WP’s Morin on Exit Polls

Exit Polls Legacy blog posts

Yesterday’s Washington Post had a long story on the exit polls by Richard Morin, its director of polling. If you have followed the exit polling controversy with interest, it is absolutely positively a must-read. Of course, as a "self-important blogger" (see below), I am also duty bound to note that it plows a lot of familiar ground, confirming much of what you have already read here.

Since The Washington Post subscribes to NEP’s data, Morin had full access to it on Election Day and has presumably seen the confidential reports by the exit pollsters to their clients. So he based the following on access to the hard data:

The sampling errors gave a boost to Kerry, who led in all six releases of national exit poll results issued on Election Day by the National Election Pool (NEP), the consortium of the major TV networks and the Associated Press that sponsored the massive survey project…

In the first release, at 12:59 p.m. on Election Day, Kerry led Bush 50 percent to 49 percent, which startled partisans on both sides. That statistically insignificant advantage grew to three percentage points in a late-afternoon release, where it remained for hours, even as the actual count began to suggest the opposite outcome. It was only at 1:33 a.m. Wednesday that updated exit poll results showed Bush ahead by a point.

Even more curious numbers were emerging from individual states. The final Virginia figures showed Bush with a narrow lead. Exit poll data from Pennsylvania, which was held back for more than an hour, showed Kerry ahead by nine percentage points. The actual results: Bush crushed Kerry in Virginia by nine points, while Kerry took Pennsylvania by just a two-point margin.

In a review of 1,400 sample precincts, researchers found Kerry’s share of the vote overstated by 1.9 percentage points — which, unhappily for exit pollsters, was just enough to create an entirely wrong impression about the direction of the race in a number of key states and nationally.

Morin also confirms that previous years showed a similar, though typically smaller Democratic skew.  He ads one important new wrinkle — 1992 had a similar skew: 

It’s hardly unexpected news that the exit polls were modestly off; exit polls are never exactly right. The networks’ 1992 national exit poll overstated Democrat Bill Clinton’s advantage by 2.5 percentage points, about the same as the Kerry skew. But Clinton won, so it didn’t create a stir. In 1996 and 2000, the errors were considerably smaller, perhaps just a whiff more Democratic than the actual results. That suggests to some that exit polls are more likely to misbehave when their insights are valued most — in high-turnout, high-interest elections such as 1992 and this year [emphasis added].

Morin also answered a question that comes up repeatedly:

Perhaps the Democratic skew this year was the result of picking the wrong precincts to sample? An easy explanation, but not true. A post-election review of these precincts showed that they matched the overall returns. Whatever produced the pro-Kerry tilt was a consequence of something happening within these precincts. This year, it seems that Bush voters were underrepresented in the samples. The question is, why were they missed? [emphasis added]

This piece would have been stronger without the usual gratuitous slap at bloggers (though this one is a bit back-handed):

It’s also time to make our peace with those self-important bloggers who took it upon themselves to release the first rounds of leaked exit poll results…but rather than flog the bloggers for rushing to publish the raw exit poll data on their Web sites, we may owe them a debt of gratitude. A few more presidential elections like this one and the public will learn to do the right thing and simply ignore news of early exit poll data. Then perhaps people will start ignoring the bloggers, who proved once more that their spectacular lack of judgment is matched only by their abundant arrogance.

Oh well….I’ve said my piece on this issue already. At least Morin says bloggers are "his new best friends." Name calling aside, the article remains worth reading in full.

UPDATE:  Morin had much more to say about the exit polls in this online chat — even some nice words for a certain blogger.  Who knew? 

Mark Blumenthal

Mark Blumenthal is political pollster with deep and varied experience across survey research, campaigns, and media. The original "Mystery Pollster" and co-creator of Pollster.com, he explains complex concepts to a multitude of audiences and how data informs politics and decision-making. A researcher and consultant who crafts effective questions and identifies innovative solutions to deliver results. An award winning political journalist who brings insights and crafts compelling narratives from chaotic data.