I’m linking directly to Ace on this one because Politico gets more respect than they deserve. The gist is that exit polls in the Democrat primaries tended to overstate Barack Obama’s support by about 7 points.
The medium-term lesson to be drawn from this fact is that conservatives should not allow phony election day exit polls to depress them to the point where they don’t vote. The short-term lesson:
Funny how these errors almost always seem to overstate Democratic support all over the place, isn’t it?
Now, this raises a question that Politico doesn’t address. If an “enthusiasm gap” is responsible for skewing exit polls, why isn’t an “enthusiasm gap” responsible for skewing pre-election day polling?
A properly conducted poll can be a useful guide to judge an election’s dynamic. On the other hand, improperly conducted poll can be used by the media to create the news they want. Luckily, people are catching on to the media. Hopefully enough people . . .
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Polls overstating Democratic advantage are so common it’s laughable. Don’t get me wrong, I think Obama is ahead. But if he wins by 10 points I’m going to switch parties in 4 years and vote for Obama myself.