Much was made tonight (November 2-3, obviously) about how the predictions made by exit polls ending up going wrong when the actual results began to come in. Some people even argued that exit polls were clearly unreliable and of questionable usefulness. CNN almost made a point of not projecting any winners based on exit polls unless the results were overwhelmingly one way or the other. In the last few days and weeks, much had been made about the record number of early voters. Are these people included in exit polls, and might that explain why the exit polls were unreliable (in Florida, for example)?
The journalists concentrated mostly on the value of exit polls in predicting a race on election night, before the results come in. They might have underappreciated their value explaining why people voted a certain way, but they seemed demographically skewed, which may undermine some of their explantory value. I saw a few where 46% of the people who answered were male, and 54% were female. Does anyone know why that was? (I knew that there are slightly fewer men than women in most places, but it’s definitely not that much.)
Some of the questimates as to why the exit polls were so far off the mark have been: estimated Latino voting block pop #s used by the pollsters was lower than the general estimated total and that the woman voting block was also underestimated. I find it hard to accept that polling professionals were so dumb, but you never know to what extent professional blinders promote narrow perspectives. A hot issue to be reanalyzed once again.
I find it really distressful that folks who voted based on values and morality would vote for someone who has systematically blinded the American public with lies and clever wordplay.
While I applaud the idea that every vote counts and every vote will be counted, there comes a time when the numbers just will not add up. I hope that the Kerry campaign will hold out until those votes are counted, but I am not optimistic because, again, Ohio voting administation is in the hands of the political opposition.
The number of women voting was probably overestimated; the nationwide CNN exit poll says that 54% of respondents were women and 46% were men. This seems odd, though I guess it’s possible. Women tended (in the exit polls) to vote for Kerry, so if the percentage of women who actually voted was higher than the polls indicated, you would have expected better results for Kerry than the polls suggested, which was not the case. The exit polls suggested he would win Florida, Ohio and the popular vote.