miscues. We test this hypothesis and reject it. Our regression results find no significant impact on the Gore/Bush vote differential, nor do we find any impact on voter turnout or third party voting, in these counties.