With the post election analysis going on right now, there seems to be a ton of weight being put behind exit polling (so and so got x% of women voters, etc) to the point where they just are presented as fact. As early voting and mail-in voting increases around the country, aren’t those exit polls getting more and more unreliable? I don’t see that discussion happening anywhere and perhaps I have a misunderstanding of what an exit poll even is. I’ve never been polled in any way after voting myself and as I understand it polling is already not as reliable as they’re presented. So should we put as much trust into these exit polls?
I don’t so much mean weird situations, but perhaps just the demographics get skewed. Now that I think about it, I perhaps have a dumber question:
What the hell are exit polls are how are they conducted? The name implies they’re conducting with folks leaving the polls, but if they’re voting at home then how are they polled? This could also just simply boil down to why do we trust polls so much anyways
Yeah, exit polling is literally asking people as they walk out of the polls
Statistical analysis is a science.
The problem is it’s not taught in k-12 and most never learn it in college
So people don’t understand it, media represents it however they’ll get the most clicks/views.
The problem with polling isn’t polling, it’s the media’s and viewers’ misinterpreting the results that’s the problem