Reply #14: Exit Polls as gold standard for fair elections 101

[99th_Monkey]

"This is the book I have been waiting for. Freeman and Bleifuss are reasonable, balanced, and insistent--addressing the questions about the 2004 elections that won't go away. They specifically target the exit polls and explore how these exit polls (the gold standard of polling) could have been so far off from the official count in so many states. Readers will have the opportunity to step outside a comfortable conventional wisdom, not into a world of conspiracies but into the territory of careful searching, combining the best features of science and true investigative journalism."
http://www.electionintegrity.org/book.shtml
—Karen Parker Lears, Raritan Review (Rutgers University)

"Election day voters’ polls are commonly called “exit polls,” since the data are collected from voters as they “exit” their places of voting. The person best known for developing exit polls was a statistician named Warren Mitofsky, who died last September 1. According to Richard Morin, then polling director for The Washington Post, Mitofsky “introduced exit polling to the world, including to countries new to democracy and free elections. His reputation for accuracy and independence—a reputation he fiercely guarded—made his exit polls the gold standard with which election results were compared and confirmed.” And yet exit polls have been surrounded by controversy in recent years, with some questioning the accuracy—and hence the value—of the data they yield."
http://www.publicopinionpros.com/features/2007/jan/shap...
--Robert Y. Shapiro and Lisa Ferraro Parmelee (Robert Y. Shapiro is a professor of political science at Columbia University. Lisa Ferraro Parmelee is the editor of Public Opinion Pros.)