I've been reading several diaries which are rightly crowing about the MASSIVE early voting turnout numbers in Georgia, North Carolina, and other states--and how the early numbers strongly suggest a massive Obama victory in the early voting.
For example, it looks like something like half of all of North Carolina's ballots are gonna be cast prior to Election Day, which is great.
It also looks like the vast majority of those early votes are gonna be for Obama, which is also great.
HOWEVER, this also raises an important issue on how the results are reported on November 4th.
Let's take this to the extreme: Suppose, theoretically, that exactly 5 million people in some state vote total, half of them early/absentee. Let's also suppose that 3 million vote for Obama, 2 million for McCain. However, suppose that (for example's sake) that ALL 2.5 million early/absentee votes are for Obama, while the election day voting would be 2 million for McCain and only 500,000 fr Obama.
That would mean that Obama won the state 60% to 40%, BUT any exit polling done on election day itself would "show" an 80/20 McCain blowout!
Now, the above example is obviously taken to the extreme, so let's look at a more realistic scenario:
Let's suppose that in North Carolina, roughly half of the total votes are cast early/absentee, and go heavily for Obama (say, 60/40).
Since most of the Obama supporters would have already voted, those voting on the 4th skew 55/45 for McCain, resulting in a final tally for Obama winning North Carolina 52% to 48%, a solid 4 point win!
HOWEVER, if the networks only use election day voters for their exit poll projections, they're gonna be freaking out over a "Ten Point McCain Upset!!" bla bla bla, even though the final numbers will show a healthy four point Obama win.
Why is this important? Because the polls in California, Washington and Oregon are still gonna be open for 3-4 hours when the first projections start to be broadcast from North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and Florida. If the big story becomes a McCain back-from-the-dead shocker, it could easily become a self-fulfilling prophesy as west coast voters decide not to bother showing up at all.
SO, my question is: How do the media (local and national) report on this sort of thing? When they do their exit polling (and thus, their early projections), do they take the early polling numbers into account? Or do they simply base their projections on whoever they interview outside of the actual polling places on the 4th?
If they do the latter, we could end up with a lot of "Dewey Beats Truman!" silliness which turns out to be way off--ie, FOX breathlessly reporting that NC went heavily for McCain, when it actually turned out that Obama won by a decent margin.
Anyone know how such things are handled?
For that matter, can anyone living in Oregon--where EVERY vote is cast "early" by mail, as I understand it--tell me how exit polling is done there?