Dick Morris thinks that the exit polls were deliberately screwed up.

If so, why? To discourage and suppress the Republican vote?

Maybe. After all, it worked in Florida in 2000, when the early (false) call of the state for Gore reduced Bush turnout in the panhandle (where polls closed an hour later).

Whatever happened, I agree that we need to understand it--it may indeed have been one last attempt of many through this election season by a now shameless MSM to steal an election. Fortunately, they are even bigger losers at this point than John Kerry. As is John Zogby. He may have trouble getting people to pay attention to him next time.

[Update at 9 AM EST]

Michael Barone has a plausible theory about how it happened:

My own suspicion is that some Democrats—at the command level, or somewhere below—had an election-day project of slamming the results. New Hampshire, Minnesota and Pennsylvania initial exit poll results had huge margins for Kerry—much larger percentages than he won in any pre-election poll. If somebody had slipped some Democratic operative the list of exit poll sites—40 to 50 sites in each critical state—he or she could have slipped several hundred operatives into the polling places to take the exit poll ballots and vote for Kerry. The results would have shown Kerry much farther ahead than he actually was and, broadcast through drugdereport.com and other sources, could have heartened Kerry supporters during the afternoon and disheartened Bush supporters. When I was active in Democratic politics, in 1964-80, it would have occurred to us to do no such thing. But Democrats these days are so filled with a sense of grievance and with a feeling of justification for employing any dirty tactics to win, that this is not unthinkable. If people can game the exit polls, there's not much point to having exit polls any more.

Also:

The Democrats have lost the presidency, have lost seats in the Senate (including, apparently, despite the Indian reservations, the seat of Minority Leader Tom Daschle) and have lost seats in the House of Representatives needs to take a different approach. How long will it take the Democrats to learn that lesson? And will George W. Bush, in the meantime, use his Republican majorities to guide public policy in new and interestingly different directions?

We'll see. I hope so, on both counts.

This puts some of the weirdness I saw at CNN (over the ten minutes I watched it) in context. They interviewed one of the Kerry people. The guy kept describing all the wonderful progress being made in Ohio, Florida, etc. Then I see the vote numbers for the states and I see Bush over Kerry by nontrivial amounts. So at first, I thought the Bush team had snuck in a sypathizer or something.

Later on we see some sort of "technology" being applied to the race in Ohio. A couple of talking heads lean on a box (probably hiding the backside of some sort of monitor/laptop) that looks kind of like a computer and talk about how the race is "too close to call". They then switch to a computer graphic of Ohio by county with a swirl of reds and blues indicating the relative strength of each candidate. After circling a few blue counties and claiming Kerry still has a chance, they switch back to the main collection of talking heads.

Very surreal and the props were useless except when they were distracting (eg, the backdrop of dozens of CNN fans waving frantically every time the camera took them in).

OTOH, having Wolf Blitzer (the coordinator) stand and the other talking heads sit in elevated chairs kinda worked for me.

Maybe we will see the end of Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and exit polls. If they can't be relied on then why listen to them. And if they are played with at that level, will we, the voters, listen to them again?

It was clear last night watching Fox News, and some MSM, that they were clearly bewildered by the exit poll/actual vote difference. They all held off "giving" several races to anyone with well over 90% of precincts in.

What would it hurt if we have to wait until 7:30 or 8:00 P.M. eastern, to start seeing who is ahead. If we are going to see the exit polls manipulated, as Mr Morris suspects, then I am willing to wait for the news of the ACTUAL vote.

Well, I didn't watch the television at all last night and I daresay I got a better picture than those who did.

Reliable pre-election polling (e.g. from RCP) told us how it was going to shake out, and was bang on correct right down the line, state by state. Numerous serious blogs from people on the ground reported all the important true facts -- heavy turnout, fired-up GOP base, no major Florida-style weirdness -- and none of the wild-eyed spin -- crazed exit polls weighted 60%/40% towards women, forsooth! (Proof that some blogs are as hysterical as CBS any day, incidentally.)

Hard data flowed in from the Secretaries of State Web sites as polls closed, in real time, confirming the responsible predictions and showing the efficient W machine quietly chugging up one row of counties and down the next, harvesting every last GOP vote. The outcome was obvious by about 10 PM eastern, when GOP campaign insiders told NRO that the numbers were very solid in Florida and Ohio, and why. After that, you'd have to believe (as I assume the innumerate ninnnyhammers on the TV believed) in a whole row of statistical improbables to believe W was in any real danger.

I only read about the frantic antics of the TV networks second-hand, e.g. from some of the sillies at the NRO Corner, whom Hugh Hewitt now famously and correctly rebuked, and it all seemed curiously detached from the emerging reality.

Despite the best efforts of the MSM, there never was a dramatic story in this election, any more than there was a dramatic story in al-Qaqaa, the Guard memos, merry Muqtada al-Sadr and his band of brothers. . .

So who cares whether the MSM reforms? They are now both superannuated and superfluous.