How to Steal an Election: The Inside Story of How George Bush's Brother and FOX Network Miscalled the 2000 Election and Changed the Course of History

by David W. Moore

This is the inside story of how Jeb Bush persuaded the Fox network to call the presidential election for his brother George W. Bush on Election Night 2000. It was one phone call to Fox -- the details of which are revealed in this book for the first time -- that propelled George W. Bush into leading position for 43rd president of the United States. Even though the erroneous statement had to be retracted within two hours, the damage done by this false call to Al Gore's chances of winning the election were incalculable. David Moore, at the time senior editor for the Gallup Poll, makes the plausible and alarming case that, had Fox not made this miscall, the resulting political environment would have been less biased in favor of Bush, and that Al Gore could have won. On Election Night in 2000, Moore was with the exit poll "decision team" of CBS and CNN, taking notes on how election races were called, and miscalled, around the country -- including the two miscalls and two rescissions in Florida. Prior to joining Gallup in 1993, Moore was founder and director of the Survey Center at the University of New Hampshire.

Genres: Politics

210 pages, Paperback

First published September 27, 2006

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

AN EXCELLENT INTERPRETATION OF THE 2000 ELECTION RESULTS

David W. Moore was a pollster with the Gallup organization for 13 years; he is also the author of 'The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls' and 'The Superpollsters: How They Measure and Manipulate Public Opinion in America.'

He wrote in the Preface to this 2006 book, "The presidential election of 2006 was stolen from Al Gore. This is an historical observation, not a partisan charge... Officially, Gore lost Florida to George W. Bush by 537 votes. In fact, the evidence shows that more people in Florida voted for Gore by a margin of at least several thousand votes. Many of those votes were not counted because of ballot designs... But there were other uncounted votes that could have been counted for which the law did provide a remedy, but which the U.S. Supreme Court denied."

He argues that FOX News, which made the first announcement of a Bush victory at 2:16 AM, was quickly followed by NBC, CBS, CNN and ABC, which prompted Gore to make his concession telephone call to Bush (which he soon retracted, of course). (Pg. 5) Moore argues, "It is difficult to overestimate the impact of the erroneous network call... It created havoc for Gore, giving rise to charges that he was a 'sore loser' and undermining the legitimacy of his efforts to obtain a hand recount of the votes in Florida." (Pg. 6)

Moore notes that the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago, which ultimately tabulated all of the disputed ballots, reached the conclusion that "Under any standard ... Gore erased Bush's advantage and emerged with a tiny lead that ranged from 42 to 171 votes." (Pg. 5) He also charges that "the data didn't support the call" that the five networks made for Bush, as well. (Pg. 104)

This is a very interesting book---written with the advantage of more years of "hindsight" to overlook the matter, when compared to all the books that came out in 2001 and 2002.