By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
A professional pollster is warning voters to remember the exit polling fiasco of the 2004 election which grossly over-stated Sen. John Kerry’s lead, saying the same misinformation will probably surface again this year.
“ . . . (W)e would discourage a rush to judgment based on the exit polls and wait until there has been a representative sampling of actual tabulated results from a variety of counties and precincts in a state,” said McCain-Palin pollster Bill McInturff in a memo that was released to the public.
“As we have seen in previous election cycles, the exit poll results do leak early and that ends up influencing the coverage of the race before even the first state polls close at 6:00 PM Eastern,” McInturff wrote.
He went on to list several key points the public should keep in mind when exit poll data begins to be leaked:
1. Historically, exit polls have tended to overstate the Democratic vote.
2. The exit polls are likely to overstate the Obama vote because Obama voters are more likely to participate in the exit poll.
3. The exit polls have tended to skew most Democratic in years where there is high turnout and high vote interest like in 1992 and 2004.
4. It is not just the national exit poll that skews Democratic, but each of the state exit polls also suffers from the same Democratic leanings.
5. The results of the exit polls are also influenced by the demographics of the voters who conduct the exit polls.
After the 2004 election, the National Election Pool completed a study investigating why the exit polls that year showed John Kerry over performing 5.5 points better than the actual results showed him to have done. Their conclusion was that Kerry voters and Democrats in general were more likely to participate in the exit polls.
“Our investigation of the differences between the exit poll estimates and the actual vote count point to one primary reason: in a number of precincts a higher than average ‘Within Precinct Error’ was most likely due to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters. There have been partisan overstatements in previous elections, more often overstating the Democrat, but occasionally overstating the Republican.”
McInturff believes this will hold true again this year. A recent Fox News survey showed that 46 percent of Obama voters said they were very likely to participate in the exit polls, while only 35 percent of McCain supporters said the same.
What effect will record turnouts have on the exit polling problem? More errors, says McInturff. The 2004 election also had a record turnout, he said, but this only amounted to more errors in the polling.
“So given that turnout is expected to be even higher than 2004 and that Democrats are more likely to participate in the exit polls, this means we should expect greater fluctuation and variation in the exit polls from the actual election results.”
McInturff concluded that based on the previous exit poll results “we should expect once again that Tuesday’s exit poll data could overstate the Obama vote and under represent the McCain vote.”
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