Though the early exit poll data proved misleading, experts said, the election results generally tracked closely with the findings of full-scale preelection polling.
For example, an average of the final week's nonpartisan polls showed Bush with a 2-percentage-point lead over Kerry in the head-to-head national horse race, according to the website RealClearPolitics.com.
That was close to the 3-percentage-point victory margin Bush ultimately claimed, and it was within the margin of error.
Final battleground polls also forecast with relative accuracy the winners of most key states. Only in Wisconsin, where polls generally showed Bush with a tiny edge, did the outcome -- a slim Kerry victory -- belie the prediction.
"The preelection polls did a pretty good job -- they mostly showed it either even or a small Bush lead," said Andrew Kohut, director of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, whose final poll nailed the outcome with a prediction of a three-point spread for Bush.
The final Los Angeles Times poll found a 49%-48% Bush lead nationally among likely voters -- near enough to the final result to be within the margin of error.
Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, acknowledged that Tuesday's outcome did contradict one major preelection assumption of many pollsters: that undecided voters would break in Kerry's direction.
Despite the exit polls' limitations, they were eagerly inhaled by impatient amateur analysts -- and plenty of political pros -- as soon as raw numbers began to flow in starting at about 2 p.m. EST Tuesday. They were rapidly leaked to websites such as right-leaning Drudge Report and left-leaning dailykos.com.
Drudge posted a headline -- "Kerry Finds Comfort in First Batch of Exit Polls" -- that alarmed many Republicans.
By the evening, dailykos.com posted a batch of exit poll results that showed Kerry leading Bush 51% to 49% in Ohio and Florida and running better than expected in some other states.
The Times, which purchased portions of the survey data, was told Kerry had a 51% to 49% lead in Ohio and that the Democrat and Bush were locked in a dead heat in Florida. But Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus said the exit pollsters warned the newspaper that the states were too close to call.
The exit polls were conducted by Mitofsky International and Edison Media Research. Edison's Joe Lenski, who helped oversee the surveys, said Wednesday he was happy with the results. The networks, which made no erroneous projections, were also pleased.
"I'm not designing polls for some blogger who doesn't even understand how to read the data," Lenski said. "It's like if you were graded by your readers on the first draft of your article."
But on election day, everyone in politics craves real-time data. Republican pollster Whit Ayres scanned the early numbers Tuesday and heard rumblings of fear from within his party.
"There were a lot of folks on my side who thought it was over," Ayres said. "I worried, but once I looked carefully at the data, I realized it was ridiculously off."
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Times staff writer Esther Schrader contributed to this report.
