http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/19/exit.polls/index.html

Report suggests changes in exit poll methodology

Wednesday, January 19, 2005 Posted: 10:09 AM EST (1509 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Exit polls overstated John Kerry's share of the vote on November 2, both nationally and in many states, because more Kerry supporters participated in the survey than Bush voters, according to an internal review of the exit-polling process released Wednesday.

The report said it is difficult to pinpoint precisely why, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit poll than were Bush voters. "There were certainly motivational factors that are impossible to quantify," the report said.

Problems with the numbers first surfaced on Election Day, when exit polls showed Kerry with a 3-point lead nationally and an edge in some key battleground states. Those exit poll results were leaked and became widely known through the Internet.

CNN did not air those inaccurate results or post them on its Web site, and CNN's projections of winners on election night were accurate.

Nationwide, Bush got about 3.5 million more votes than Kerry.

The discrepancies stemmed from problems in interviewing voters at the 1,480 randomly chosen precincts where exit pollsters were stationed, not from how those precincts were selected or the way the data were processed, according to the 75-page report.

The report recommends a number of steps to deal with the problem, including better training for interviewers, as well as continued research aimed at boosting participation in the polls.

The report was issued by Mitofsky International and Edison Media Research, the polling firms that conducted the polls on behalf of the so-called National Election Pool, a consortium of six national media organizations (AP, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC).

To prevent leaks in future elections, the news organizations have agreed not to access the data until 6 p.m. ET.

The report found that the exit polls offered no evidence of widespread fraud.

"Exit polls do not support the allegations of fraud due to rigging of voting equipment. Our analysis of the difference between the vote count and the exit poll at each polling location in our sample has found no systematic differences for precincts using touch screen and optical scan voting equipment," the report found.

The new report shows that exit polls overstated Kerry's support in 26 states, while estimates overstated Bush's support in four states. The problem is not new -- in every presidential election since 1988, exit polls have overstated support for Democrats nationally -- but the discrepancy in 2004 was more pronounced than in previous years.

The report identified several factors that may have contributed to the discrepancy, including:

# Distance restrictions from polling places imposed upon the interviewers by election officials at the state and local level.

# Weather conditions, which lowered completion rates at certain polling locations.

# Multiple precincts voting at the same location as the precinct in the exit poll sample.

# Interviewer characteristics, such as age, which were more often related to the errors last year than in past elections.

The pollsters said they plan to further investigate the recruiting and training procedures, the interviewing rate calculations, the length and design of the questionnaire, as well as characteristics of both the interviewers and the precincts chosen to be surveyed.

"Even with these improvements, differences in response rates between Democratic and Republican voters may still occur in future elections," the report reads. "However, we believe that these steps will help to minimize the discrepancies."

In addition to the information included in this report, exit poll data from this election are being archived at the Roper Center at the University of Connecticut and at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan and will be available there for review and further analysis. A description of the methodology of the exit polls is posted at http://www.exit-poll.net.

From 1992 to 2002, exit polls were conducted by Voter News Service (VNS), whose exit polls in 2000 led to the networks' decisions to declare Al Gore the winner in Florida. In 2002, VNS was unable to deliver any exit poll data to the networks, resulting in the decision to disband it.

Well, that's interesting.

--PunkDavid

amazing that had this been bushs people who skewered the exit polling results, 95% of this board would go on about haliburton, the iraq war, and how you could not trust this administration and this is one more glaring example of why

I don't think this article showed anything about "Kerry's people skewering" the results. What I see is a seriously faulty methodology that for some reason seems to slant towards the democrats in far more case than towards republicans.

As I've said 100 times before, neither Kerry's nor Bush's people had any incentive to purposefully slant the exit polls one way or the other. If the polls were bad it was due to faulty methods, not intentional sabotage.

--PunkDavid

Exit polls are meaningless, other than to give news organizations fuel for the fire. I couldn't care less about exit-poll fraud one way or the other. This article is interesting, but it doesn't debug the need and demand for acurate voting machines, which sounds like what you're getting at.

Dude, peeps, I voted for Kerry and I thought the guy would lose. That didn't mean I think that he could win. It didn't mean that I did not have hope, but I just felt that exit polls were wrong.

September 11, 2001. Letting the same messy leader cleaning up his mess. The well-intentioned, but perhaps misplaced evangelicals. Clinton. And probably a few other reasons that are situational, rather than argumental lead to Bush's second victory (and an honest-to-god victory) for the presidency of the United States.

I don't think exit polls would have much to do with it. Exit polls are nice, but this election, I'll just say it, they hurt my feelings a bit. I wanted to believe that this nation would hold George Bush a little more accountable. One term was enough, in my opinion.

But if Bush polarizes the nation on issues that cross parties like Clinton did in his second term, I believe 2008 could be the year. However, if the lead Democrat that year is named Hillary Clinton, I'm voting for Jesus.

God bless,

Jared

who are you, woody guthrie?

"This Land Is Your Land" is among some of my favorite patriotic/politically themed songs.

I'll go with Rush. I liked Bill Clinton. But he and his wife will kill Democrats. With Hillary Clinton, I honestly have to begin questioning integrity. Bill Clinton, I'd like to think repents. And seeing how he isn't in office, I can't question him as harshly. But Hillary, gosh, I just don't see it. Maybe I should read her more recent autobiography, but I just get the feeling that no matter what I get from her, it's tainted to a large extent.

God bless,

Jared

I was thinking more along the lines of this one..


Let’s have Christ for President.
Let us have him for our King.
Cast your vote for the Carpenter
that you call the Nazarene.

The only way we can ever beat
these crooked politician men
Is to run the money changers out of the temple
And put the Carpenter in
O It’s Jesus Christ for president
God above our king
With a job and a pension for young and old
We will make hallelujah ring

Every year we waste enough
to feed the ones who starve
We build our civilization up
and we shoot it down with wars
But with the Carpenter on the seat
away up in the capital town
The USA would be on the way prosperity bound!

but anyway, Democrats don't need Christ, but they need someone who speaks with the authority of a hardcore Christian like Bush.

And the exit polls were hogwash, but if Kerry's people had anything to do with it they're amazingly dumb. They should have been like Bush's people and messed with the votes that mattered.

I don't think we'll ever know. I wonder if there's ever a way for a private re-vote to test the waters of what the election actually was.

God bless,

Jared