Put on your critical thinking cap on when you read exit polls

[IsItJustMe]

Over the last week, I have seen all types of numbers thrown around, in the media and even here at DU, because of exit polls. The prevalent myths being created, in my mind at least, are that Democrats lost minority votes to Trump and that white women backed Trump by 55 percent.

You do realize that the majority of these exit polls were taken on the day of the election and that would have been highly skewed towards Republican voters to begin with (not including the mail in votes, which were highly skewed toward the Democrats). With this in mind, there is no way that you could come to these conclusions. I, for one, am going to withhold my judgement until I see more in-depth and concrete analysis come forth.

Question everything. Now more than ever.

[krispos42]

1. Good point

Exit polls are usually pretty accurate... assuming that pretty much everybody is voting at a polling place.

"What did you just eat for dinner?" gets more accurate results than "What are you planning on eating for dinner?", which is what exit polls are checking for... at polling places.


I worked a polling station on election day. Mail-in ballots were a third of all votes cast in our precinct, and they were for Biden about 4:1. The in-person vote was about 5:4 Biden.

[spooky3]

2. The exit pollsters CLAIMED to have contacted early voters too BUT

in the articles I read, the numbers simply did not add up. E.g., if white women backed Trump by such a large margin (much higher than in 2016) and other groups behaved as the pollsters claimed, Trump would have won.

Even in the best of times, exit pollsters adjust numbers to fit results. Pew Research did studies using validated votes (better data than exit polls) and found different results in 2016. I am going to wait for their study for this election.

Per Pew Research, in 2016 white women (47%) were only slightly more likely to back Trump than Clinton (45%).

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters/

It seems VERY unlikely that white women's support for Trump grew 8 percentage points during this time.

[IsItJustMe]

3. I do believe that exit polls in the past were pretty accurate

But now, in this Covid election turned upside down, there is no way that we can extrapolate the results of exit polls, with any given degree of accuracy, to the given electorate as a whole.

Take me for instance, my state never even had mail in ballots before this election, and I voted my mail, as I am sure millions upon millions of other people did.