Posted on 10/25/2008 5:02:33 AM PDT by HalfFull
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 of Obama support was already seen in Democratic primaries earlier in the year.
In 18 of 20 states he reviewed, votes in favour of Obama, who at that time was duelling Hillary Clinton for the party's White House nomination, were overestimated by an average of seven points.
The gap was likely due to the fact that many of Obama's most fervent supporters, often younger, more politically active and in many cases better educated than Clinton's, were more inclined to respond to exit polls.
The same thing could happen on November 4 if Obama voters turn out to be markedly younger than those of his Republican rival John McCain.
According to a recent Gallup poll, 65 percent of voters aged 18-29 plan to vote for Obama, against 31 percent for McCain.
Meanwhile, pollsters themselves tend to be on the younger side.
"One problem (with polls) has been that interviewers tend to be young people, and older voters are less likely to respond to young pollsters--if most of the interviewers this year are again young people, that might lead to some overstatement of the Obama vote," said Herb Weisberg, a professor of political science at Ohio State University.
Weisberg also stressed the unknown factor: ballots cast before November 4--which researchers say could total as much as one-third of the national total.
"Another problem will be that many votes are being cast absentee (early) this year. Exit polls can't pick up these votes," Weisberg said.
"Some pollsters will undoubtedly do phone surveys the weekend before the election to ask people if they've already voted and how they've voted, as a means of trying to capture this effect."
Exit polls have been conducted since 2003 by the National Election Pool (NEP), a consortium of ABC News, Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News, which uses the Edison media research and Mitofsky International to carry out the post-voting voter questioning across the country.
On November 4, the Edison/Mitofsky team plans to carry out more than 100,000 interviews of voters at more than 1,000 US polling stations.
Concerns about the accuracy of this particular type of polling are nothing new.
In the 2004 presidential election, early exit polls gave a slight advantage to Democrat John Kerry, prompting some premature celebrating by Democrats and hand-wringing by Republicans, only to have George W. Bush eventually win the White House.
"People ought to be very skeptical of leaked (exit poll) results they might see between 5:00 pm Eastern Time (2200 GMT) and when the polls close on November 4," Blumenthal said. (AFP)
LOL. when someone "hags up" on me I usually walk away quickly.
ping
I agree. I would also have all states vote on the same day.
He and Michelle will be furious, not in tears, and they will tell their supporters to go get steal pie.
That's better.
I remember going to my parent's house at about 5pm central on election day 2004. They were in a near panic watching a very ashen Brit Hume talk about the runaway exit polls showing Kerry ran away with the election.
If they thought Kerry would have been bad, what do they think of Obama?
I think we both know the answer to that question. Thankfully, my mom has been very outspoken in talking to a number of wishy-washy know-nothings who were leaning Obama.
i never lie to pollsters and have never seen the value in lying to them... it ends up demoralizing potential voters... why do that? just so pollsters can wonder what happened?
If you listen to some of Obama's earlier interviews, he doesn't stutter when he's on his real, favorite subject; The White Devil. He stutters when he's trying to construct some hallucinaton or other for the general electorate.
My state will for Obama, but I’m still hopeful that the country won’t. Usually I’m anxious about the results, but this year I’m more nervous about them.
Just think, four years ago, we all probably thought the dem candidate would be Hillary, and we thought THAT was bad.
The moment I become similarly convinced, I will want to work on making sure it's not an eeked-out victory, merely able to withstand lawyers, judge-shopped courts, thugs, or Paris-style, burning-car riots, but then to turn the victory into a clear mandate for Sarah's point of view, one that will clean up the downward slide in schools, that so failed a large a part of our electorate, causing them to be so lacking in their appreciation of capitalism and the US military accomplishments while being indifferent to, if not cheering on, Marxist socialism!
HF
I’m a bit skeptical of reports like this. I regularly refer to the 2004 exit poll data regularly to debunk most of the current polls. The 2004 data is remarkably close to the actual vote totals, both nationally and state-by-state.
The problem in 2004, I think, was that some early and incomplete exit poll data was leaked early and it was more favorable to Kerry than the final results. Apparently Republicans voted later in the day than Democrats did.
But your point remains. Don’t let exit poll data stop you from voting. That’s the lesson that we should have learned from the 2000 election and apparently did heed in 2004.
Vote, PLEASE, for Palin and what’s-his-face, McCain. None of this third-party, the-Republican-Party-needs-an-Enema, McCain-is-RINO stuff.
Then go home. Don’t turn on the TV. Go to sleep. Check FR in the morning for whatever you need to know.
I share your outlook.
LLS
I mostly just hang up on pollsters; but occasionally I
will stay on the line and lie and say I am voting for Bob Barr.
I missed all of that because it was the middle of the night here. I woke up to everyone waiting on Ohio and Kerry refusing to concede. I was literally pacing back and forth watching it in our office later that morning. At about 6 p.m. our time, Kerry finally gave it up and the relief on our base was palpable.
The results this year will likely be firmed up in the middle of the night for us. I'm already imagining how nervous I'll be before turning on the TV when I get up the morning of November 5. I'll have to squeeze my eyes shut, take a deep breath and just do it.
I still have very bad memories of doing just that in 2006...
“I never lie to pollsters and have
never seen the value in lying to them”
- - -
The value is in the long-term goal
of making the polling data worthless.
I have been lying to them for over 30 years.
I agree that we will win the White House. Unfortunately it will require calling up the National Guard in major U.S. cities to control rioting, resulting in death and destruction. But we definitely will win the election.
Just as in 2004, I remain cautiously optimistic that the majority of Americans will not sell out their country. Thank you for your service, and may your election night awakening be to that of good news for all.
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