A poster has provided a wonderful link on why Exit Polls are not relevant for tracking fraud

[Godhumor]

USAID has a large document about democratic and electoral integrity in transitional countries, and right there in the middle is Chapter 3: Limitations of Exit Polls and Other Types of Public Opinion Research.

Now this document is primarily about post-conflict and transitional countries, but the US is mentioned frequently and throughout the multitude of examples and explanations. I get that people on DU might doubt my professional expertise in these matters, so maybe the US AID document will be more authoritative than yours truly.

The chapter is quite long, so I'll leave you with the conclusion:

Conclusion: Lessons Learned About Exit
Polls

Exit polls can provide useful information about voter
motivations and behavior in a given society and can begin
to establish trends and identify correlations between votes
and other variables such as gender, ethnicity, religion, or
socioeconomic status. In general, however, exit polling and
other forms of survey research are not the best way to de-
tect or deter election-related fraud or forecast election re-
sults in postconflict or transitional countries. Exit polls
have been unreliable in the US even though they have been
used for years. Although benefiting from sample-based ri-
gor, exit polling raises a number of methodological con-
cerns, including lack of historical election data, difficulty
calculating margins of error, and selection bias. Even more
important, exit polls are inappropriate whenever there is a
climate of intimidation. Thus, exit polling and other forms
of survey research are not the best way to detect or deter
election-related fraud or forecast election results in post-conflict or transitional countries.

http://www.eods.eu/library/DI.Vote%20Count%20Verification.pdf

Turns out this is a great source on what exit polls should and should not be used for, and it was very well hidden.

[ThePhilosopher04]

1. So sayeth the fraudsters

[Godhumor]

2. Exit polls are a demographic tool. I use them, I work with them

They are not predictive tools.

[ThePhilosopher04]

3. Bullshit

[Godhumor]

5. You got me. I bow to your deep understanding of me and exit polling n/t

[ThePhilosopher04]

6. Exactly. Take the bullshit someplace else

[Godhumor]

11. You, sir, are a poet with your deft use of the English language n/t

[Godhumor]

9. No...that is not what it means

It means that even in a country where elections are free, exit polls are used to track patterns and demographics to actual results and ate notoriously unreliable in predicting said results for a number of reasons.

[bobbobbins01]

7. Is the US a postconflict or transitional country?

Because that is what your paragraph is referring to...the same document also says this:

"Exit polls have long been employed in developed countries to quickly predict the outcome of elections. If conducted in countries with a history of democratic elections and in which citizens have reasonable confidence in their own safety and security, then well-designed exit polls can serve as an effective method for projecting election results."

[Godhumor]

10. As I said, the chapter uses examples from the US where exit polling is unreliable

And I bolded in my paragraph where they explicitly say that exit polls miss in the US.

[bobbobbins01]

12. But you can't make that leap.

They're specifically saying that the variances in exit polling in a stable country make it unreliable in post conflict and transitional countries. That makes sense because the variances would be even greater in those countries, but it doesn't say what you want it to say.

[Fumesucker]

8. Some of us are old enough to remember when exit polling suddenly became unpopular and unreliable

And The Wind Whispers "Dubya"...

[highprincipleswork]

13. Let's just use them in other countries, to determine if they are running fair elections or not. In

the U.S., it's a known fact that elections are so corrupt that nothing, exit polls or anything else, can really determine much of anything valid - other than we simply don't know.

Only one good reason why elections in the U.S. are so hard to verify, so non-standard, so hard to predict or get ahold of - the powers that be prefer it that way.

[bemildred]

14. Just count the goddamn ballots, all of then, publically. All this "trouble" will go away. nt