The rumbling started in the East, where the polls opened first. Within hours the political seismologists at Voter News Service in Manhattan were getting off-the-chart readings from their exit polls. Tapping at rented computers in a windowless warren 30 floors up in the World Trade Center, analysts spent Election Day sifting the results of more than 10,000 field interviews by exit pollers who questioned voters as they emerged from 1,039 polling places across the country. By 11:45 a.m., Murray Edelman, the veteran director of the operation, expressed astonishment that for the first time in the 12-year history of exit polling, a...
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