Reply #36: Conyers' report disagrees [View All]

[Time for change]

The Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff: Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio:

After pointing out that there was a discrepancy between the Ohio exit polls and the official vote tally in Ohio of 6.7%, the report goes on, "It is rare, if not unprecedented, for election results to swing so dramatically from the exit poll predictions to the official results."

Later in the report, "... prominent survey researchers, political scientists and journalists 'concur that exit polls are by far the most reliable' polls".

Not specifically mentioned in the report is the fact that exit polls are far more reliabe than pre-election polls, for several reasons:
1. No chance for a voter to change his or her mind.
2. No need to guess who the "likely voters" are.
3. Don't have a problem in reaching any portion of the population (for example, cell phone users will be missed in pre-election polls)

Does anyone claim that pre-election polls are not used to predict winners? Since exit polls are much more accurate than pre-election polls, if they claim that exit polls can't be used to predict winners, what does that say about pre-election polls? And if polls aren't used to predict winners, why are they done so frequently?