> What I want to know is WHY it was reported to the press that Gore
> had won Florida--way too early.
It wasn't reported *to* the press, but *by* the press. The way the forecasting works is like this. The AP and major networks form a press consortium which conducts exit polling during the day. It's embargoed until the polls closed.
The results and exit polling are combined in a model which gives odds, basically, on who should win. As the early results and exit polling were both strongly Gore, then the model indicated a Gore win at the very beginning, but when Bush recovered it moved back to undecided. When Bush opened up a large lead in voting with 95% reporting, the model concluded that Gore couldn't catch up and indicated a Bush win. When the margin narrowed to five hundred, the model took it back away from Bush and into undecided.
> My newspaper says that Bush is the probable winner. But the
> television media says that we don't know yet. I'm confused.
Your newspaper went to press around 1AM EST, possibly earlier, long before Gore closed the gap (around 3AM EST). Most newspapers here indicate a Bush win, too - they went with what they have to go on.
Right now, given that absentee ballots have been involved in voter irregularities quite recently in florida, I think that Bush has the edge but only just. The gap probably will close somewhat, resulting in Bush having the legal right to the presidency but only a mild moral right to it. (That isn't to say that such issues bother him much, but they probably will make him a lame-duck president.)
Marco
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> Marco Anglesio | Hard reality has a way <
> mpa at the-wire.com | of cramping your style. <
> http://www.the-wire.com/~mpa | --Daniel Dennett <
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