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This BONBC article is interesting on several levels, as it makes these points.
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. 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.
| In 1980, Ronald Reagan was declared president-elect approximately
two-minutes after east coast polls closed. Democrats to the west,
demoralized by the prospect of life without Jummy, went home.
As a result they lost the White House, the senate, several house seats, and
tons of local offices. Since then democrats have tried to use exit
polling as a tool that will effect the outcome in their favor.
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- Exit polls frequently overstated Obama’s vote during the primaries by as much as 3 percentage points.
- Well-educated and young voters are more likely to agree to fill out an
exit-poll survey, and both these groups have tended to favor Obama, the
experts said.
Well educated voters tend to favor Obama?
Arguably schooled, but not educated. Democrat voters are
demonstratively ignorant. To this day neither my
wife, nor I, have found a single person in our walk-about life who's
heard about Obama's "visiting all 57 states" gaffe, or any other of his idiocies. Nor can any of them name a single accomplishment of
this man for whom they will vote. Sounds pretty freaking stupid to me.
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- Enthusiastic voters are also more likely to seek out pollsters, or at
least not go out of their way to avoid them. That was true about Obama
during the primaries, just as it was for Republican Pat Buchanan during
the 1992 New Hampshire primary
| Exit polls are after
the fact, so why this concern when they've shown none about overstating
democrat numbers during the campaign -- by 20%, and higher?
The arcane inclusion of Republican Pat Buchanan's 1992 New Hampshire primary
exit polling is a tip-off to the AP's agenda. They needed a Republican to give this exercise the appearance of being about professional concern about getting things right, and not as a subversive device.
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- It was the exit polls’ overstatement of John Kerry’s
support in 2004 that caused problems for the networks, particularly
when the first wave of results were leaked on the Web (and sent the
networks into sustained orgasm).
- The problems were more serious in 2000, when networks prematurely
“called” Florida, and thus the election, for George Bush. It led to a
congressional investigation into their practices.
| The claim that Florida was prematurely called for Bush is a straw man,
because the polls were closed when that midnight call was made, first
by Fox, and it was accurate. Bush had won Florida. AP does not
mention that networks called Florida for Gore while the overwhelmingly
Republican panhandle, in a different time-zone, were still voting. As
a result, Bush lost between an estimated 20,000, and up to 100,000 votes when discouraged
voters went home.
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- For the Obama-McCain contest, there’s concern about whether some voters
will say they voted for Obama but, for racial reasons, actually didn’t.
- An unknown this season will be whether resentment toward the media
fomented by John McCain’s campaign will make his supporters even less
willing to “help” them by taking a survey.
| "Resentment toward the media
fomented by John McCain’s campaign " Are you kidding me? I'll bet this canker-blossom thinks he's educated.
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