Best news of the day: We are getting exit polls from all 50 states + DC again !

[Tender Branson]

Or so it seems:

Networks, AP changing exit poll strategy

Updated: Thursday, 25 Oct 2012, 11:45 AM MDT
Published : Thursday, 25 Oct 2012, 11:45 AM MDT

NEW YORK (AP) — A growth in early voting and tough economy for the media are forcing changes to the exit poll system that television networks and The Associated Press depend upon to deliver the story on Election Night, all with the pressure-filled backdrop of a tight presidential race.

The consortium formed by ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News Channel, NBC and the AP is cutting back this year on in-person exit polls while upping the amount of telephone polling. This is to take into account more people voting before Nov. 6 and households that have abandoned land lines in favor of cell phones.

"It makes it trickier," said Joe Lenski, executive vice president of Edison Research, the company that oversees the election operation for the news organizations. "It means there are a lot of different pieces to keep track of."

On a perfect Election Night, Americans who are tracking results won't notice all the work being done behind the scenes. The Associated Press reports actual vote counts nationwide and news organizations use those numbers, plus the exit polls, to do their own race calls. But things haven't always gone perfectly. The news organizations completely rebuilt their exit poll system after the 2000 embarrassment, when TV networks mistakenly called the race for George W. Bush when it wasn't decided until a month later (the AP mistakenly called Florida for Bush, retracted it but, unlike the networks, never called the overall race for Bush). In 2004, early exit poll results overestimated the strength of Democrat John Kerry.

To save money this year, the consortium is doing bare bones exit polling in 19 states. Enough voters will be questioned in those states to help predict the outcome of races, but not enough to draw narrative conclusions about the vote — what issues mattered most to women voting for Mitt Romney, for instance, or how many Catholics voted for Barack Obama.

The affected states are: Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming, along with the District of Columbia.

Each is considered a non-battleground state with polls showing a strong advantage for one of the presidential candidates. Some non-battleground states will get the full exit poll for other reasons, like Massachusetts and its hotly contested U.S. Senate race between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren.

"What we are doing is taking our resources and using them where the stories are," said Sheldon Gawiser, NBC's elections director and head of the steering committee for the AP-network consortium.

Spending figures were not made available. News organizations have had a tough few years financially, but the consortium noted that it is interviewing a total of 25,000 voters this year, up from 18,000 in 2008.

Because of early voting, there are no traditional exit polls in Oregon, Washington and Colorado. A phone poll is done prior to Election Day in those states, taking in a mixture of people who have and haven't voted. Others states have a mixture of telephone polling and exit interviews. California, North Carolina and Arizona are among the states where the percentage of telephone polls has grown because of more people voting early.

More people are interviewed on cell phones because it is the primary way to contact them. The consortium said cell phone interviews are twice as expensive as those on land lines because of manpower costs, in large part because it is harder to reach people and federal law requires the phone numbers to be manually dialed instead of done by computers.

http://www.krqe.com/dpp/elections/president/Networks-AP-changing-exit-poll-strategy_50453648

...

So, the 19 states that were supposed to be not polled by Edison this year will get polled after all, but just with basic questions ... But still, there will be some sort of exit poll.

[dirks]

I like this...for no other reason that it makes things more fun...even if we get a deluge of misinformation

[retromike22]

YAY!

[Stirring Wolf🥣🐺]

Good to hear.

[Gass3268]

Yay! =)

[Lief 🗽]

Hopefully they still ask the basic demographic questions (age, religion, race, gender).

[SirMuxALot]

That is just madness to do telephone exit polling instead of live exit polling.  That's the whole point of why you do in-person exit polling - you know that person just voted. (And even that group showed a self-selection bias in 2004, remember?)  With telephones, now you are back to trying to figure out who is telling the truth - a much more difficult problem to solve.  They'll need some kind of "likely voted" screen, and it's going to be far from foolproof.

[Lief 🗽]

That is just madness to do telephone exit polling instead of live exit polling.  That's the whole point of why you do in-person exit polling - you know that person just voted. (And even that group showed a self-selection bias in 2004, remember?)  With telephones, now you are back to trying to figure out who is telling the truth - a much more difficult problem to solve.  They'll need some kind of "likely voted" screen, and it's going to be far from foolproof.

There's really no other way to poll early/absentee voters though, who make up a significant chunk of the electorate these days.

[Adam Griffin]

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

[SirMuxALot]

There's really no other way to poll early/absentee voters though, who make up a significant chunk of the electorate these days.

So you mean you're going to put more stock into a poll of absentee/early voters, rather than a Secretary of State's actual reported numbers?  That is also madness.  Especially given some of the polls last week where 19% OH voters claim "already voted" but the same-day number reported by the OH SoS was 5.5%!  I am picturing the exit polls projecting 135% turnout in Ohio using that technique.

The only uncertainty on SoS-reported AB/EV numbers is how the indies are actually voting, but in almost every live-voting state you can get a perfect read on them from the in-person exit polls and easily extrapolate.

Polluting the live exits with telephone respondents will introduce a huge self-reporting bias uncertainty.  It seems foolish to me.

[5280]

When you have ACTUAL secretary of state number reported from absentee ballots and early voting, I think it's safe to say telephone/cell phone polls are moot at this point in time.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

To save money this year, the consortium is doing bare bones exit polling in 19 states. Enough voters will be questioned in those states to help predict the outcome of races, but not enough to draw narrative conclusions about the vote — what issues mattered most to women voting for Mitt Romney, for instance, or how many Catholics voted for Barack Obama.

but, that's the interesting part.

[This user has not been convicted of 34 felonies]

Excellent news. Champagne for everyone.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Excellent news. This is so important, not necessarily for Election Night itself, but for historical purposes.

[LiberalJunkie]

YESSSSS!!!