A Closer Look at Those Wisconsin Exit Polls

realclearpolitics.com ^ | June 7, 2012 | Sean Trende

[neverdem]

The Democrats emerged from Tuesday's recall election with two consolation prizes. The first is that they flipped a seat in the Wisconsin state Senate, taking control of that body (which won’t convene again until after the 2012 elections).

The second, and most frequently cited, is that exit polls found President Obama ahead of Mitt Romney by seven points in Wisconsin. As Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos summarized, “[a] seven-point lead, Obama over 50 percent, despite lacking participation of one of Obama's biggest constituencies (young voters), does not suggest a particularly close race this November. If Republicans want to dump their millions (and they'll have plenty of those) here, they're free to do so.”

But was this finding of the exit poll correct? We can’t know for certain, but there are four reasons to at least raise an eyebrow. The first is the wording of the question, which asked whether respondents planned to vote for Obama, Romney, or not vote. Missing from the choices? “Don’t know.”

In other words, what we may be seeing -- and what may explain some of the discrepancies we see below -- is that voters who haven’t given a lot of thought to the 2012 election are presently leaning Obama’s direction if forced to make a choice, but would respond to a typical horse-race poll that they are “undecided.”

Second, the independent polling shows a...

--snip--

This is the problem with the “down-ticket” questions, especially in elections like this one where the top lines had to be heavily weighted. This is part of why exit pollsters only asked basic demographic and top-line questions until fairly recently. And, in fact, Warren Mitofsky found that conservative voters were, in fact, less likely to respond to exit pollsters than liberal or moderate voters, suggesting that our hypothetical isn’t purely hypothetical...

[GOPJ]

I would never respond to a poll.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[scram2]

I believe you have misunderstood what I said.

Those that in effect say “Yeah sure I like the black guy” are not the racists. They say that so they don’t have to face charges or questions of racism if they say they do not like him or his policies or the job he has done.

It is less of a hassle to agree with what is expected of you by the Obamabots and go on your way leaving them happy and you to vote your true feelings in peace.

[Munz]

In that environment with SEIU running around demanding the head of Scott Walker, with such OBOTS, do you really think that many people would utter the words Romney?

Add +10 % just for fear and intimidation factor to Romney

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem.