I posted this over at Drudge Forum, but thought I’d get it over here also. Matt Drudge is getting a lot of press over his huge impact on election day. Even though big media outlets may have ruled election night as the tallies came in, I think that Drudge and bloggers totally dominated the daytime on election day. It was a snoozer of a news day if not for Drudge and the blogs out there. There has been a major shift in power to the online world and election day just amplified and illustrated that.

There are several articles out there pointing out that the exit poll data that Drudge posted midday on election day was incorrect data that shouldn’t have been released. They also point out that his story about Philadelphia having problems with votes already on the machines on election morning were mostly untrue.

So, the question I pose is was it wrong for Drudge to report those stories, even though they were credible at the time? Drudge is all about information wanting to be free, and he doesn’t hesitate to get the information out there for the most part. I personally almost never have a problem with him getting the news out there. On the exit poll story, he did post a correcting “use caution” follow up story quickly after there was some question of the usefulness of the exit poll data.