As analysts and pundits decry the networks' rush to judgment, it remains unclear precisely what caused the errors.

At 1 p.m. on Election Day, VNS exit poll data began to filter in to the news organizations.

Historically, exit polls have been accurate predictors of election outcomes, though some political scientists believe that as many as four precincts in ten may provide a false picture of the electorate.

Subscribers to the VNS service must agree to an embargo on the data until the majority of the polls in a particular state have closed, in order to ensure that a projected outcome does not influence voters or reduce turnout.

Networks have now accused VNS of providing bad data that led them to the make the multiple missed calls in the Florida race, and assert that the errors were not caused by poor internal analysis of that data.

"We based our call as did everybody else, on tabulated votes," said CBS news spokesperson Kim Akhtar. "As the data continued to come in after we made the call, we began to realize that something wasn't right."

Akhtar said that as the night wore on, the data was not as accurate as had been expected, and the actual numbers of votes didn't match up with VNS' predictions.