EXIT POLLS A number of people have emailed to point out that the samples in individual precincts are small. That’s true, but the overall sample is large, and it went awry on every level: in each state and in the national vote. Sure, it was a close race, but as far as I can tell, the errors all ran one way: towards Kerry. Rumour has it that the reason the networks were so slow to call the Carolinas is that the exit polls showed them going for Kerry, a nonsense result in light of the result, and even in light of previous polling.

Perhaps people were ashamed to tell exit pollsters they’d voted for Bush; I would have been leery of doing so in my polling place, which resembled a Kerry campaign rally. Or perhaps there’s some sort of systematic bias in the results, starting with the abnormal number of women sampled: are women more likely to respond? Did the exit polls oversample former swing districts, when increased turnout in “lock” districts seemed to be the key to the race? I don’t know, but I hope someone’s finding out.