OK, you can't really trust exit polls any year. They're notoriously bad, and four years ago were predicting that Kerry had won a bunch of areas that he wound up getting whooped in. Ruined my night because I though he'd won Florida. Then it ruined the next four years 'cause he didn't.
But this year is extra-different because we have early voting in a lot of states. My own state, NJ, has absentee ballots with no conditions. If you just don't like the shape of the polling place or the weird left turn into the parking lot you can vote absentee now.
But lots of states -- Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia and Ohio for example -- have early voting in person and mail now, so many folks are casting their ballots today or weeks before the election actually happens. While those yahoos are standing outside polls on November 4 asking people how they voted, they'll be missing the input of all the excited folks who are doing it now.http://
Here's a piece of a diary from today from AllenB101 about the makeup of the early voters in Ohio:
[T]he line was looooonnnnnnng. Most of the voters were African-American of various ages and split evenly along gender. The few white and hispanic voters there all appeared young, between the ages of 22-32.
Given the ways the polls have been going lately, I'd say that demographic is pretty overwhelmingly for Obama. Of course, the diarist is a law student so this is probably a college area, but still!
Fortunately after screwing up in 1996 and 2000, the networks don't predict winners until after the west coast votes, and don't present exit polling data until then.
But any analysis of voters by demographic based on election day interviews are thoroughly bogus at this point, and should be thrown out of most analysis for future races.
It's getting like pre-election polling that ignores people with cell phones and no land-line, or areas with heavy youth where they share houses and a phone line. As time goes on and more and more people move away from land lines these polls area going to get worse and worse.
And as we go to early voting more and more, the exit pols are going to be dumber and dumber.