Define "reliable". :)
CLINTON: "I was always 'reliable', if you know what I mean..."
Posted on 11/03/2008 11:26:06 AM PST by truthandlife
Exit polls have been a source of controversy in the past four elections. Will there be problems again on Tuesday?
A little background: Exit polls got their start 40 years ago in the 1967 Kentucky gubernatorial contest. Then, the late Warren Mitofsky of CBS (nyse: CBS - news - people ) News conducted the poll. Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International will conduct this year's poll for the National Election Pool, a consortium of the five major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and CNN) and the Associated Press. About 3,000 people will be involved in the 50-state effort, and more than 100,000 voters will be surveyed.
Interviewers are sent to pre-selected precincts around the country, and they hand a questionnaire to every nth voter ( n, or the skip interval, is computer-generated) leaving the polling place. The poll is usually printed on both sides of a single piece of paper, and voters are asked to check boxes that provide basic demographic information about themselves and answers to election-related questions. Interviewers phone their results into exit poll headquarters several times during the day.
While the interviewing is going on, the Associated Press deploys a small army to collect actual vote returns throughout the United States. Because many Americans will vote absentee or early--possibly as many as a third this year--the exit pollsters also survey people before Election Day to ask whether they have voted and, if so, how. Those results are combined with the results collected on Election Day. Edison then provides its estimates and the rest of the exit poll data to the consortium members; the desk analysts at the networks review it and decide when to call an election.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
READ WHOLE ARTICLE (Another excerpt):
This problem was due, according to a post-election analysis by Mitofsky, “to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters.” This was the largest problem of its kind in the past five presidential elections. Although it was a serious problem for the pollsters, he said, this error did not “lead to a single incorrect NEP [National Election Pool] winner projection on election night.”
Can these past problems be overcome on Tuesday night? To compensate for the potential oversampling of Democrats, Edison/Mitofsky have improved interviewer training and are using fewer young interviewers. They have compromised with states that had kept interviewers far from the polling locations, which made data collection difficult. And as in 2006, the networks won’t get the data until 5 p.m., which will help to prevent the kind of leaks that suggested—too early—that Kerry would win in 2004. Additional safeguards will check the poll against actual votes. These changes should improve the reliability of the only tool we have to look at the views and values of actual voters and how they have changed over time.
No. They are there to get people not to go vote.
Does Obama love America?
Define "reliable". :)
No.
no
if these polls were accurate, we would have had a President Kerry and a President Gore...and when we hit out knees tonight we can thank God that we didn’t!
CBS or someone will go off half cocked calling Virginia or some other state for Obama early and then have to pull it back, you watch !
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Remember 2004?
No!
We have an election this year with an unprecedented number of undecideds. There is a strong suspicion that these folks are refusing to state what they have indeed already determined to do. What makes anyone believe that people who refused to divulge their choice before the election are going to spring from the voting booth willing to tell anyone anything about their ultimate decision?
IMO, a big fat NO.
RATS love to hear themselves talk...
think their opinions matter more than anyone else’s...
ergo...are MUCH more like likely to put up with idiot pollsters.
So, the answer is no.
Define "reliable". :)
CLINTON: "I was always 'reliable', if you know what I mean..."
Sure they are, just ask President Kerry.
Two hints for election day:
1) Ignore the exit polls; firstly, people responding to exit polls are self-selected, and secondly, people are not going to tell reporters that they've voted against the One.
2) Ignore the media, especially if they call states for Obama as soon as the polls close based on exit polling. MSNBC will be egregious in this regard because they want to depress McCain turnout in the mountain west, especially Colorado.
No, and yes.
No, the exit polls are not accurate, at first — there is a strong self-selection bias in those who choose to participate, and the selection of which precincts to poll comes down to fitting a pre-determined turnout model, which places them at just as much of a risk for over- or under-sampling particular demographics as do the phone-based polls. Also, these polls depend on the respondent telling the truth.
Yes, the exit polls are accurate, but only when properly adjusted for actual turnout. Despite all of the whining (from both sides) about how the exit polls didn’t match the results in 2004, the fact is that once the polls were weighted to reflect the actual demographics of those who voted, they were extremely accurate.
To summarize — the initial numbers are not reliable, but the weighted numbers are. However, since the exit polls are used to project actual turnout, the fact that they are not reliable until the actual turnout is known makes them useless except for after-the-fact analysis to see what the trends were.
I believe MSM will start calling the election for Zero about two minutes after polls close on east coast. IGNORE THEM ALL AND JUST KEEP VOTING -—
Every state counts — this won’t be so clear cut and there is so much fraud and voting machine/ballot trouble ahead tomorrow. This will be like election 2000 but 1000 times worse.
JUST VOTE!!!!! Keep your eyes/ears off the TV/radio/internet (except for FR of course!)
So, most refuse to talk to pollsters. Others, like me, lie outright to them.
Many others simply feel that their vote is no one's business but their own. I'll leave it to the reader to decide how the party breakdown might be for that group.
In this election in particular (and in the past as well), voters for a particular candidate have been actively ridiculed: by the media, by the pundits, by friends, and even family. So, they aren't going to answer that question honestly, if at all. Again, you decide how that group's votes may have been allocated.
The pollsters know all these things. But, as long as someone is willing to pay them to try, they will keep trying to predict the outcome. This year, I expect them to get it really wrong -- if they don't succeed in suppressing the undecideds who think it's pointless to vote after all.
I am predicting that this will happen for three states.
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