Exit Polls are crappola
By Brian Kirwin | Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 | Catch-AllMedia sources are all touting exit polls as if they’re giving useful information, like whether the election was about Obama, and which demographic groups voted for whom.
Vivian Paige and I were reviewing Virginia exit polls, when we discovered they are full of …, well, fertilizer.
The tip-off was this question:
Vote by Size of Place
Total D Deeds R McDonnell
Big Cities (N/A) N/A N/A
Smaller Cities (21%) 56% 44%
Suburbs (48%) 43% 57%
Small Towns (3%) N/A N/A
Rural (28%) 31% 68%
Big Cities N/A????? they conducted exit polls without getting a single sample from a big city? The regional vote of Richmond/East didn’t include Richmond? They split out the “Hampton Roads” vote without a big city? Northern Virginia without a big city?
Guess they deduced the African American vote from sampling Isle of Wight county. The youth vote from Poquoson. I mean, folks all over the media are quoting these exit polls like their the Bible.
“This was a suburban election” Well, when the exit polls leave out every big city in Virginia, hell yes it’s a suburban election. No responses from Asians, Latinos and none from any African American under 45. Great data, folks.
“This race was not about Obama” Maybe not in Roanoke, but it sure was in Virginia Beach. Ok, that’s another fallacy. People said their votes weren’t about Obama. That doesn’t mean they weren’t about government takeovers of health care, cap and trade and all that mess in Washington DC. It just means people weren’t voting with Obama on their minds. His policies? I guarantee you, yes. Him personally, no. But vapid media analysts are confusing the two.
New Jersey’s exit polls have the same problem.
To political professionals who plan to use these exit polls to plan for upcoming campaigns, it sucks to be you.
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The right wants to jeer him. The left wants to censor him. Moderates usually want both. Brian Kirwin is a political consultant and public relations strategist in Virginia Beach with a lightning-rod flair. Brian also serves on the VB Arts & Humanities Commission and frequently appears on Hampton Roads theatrical stages, if only to prove that all actors aren’t liberals. Kirwin’s columns stir up debate and hit the political scene with no punches pulled.
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4 Responses to "Exit Polls are crappola"
That everyone was holding up this exit poll last night as “proof” of this or that is extremely troubling. It shouldn’t have taken the two of us to locate the problems with the polling. Somebody further up the food chain should have actually looked at the thing and seen how bad it was.
What passes for journalism these days is pathetic.
The modern America media would report a poll that asked, “do you like extremist partisanship that leads to government divisiveness or cooperation?,” and report people choosing cooperation as news. I know its a free speech issue, but some polls collectively make the country dumber and should be banned as a danger.
Uh, there are no big cities in Virginia, at least not as defined by national pollsters. Big cities generally have more than 500,000 people and the largest city in Virginia is the City of Virginia Beach, which has 430,000 or so. So yes, the exits don’t have anything from big cities. That doesn’t mean they are worthless
[...] In both 1993 and 2009, Republicans were seeking to regain their footing and their identity, after having suffered defeat the year before to a charismatic liberal who won the presidential election after deceptively campaigning as a “centrist.” In both years Republicans swept to power in historic statewide elections in Virginia and New jersey, at least in part because of voter backlash toward Democrats for decidely non-centrist policies (e.g., in 1993 it was tax hikes and HillaryCare; in 2009 it was ObamaCare, and a host of other issues, shoddy exit polling notwithstanding). [...]
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