The convergence of the ever growing pool of political pundits faced with the daunting challenge of filling the 24/7 cable news pipeline with non-stop sharing of their own world visions, the exit poll has given them so much more to analyze. It is not enough to know that A beat B, but now we know, because they found out for us, that B lost because he could not secure the vote of those who fall in the 34-38 age bracket, who are underemployed, of eastern European dissent, who have completed at least one year of junior college, but failed biology, and have never ridden a train or eaten tofu but would be willing to do both.
How does that help us?
It doesn’t. It serves only to fragment the population into smaller and smaller slices of neighbors with conflicting interests. Obama may not be getting as much support from white women over 50 from Clinton and Clinton’s support may slide proportionally to the amount of education of a particular voter. And while such facts are interesting to those in marketing who perfected this business of polling, it does not serve any public interest. If I am a woman over 50 who supports Obama, do I question my judgment? If I am a post doctoral research fellow in molecular astrophysics ready to vote for Clinton, do I wonder if I am stupid? I do if I believe the exit polls and what pundits make of them.
Without such information, I simply know that while I may differ with my neighbors on some things, we share common ground on enough to share a common candidate. The emphasis is toward unity, not division.
Without such information, the wise men and women on cable and in print would only know who one and where their votes came from. That's enough.
The first national exit poll by a news agency was used just 40 years ago, and grew slowly and originally with the goal of predicting a winner before the polls closed or very soon afterward, thus giving one news outlet the jump over the others by knowing the end result first. As scientific as the system may be, broadcasting such information before eveny voter has voted is a diservice as we have seen.
But with growth of questionnaires from “Who did you vote for” to “Who did you vote for and do you go to church and how much money do you make and did you consider race or gender or religion in you decision?” the goal is now to know as much about the why as possible. And with the crowded primary calendar there have been many more opportunities over a longer period of time to collect data and talk talk talk about it.
I have no illusion that it will end or even wane. With the growth of technology, polling will grow. My own personal fight-back against the machine will be to respond to any pollster who greets me when I exit my polling place with a “Who did you vote for,” with a simple “None of your business.”
For a brief history of exit polls, read Behind the Controversy: A Primer on U.S. Presidential Exit Polls
Click on the image below to see the exit poll results publiched by CNN following the Indiana Primary.
