2016 Postmortem

If the exit poll table is 100 feet from the polling place there is plenty of space to avoid speaking to them if you want to. Exit pollsters are also often younger women and there are often banners on the table identifying the exit poll site by organization sponsoring it. The exit poll questionnaires also have as many as 40 questions to answer.

So who would tend to self select toward that table and who would tend to walk in the other direction? It's just not a random sample. Angry older white men don't go near an exit pollster and a young woman is unlikely to chase them down when there's a much friendlier face right behind them. They are supposed to interview every fifth voter. Turns out that's a lot different than interviewing one of every five voters.

Back in 2004 there was an article in one of the newspaper magazines (NYT?) by an exit pollster trying to explain why she thought the exit polls were so wrong. She said that all through the day she felt she was not getting a good sample of respondents. She said she made an honest effort to question everyone she was supposed to, but some people just blew past her with a wave and she felt during the day it was skewing her results. When the exit polls turned out so wrong, she said she wasn't surprised and she in a tiny way blamed herself for it.

The fact is that angry older white male voters are not going to stop and talk to a young woman working for a media conglomerate at the same rate as other people. So who are the Republican's most reliable voters?