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Exit Polls: You’ve Been Warned

Posted by PETE ABEL, Managing Editor in Politics.
Nov 4th, 2008 | Comments

As I was leaving the office on election day 2004, I distinctly remember the headlines about exit polls predicting a Kerry win by a significant margin — only to learn later that the exit polls were smoking crack.

Nate Silver remembers, too, and offers his “Ten Reasons Why You Should Ignore Exit Polls.” Enjoy.

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mlhradio

Seems like all the cable news networks and political blogs are taken extra-special pains to say IGNORE THE EXIT POLLS. I'm ignoring them myself, since I was burned so badly in the 2004 election when exit polls showed Kerry way up over Bush.

I would also like to add - DO NOT PUT MUCH STOCK INTO EARLY RETURNS, EITHER. Many networks (and conventional wisdom) says that people who voted before today tilted heavily Democratic - so by extension I expect early returns that are reported to the networks will lean disproportionately Democratic as well. And then, as the evening progresses, the Republican tally will play catch-up. The real question, on a state-by-state basis, is whether the Republican turnout today will be enough to outweigh the Democratic advantage in the early votes. So when those very first returns come in for each state, take them with a huge grain of salt - wait until a healthy percentage of the vote is in before breathing easier (or harder, as the case may be).

DLS

It's good that they're refraining. As someone here in Detroit said so correctly, the media have been so overtly biased this year (they have been Obama's campaign auxiliaries, as I have correctly said myself), and many expect them to rush to announce Obama's win as soon as too few voters still to vote remain to change the outcome.

(The real-world assessment of this amounts to the question of how many victories the Dems will win in addition to the White House, and the concern if they will try taking us far more left than all but the lunatics want us to go.)

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