Exit polls

[dougo]

CNN.com has full exit poll results. (Yes, the exit polls during the day were grossly inaccurate, but they became accurate by the end.) There's plenty to chew on here, but I'm not going to right now, except to point out that the "moral values" thing is really overblown—it seems clear that concerns about terrorism had a much bigger effect on the election. I think there's really just a huge number of single-issue voters like Dennis Miller and Ron Silver: socially and economically liberal, but "killing the bad guys" trumps everything else.

(Thanks to chrismwage and wonkette for the links.)

Comments

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the moral values link. One thing I thought was interesting: Meyer says that "terrorism and Iraq", lumped together, would be considered the voters' biggest concern. But it's clear from the results that, in fact, most voters don't consider them a single issue. Terrorism voters went strongly for Bush, Iraq voters for Kerry.

Without doubt there are similar schisms to be found inside "moral values". His main point--that the arbitrariness of the list of "issues" makes it hard for respondents' answers to tell us much--is well taken.

accuracy of polls

[temvald.livejournal.com]

The exit polls were inaccurate to the end. From the NYTimes article:

"The last wave of national exit polls we received, along with many other subscribers, showed Kerry winning the popular vote by 51 percent to 48 percent, if true, surely enough to carry the Electoral College,'' Steve Coll, managing editor of The Washington Post, wrote in an online chat with readers Wednesday.

The Boston Globe article you linked referred to general, pre-election polls, which came close enough to matching the final official tally to be considered accurate.

Mystery Pollster has an interesting analysis of the Times article.

Wait...

[mshonle.livejournal.com]

Dennis Miller (who I haven't seen much post-9/11) is all for Bush? (i.e., killing the bad guys?)

That's kind of disapointing to hear.

Re: Wait...

[bushmiller.livejournal.com]

Oh dear god, he's become the most annoying of the Bushies.

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Slate has another article (http://slate.msn.com/id/2109275/) debunking the "moral values" assessment.

[chrismwage.livejournal.com]

You're welcome for the links, but .. which did you get from me? I don't remember posting any of them.

Also, if there's one thing that election coverage this week has taught me it's that wonkette is totally hot. When are you gonna hook a brother up?!

FUD factor

[feoh.livejournal.com]

My personal fear all along with this election had been that people would cave to the Republicans superior FUD generating apparatus and vote Bush along the "terrorists are scary! We've got to do something!" line.

Kind of a disappointing indictment of the voting American public.

While waiting in line on election day I found myself thinking "Yay all these people coming out in droves who'd never have voted otherwise, voting for Kerry!" - How naive I was thinking that the same wouldn't hold in the opposite direction in many other states of the union.

Ah well, hopefully those of us who care will see this as a challenge to become more outspoken and active than ever, showing the far right that we are a sizable minority and one that should be heeded.

[ketzl.livejournal.com]

As temvald noted, the exit polls themselves were still showing a Kerry victory, but after actual results were coming in they averaged the results with the polling numbers broadcast so of course they tended to converge. I have heard additional speculation that in states with Diebold voting and no paper trails, the gap between actual vote & exit polls was significantly higher than in other states just on the Presidential vote, but that exit polling was much more in agreement with vote results for other elections. I find myself speculating how easy it would be to insert a special case in these things which wouldn't be caught by testing procedures, something like "if date=11/2/2004 and candidate.lastname='bush' and testmode=false and state in ('OH','NV', etc) and random(1)>0.95 then". But of course that's just depression talking. If it hadn't been close, such potential cheating couldn't be concealed.