Will exit polls be less controversial next Tuesday than they were four years ago? Early voting

[ProgressiveEconomist]

Early voting prevalence and differential survey participation rates by more enthusiastic Obama supporters than by less enthusiatic McCain supporters are the main concerns of the exit poll consortium this year, according to Politico.

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From http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14778.html :

"Media sweats over exit poll accuracy By DAVID PAUL KUHN 10/20/08

Media outlets are preparing for the possibility that their Election Day surveys could be skewed because of overstated support for Barack Obama, largely because of the enthusiasm of his supporters. While exit polling is a notoriously inexact science--early exit poll results suggested John Kerry would be elected president in 2004--the introduction of several new variables, ranging from the zeal of Obama�s supporters to his racial background to widespread early voting, is causing concerns among those charged with conducting the surveys and the networks that will be reporting them. 'It�s in some ways the flip side of non-cooperation,' said one pollster involved in preparations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, 'It�s over-cooperation by certain people.'

... The exit polls are conducted by the National Election Pool (NEP), a consortium of ABC News, Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News formed in 2003. In theory, exit polls should match election results. But for all the care that goes into conducting accurate exit polls, errant results aren�t completely uncommon. Respected polling analyst Mark Blumenthal found that during the Democratic primaries this year, preliminary exit polls overestimated Obama's strength in 18 of 20 states, by an average error of 7 percentage points, based on leaked early results. The reason? Obama�s supporters were younger, better educated and often more enthusiastic than Hillary Clinton's, meaning they were more likely to participate in exit polls. Insurgent candidate Pat Buchanan�s support also was overstated in the 1992 New Hampshire Republican primary, a phenomenon attributed to the greater willingness of his impassioned supporters to participate in exit surveys.

More recently, in 2004, exit poll data that began circulating early in the afternoon led to short-lived Democratic elation and deep Republican anxiety. By evening, some of President George W. Bush�s key strategists were frantic, emailing reporters at polling organizations to better understand the gap between what they were finding on their own and what the leaked exit polls indicated. As it turned out, preliminary exit polls overstated women�s turnout that year. This 'programming error,' which affects the statistical method that pollsters use to match surveys to the electorate�s composition, was discovered by the third wave of exit polling. By then, though, the premature polls had already been leaked online. ...

One important difference between 2008 and 2004 is that the early poll results are less likely to leak. Just as in 2006, the NEP has isolated a room in New York City where analysts are closed off to communication. Accurate sampling, however, is an even greater concern. In 2004, the over-sampling of women--who are more likely to be Democrats--was not the only error. Democrats, in general, turned out to be more likely to participate in the exit poll interviews than Republicans. It also surfaced that younger interviewers, who hand out the paper questionnaire to voters, were less likely to get a response from older voters. Older voters are more likely Republican. In the end, Kerry�s vote was overstated in 26 states. The same was true for Bush in four states, according to a detailed post election analysis by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, who administer the exit poll for the NEP. To correct their methodology, Joe Lenski, executive vice-president of Edison, said the NEP has increased the average age of those conducting interviews. In 2004, that age was 34 years old. Today, the average is 42. ... There has also been increased training of interviewers to maintain random sampling--for example, cautioning interviewers to not habitually approach the next approaching voter if one voter declines. ...

The NEP will be increasingly relying on phone polls conducted prior to Election Day to compensate for states with large portions of early voters--a technique that proved successful most recently in the Democratic primaries."