Listen to the music, not the words, and you can hear the commentators indicating that their “entrance polls” show a blowout for Barack Obama. And yet, with 40 percent reporting, there’s a three-way tie between Obama, Edwards and Clinton. So what gives? One possibility has to do with an age bias among the polltakers. In 2004, one of the reasons given for the incredible discrepancy between the exit polls and the results was that the polltakers are overwhelmingly young and are uncomfortable talking to older voters who are, in turn, uncomfortable talking to them. So the polltakers oversampled voters more like themselves, younger and tending to the liberal side of the ledger. Perhaps this is what is happening tonight — since it’s said younger voters prefer Obama, maybe the polltakers are missing many Clinton and Edwards voters.

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