Networks, AP cancel exit polls in 19 states

Washington Post.com ^ | October 4, 2012 at 11:15 am | Posted by Jon Cohen and Scott Clement

[DeaconBenjamin]

Breaking from two decades of tradition, this year’s election exit poll is set to include surveys of voters in 31 states, not all 50 as it has for the past five presidential elections, according to multiple people involved in the planning.

Dan Merkle, director of elections for ABC News, and a member of the consortium that runs the exit poll, confirmed the shift Wednesday. The aim, he said, “is to still deliver a quality product in the most important states,” in the face of mounting survey costs.

Voters in the excluded states will still be interviewed as part of a national exit poll, but state-level estimates of the partisan, age or racial makeups of electorates won’t be available as they have been since 1992. The lack of data may hamper election night analyses in some states, and it will almost certainly limit post-election research for years to come.

In 2008, only 18 states included interviews with early voters, with notable absences in Indiana (24 percent of voters casting early ballots), Wisconsin (21 percent) and Virginia (14 percent).

This year, exit pollsters are set to carry out phone polls in 15 states, about half of all states covered, and increase the sample sizes of those polls by 32 percent, according to Merkle. Moreover, the continued rise in the number of voters using cellphones also bumps up the price of phone surveys, another challenge motivating the changes for 2012.

Slicing the number of state surveys for more representative surveys may be a reasonable trade-off — but it will hit hard.

Here is a list of the states that will be excluded from coverage: Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

[txrefugee]

Plus the fact that millions of voters will lie to the exit pollsters....it’s a really tough job:)

[Uncle Miltie]

They don’t want to report Democrat states falling to Mitt early.

[Made In The USA]

Exclude Texas? Should they offset by not including California too?

[Rapscallion]

Okay. I always refuse to participate anyway. I trust no “pollster”.

[Steely Tom]

Pfui. They can choose to include or exclude whatever states they want, I don’t watch them, and I won’t watch them, and I think their “exit polls” are garbage and I couldn’t care less what kind of bogus “results” they get.

[DonaldC]

They’re up to something.

[PermaRag]

All of those states listed are not competitive at either the Presidential level nor do they have competitive Senate races. So exit polls aren’t needed there in order to call any big races anyway.

[PermaRag]

Actually there is one competitive Senate race in those 19 states, which should NOT be, but it is. The one in North Dakota, where freshman Congressman Rick Berg (R) finds himself in a close race and possibly losing to some FemiNazi type.

Berg is apparently a boring, milqueotast type candidate and is likely geting flayed by heavy leftist interest group advertising -- without fighting back. Just a guess, but it is what seemed to be happening there a few weeks ago.

[dalebert]

agree

[TurboZamboni]

They all quit to return to their regular daytime jobs as ACORN door knockers and community organizers.

[deport]

Voters in the excluded states will still be interviewed as part of a national exit poll, but state-level estimates of the partisan, age or racial makeups of electorates won’t be available as they have been since 1992.

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With the advent of early voting in many states whereby a substaintial percentage have already voted I'm not sure of the value of exit day polling in them anyway.