DON'T BELIEVE THE EXIT POLLS!
When the exit polling was released back in 2004, many of us believed that John Kerry would be the next president of the United States. Heck, even more recently, we thought that Obama had a chance to beat Clinton in the PA primary due to the exit polling, yet when the final results came in, Obama lost by 10 points.
Rasmussen Reports has a great article up titled Beware of the Exit Polls and it has some fascinating information within. Here are the best parts.
Reviewing Fox News/Rasmussen Reports data from key battleground states raises a couple red flags about the use of early exit polling data to predict a winner. Understanding this data from polling conducted last Sunday night may save some a repeat of 2004’s heartache.
The bottom line is that in every state we polled--Colorado, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia-- Democrats are a lot more eager to take exit polls than Republicans.
In five of the six states, a majority of Democrats say they would be Very Likely to participate in the exit polling process. At the same time, in five of the six states, fewer than 40% of Republicans would be willing to do the same.
In every state, Republicans are at least twice as likely as Democrats to say that they are not at all willing to take an exit poll.
Unaffiliated voters tend to align more closely to Republicans in all six states in both willingness and unwillingness to participate in exit polls.
The exit polling will not be released, officially, until after 5PM Eastern time. So that means we'll still have at least two hours before the first polls close to GOTV.
So no matter how good, or how poor, the exit polls reflect on Obama, please, please don't get complacent. If there's still time to knock on doors, make calls and help people to the polls, increase your efforts.
We've come too far to let this get away from us in the last days.