Polimetrics

Why were the exit polls so wrong?

After reading the 6PM exit polls, it seemed clear that my projection and Zogby's were dead on - that we were heading to a close Kerry victory - instead we get not only a close Bush electoral victory but about a 3 million popular vote victory - a popular vote much different than 2000 - different in that if Ohio had shifted 150,000 votes, the popular vote would have shifted only 2 million - Kerry would have been the one who won the electoral vote and lost the popular vote. What happened?

I will research this thouroughly once I have all the final numbers. Here are my preliminary thoughts.

First, the exit polls and the actual vote:

6PM exits Vote Result
Kerry Bush Kerry Bush Diff
PA 53 46 51 49 -2.5
FL 51 49 47 52 -3.5
NC 48 52 43 56 -4.5
OH 51 49 49 51 -2
MO 46 54 46 54 0
AR 47 53 45 54 -1.5
MI 51 47 51 48 -0.5
NM 50 49 49 50 -1
LA 43 56 42 57 -1
CO 48 51 46 53 -2
AZ 45 55 44 55 -0.5
MN 54 44 51 48 -3.5
WI 52 47 50 49 -2
IA 49 49 49 50 -0.5

Every exit poll in every battleground state erred in favor of Kerry. The odds of this occuring randomly is about 1 in 16000. Clearly, the exit polls had a systemic problem.

At Mystery Pollster there is a discussion as to possible reasons as to why the polling was wrong. Blumenthal suggests that the Incumbent Rule may not have held up in this election because of the war. That may be true, but that doesn't explain the bad exit polls where there are no undecideds. There is somethign else at work here.

One of the commenters (a New Yorker) said he was a closet Bush supporter but didn't want to tell anyone becuase of the anti Bush sentiment. Perhaps that played a role.

During the election night, I was comparing 2004 to 2000 county returns of the key states. I noticed that the increase in turnout in the Bush counties was higher than the increase in turnout in the Gore counties. Additionally in Florida, although the blue counties voted for Kerry at approximately the same percentage as 2000 for Gore, the red counties voted more heavily for Bush than they did in 2000. This combination of greater increase in turnout and higher percentage for Bush in the Red counties explains explains Bush's 370,000 vote win in Florida.

How did the exit polls miss this? It's not early voting as exit polls account for that in independent sampling and includes them in their projections. I have a theory that I will test later when I have more data:

Fear won this election for Bush.

1. Conservative Christians voted in much larger numbers than they ever have driven to the polls by two gut issues: fear of terrorism and fear of gay marriage. Also, this group is more distrustful of pollsters and was therefore undersampled.

2. A quick analysis of the returns also showed the reason that the popular voted was so skewed. Some blue states - particularly NY - did much better for Bush than the expected Partisan Index for a 3% Bush victory. I will do a county by county analysis later. NY of course was deeply affected by 9/11 and may have been more swayed by Bush's campaign of fear.

3. The gender gap decreased significantly from 2000 - scared moms?

Fear is a powerful tool - it built the Pyramids. I believe the data will show Bush's brilliant campaign of fear successfully brought out of his silent base - the secret army that the pollsters missed.