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I had already made up my mind that if I were approached by any exit pollers after I voted, that I would tell them to go oooooggggggaaaaa themselves.

WASHINGTON, DC: On presidential election day, November 4, all eyes will be on what exit polls say voters did, and analysts fear they could give a rosier view of support for Democrat Barack Obama than reality. The combination of the exclusion of early voting, and the greater tendency of young voters--more often Obama supporters--to take part in the surveys, could skew the results of the exit polls, which, taken just as voters leave polling booths, are the closely-watched first indicators of how the election is going. In a National Journal article in March, Mark Blumenthal of pollster.com stressed that overestimation...

Media outlets are preparing for the possibility that their Election Day surveys could be skewed because of overstated support for Barack Obama, largely because of the enthusiasm of his supporters. While exit polling is a notoriously inexact science—early exit poll results suggested John Kerry would be elected president in 2004—the introduction of several new variables, ranging from the zeal of Obama’s supporters to his racial background to widespread early voting, is causing concerns among those who charged with conducting the surveys and the networks that will be reporting them. “It’s in some ways the flip side of non-cooperation,” said one...

Barack Obama has taken a slight lead with white independent voters for the first time in the presidential race, positioning him to capture a key demographic group that has eluded recent Democratic nominees, according to a Politico analysis of independent voting patterns. According to Gallup’s weekly average of some 6,400 registered voters, Obama now holds a 45 percent-43 percent edge over Republican John McCain with white independents. About eight in 10 independents are white. Should Obama’s support hold, he is positioned to become the first Democrat to win white independents in a two-man race since the advent of exit polling....

Polling place surveys frequently overstated Obama vote during primaries NEW YORK - Barack Obama’s tendency through the Democratic primaries to perform better in exit polls than he actually does at the ballot box has some media organizations nervous heading into Election Night. Television networks want to avoid having their performance become an issue for the third straight presidential election. Their political experts hope that experience gained during the primaries will help things run smoothly Nov. 4.

The AP has released its early exit polling demographics in Wisconsin, and the results offer hope to both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They confirm that populist rhetoric has large appeal among Democrats, where 70% of their primary voters oppose globalization, and a majority felt the economy was performing poorly. Both candidates spent the last week hammering those themes and have to be encouraged that they resonated with the party base. The other numbers favor Hillary. More women than men voted on Democratic ballots, and nine in ten were white. Only about 40% were college graduates, where Obama usually holds...

One thing that irritates me of media coverage of the primaries has been the analysis of exit polling and reporting of demographic trends based on this polling. They all race to announce their guess of the primary winner and then they break down how this race voted for that candidate or how this age group felt about the economy, etc. The naive viewer might assume all this stuff came off the ballots. I never hear mention that this comes from exit polling, the sample size, the error rate of exit polling etc. Curious how serious we should take this kind...

NEW YORK - Warren Mitofsky, a survey researcher who pioneered the use of exit polls to cover elections and helped develop the sampling method used in most modern telephone polling, has died. Mitofsky, who was 71, died Friday in New York City of an aortic aneurysm. Joe Lenski, Mitofsky's partner in exit polling for the last two national elections, confirmed his death Saturday. Mitofsky started conducting exit polls in 1967 for CBS News and developed the projection system and analysis system used by CBS and later by a consortium of news organizations that conducted national exit polls. "He was the...

Trinity Baptist Church in Ellenwood in south DeKalb County was one of the polling places where U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney and challenger Hank Johnson jockeyed for the Democratic nomination to represent the Fourth District. Shawn Manns, like many McKinney supporters, blamed the media for a negative portrayal of the outspoken lawmaker. “I think it was a witch hunt,” the 38-year-old Atlanta firefighter said. “She’s had her controversy but she’s human. I feel like she’s done a good job.” On the other side was Gregory Johnson, a 45-year-old mortgage banker. He said he voted for Hank Johnson because he “has his...

Report Outlines Exit Polling Problems Wed Jan 19, 1:51 PM ET By SETH SUTEL, AP Business WriterNEW YORK - Two firms that conducted Election Day exit polls for major news organizations reported Wednesday that they found a number of problems with the way the polls were carried out last year, resulting in estimates that overstated John Kerry (news - web sites)'s share of the vote. Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International found that the Democratic challenger's supporters were more likely than President Bush (news - web sites)'s supporters to participate in exit poll interviews. They also found that more...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Exit polling, long a key indicator of election trends, emerged on Wednesday as a big loser in the 2004 election after Internet pundits latched onto early data to mistakenly report a commanding lead for Democrat John Kerry in key states. The use of the raw, preliminary data on freewheeling Web sites triggered a brief but doomed wave of euphoria among Kerry supporters and a sharp drop on Wall Street. The data also wound up being telegraphed by mainstream media in TV reports. The truth was that in the end Kerry did not win states like Ohio...

Associated Press COLUMBUS, Ohio - Exit polling can be conducted within 100 feet of a polling place on Election Day, a federal judge ruled. U.S. District Judge Michael H. Watson's ruling on Monday night overturned an October directive by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to prohibit exit polling within 100 feet of precincts. Five television networks - ABC, CNN, CBS, Fox News and NBC - and The Associated Press had sued on Monday, seeking a temporary order to block Blackwell's directive that limited the exit-poll surveys, even though there had been no prior problems. "Polling activities such as these...

NEW YORK (AP) - With two weeks to go until Election Day, Voter News Service is testing its new exit polling and vote-counting system, while its members are cautiously crafting backup plans, mindful of problems they encountered two years ago. The latest test run over the weekend by VNS with its six media members — ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and The Associated Press — made its executive director "cautiously optimistic." Still, the new system and fresh memories of botched calls on election night 2000 are likely to make news organizations more restrained in their pronouncements on Nov. 5. That...