Reply #58: Except in Cook County, Illinois, under the esteemed Richard Daley

[mgr]

You are aware that only one in four questionnaires employed in the national election survey has the question on it--who did you vote for in the last election.

http://www.exit-poll.net/election-night/Nat_Final.pdf

So how do you get 13,000 people to respond when only 4,000 may have done so? Apparently the MoE for the question is about 3%.

(NEP FAQs: "What is the Margin of Error for an exit poll?
Every number estimated from a sample may depart from the official vote count. The difference between a sample result and the number one would get if everyone who cast a vote was interviewed in exactly the same way is called the sampling error. That does not mean the sample result is wrong. Instead, it refers to the potential error due to sampling. The margin of error for a 95% confidence interval is about +/- 3% for a typical characteristic from the national exit poll and +/-4% for a typical state exit poll. Characteristics that are more concentrated in a few polling places, such as race, have larger sampling errors. Other nonsampling factors may increase the total error." http://www.exit-poll.net/faq.html)

That may make the bandwagon issue vanish, but it makes your argument do likewise.

Mike