Highlights of Newly Released 2002 National Exit Poll

Highlights from the newly released national exit poll of voters in the Nov. 5, 2002, elections for U.S. House:

_ 40 percent identified themselves as Republican, up from 36 percent in each of the two previous midterm elections. Democrats made up 38 percent of the electorate in 2002, 37 percent in 1998 and 36 percent in 1994. Self-identified political independents declined to 22 percent in 2002 from 27 percent each in 1998 and 1994.

_ 49 percent of women reported voting Republican for House, up slightly from the two previous midterms (46 percent in 1998, 47 percent in 1994).

_ 35 percent of Jews said they voted Republican. In previous midterm and presidential years since 1992 that number ranged from 21 percent to 26 percent.

_ 30 percent of all voters said the economy was the most important issue in their House vote. Health care, terrorism, education and Social Security (news - web sites) registered between 11 percent and 14 percent each. Only 3 percent cited Iraq (news - web sites) and 4 percent said corporate reform was the top issue.

_ 36 percent said their vote for House was intended to express support for President Bush (news - web sites), 18 percent to show opposition. At that time 64 percent said they approved of how Bush was handling his job as president; recent national telephone polling has Bush approval ranging from the low to high 50s.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=548&ncid=703&e=1&u=/ap/20030905/ap_on_el_ge/2002_exit_polls

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer

NEW YORK - Ten months late, exit poll data that shed light on why Republicans scored their unusual 2002 midterm election victory are finally becoming available.

Voter News Service collected the information but couldn't deliver it on election night because computer systems designed for VNS by an outside contractor failed.

That failure, coupled with data problems in 2000 that led television networks to prematurely declare George W. Bush the presidential winner, prompted the news organizations to shutter VNS. The consortium included ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and The Associated Press.

After a delay caused by having to manually input results from more than 16,000 paper questionnaires into a computer system, VNS members set the material aside as they decided the consortium's fate. Then they asked four independent survey research experts from academia to review the data.

The panel concluded the information is "of comparable utility and quality to past VNS exit polls, and we recommend that it be released for public use."

Among the exit poll's highlights: More voters identified themselves as Republican and fewer as political independents than in 1998 and 1994. Women leaned more Republican than usual, as did Jews. And twice as many respondents said their House vote was intended to express support for President Bush (news - web sites) as said it was to oppose him.

The panel reviewed only the national exit poll, which is geared toward whether respondents reported voting for a Democrat or Republican for U.S. House. VNS also conducted state exit polls in U.S. Senate and governor's races in 2002 but those data have not been reviewed or released.

Four of the former consortium members decided to donate the information to survey data archives at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut and the University of Michigan.

"We're not pushing it on anyone," said Sandra Genelius, CBS News spokeswoman. "We're making it available because this independent panel determined it was valid information."

This long after the elections, the news value of the data has diminished, although reporters could use the poll in looking ahead to 2004 campaigns and for comparison purposes in midterm elections in 2006 and beyond. The data also would be of value to political scientists researching how the GOP bucked a historical trend of the party that controls the White House losing in midterm elections.

"The VNS participants had considerable effort and money invested in gathering those numbers, and it made sense to us to do all we could to salvage as much of their value as possible," said David Tomlin, assistant general counsel at AP.

The data will be available on CD-ROM for $95, said Richard Rockwell, executive director of the Roper Center. It may be ready as early as next week.

"Everyone unfortunately looks at exit polls as a means for calling elections before the polls have closed," he said. "That is how the networks use them. But that is not what they were designed to do. They were designed to tell you the characteristics of why people voted the way they did."

Rockwell said he's confident in the data, but isn't sure whether they will be tainted in some researchers' minds because of the election night problems.

Two former members of the consortium — ABC and Fox News Channel — decided to have nothing to do with the data and weren't listed as donors when the information went to the data archives.

"It's not, at the end of the day, information that we feel comfortable going out with," ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said.

One concern the review team addressed was that survey questionnaires weren't available from 50 of the 250 precincts selected randomly for the national sample. The panel determined that while non-coverage was unusually high, it appeared to happen randomly and thus the data remain usable.

After disbanding VNS, the six news organizations signed a contract with two veteran polling experts to conduct exit polls during next year's election. The other job that VNS had performed, counting vote on election night, will be handled for the television networks by the AP.

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