Reply #48: The sample of voters is cumulative throughout the day.. [View All]

[Petrodollar Warfare]

...In otherwords, the pollsters survey exit voters from around 7am to 6-7pm, and add their data to the sample throughout the day. At noon their sample size was much smaller (thus unreliable), but by 4pm to 6/7pm (3rd and 4th exit polls) they have a large enough sample to accurately predict the election - typically within 1% point or less. That has been the case throuhgout the 1980s and 1990s until...FLorida 2000.

In fact, Peter Jennings on ABC stated last Friday that the "networks traditionally do not call a state until the 3rd exit polls are completed". Why not this time? Well, Florida 2000 and the shennanigans that took place. Of course the GOP did not want the networks to call Florida and Ohio last week after the 3rd or the 4th/final exit polls as the state was obviously going to be a Kerry victory. Someone intervened at 1am to "revise" the data so the public would not ask questions. The problem is that some of us recorded the results, and the "revised" figures violate the laws of mathematics.

I hope this post answers your question about the aggregated sample that is used in exit polling.