Well, whatever happens, I think that as someone said earlier in the thread, people who are voting for McCain in the privacy of the voting booth probably would not tell publicly for fear of ridicule or criticism perhaps...ultimately, i do not know how many of those folks there are by percentage, and while it may not be major, who knows if it is enough to sway things in swing states...
after all, if the polling is 48% Obama, 44% McCain, and say 8% undecided, I have to think most of those undecided may break for McCain...
most Obama supporters have shown themselves to be very solid, right from the start, and the votes he has picked up along the way seemingly got to a place where they said to themselves "yes, i am convinced"...but if the undecideds are not sold on Obama, after all the charisma, positive vibes, etc. etc., it makes you wonder if they are in fact really "undecided" or if they are just to afraid to say they are voting McCain because they are a bit nervous about Obama for whatever reason, and won't be nervous alone in the booth...
who knows...obviously, those undecideds won't swing California, or New York etc. but you just never know in places like North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Ohio etc...
I have to believe that if you are not sold on Obama by now, you wont make the leap of faith tomorrow...he seems like a candidate people are either solidly behind or solidly against, whatever their reasons...while McCain is certainly the less inspiring choice, he may seem to an undecided to be the "safer choice" for no real reason, other than he is "experienced" and a relatively known commodity even if they may not agree with all he represents...
there was also an interesting McCain memo (below) about exit polling in 2004, that showed that exit polling for Kerry turned out to be over 5.5% overreported than the actual results....
make of this what you will, but i really don't like exit polling...i think it is very dangerous and totally undemocratic...
i wish the networks would hold off until +ALL+ the votes are in.
this is not fair to either republicans or democrats, or americans in general...getting the news first should not be as important as getting it right.
the MCCain staff memo
(I am not endorsing McCain, FYI, but it does make interesting reading, and if true, is disturbing and should be adressed by not releasing exit polling at all)
McCAIN CAMPAIGN MEMO: READING THE EXIT POLLS
BILL McINTURFF, INTERNAL POLLSTER
Mon Nov 03 2008 16:53:14 ET
As we have seen in previous election cycles, the exit poll results do leak early and that ends up influencing the coverage of the race before even the first state polls close at 6:00 PM Eastern.
However, we want to remind the campaign that the medias own post-election study of the exit polls in 2004 showed that the exit polls overstate the Democratic candidates support. Therefore, we would discourage a rush to judgment based on the exit polls and wait until there has been a representative sampling of actual tabulated results from a variety of counties and precincts in a state.
Here are the key points to keep in mind when the exit poll data starts being leaked:
1. Historically, exit polls have tended to overstate the Democratic vote.
2. The exit polls are likely to overstate the Obama vote because Obama voters are more likely to participate in the exit poll.
3. The exit polls have tended to skew most Democratic in years where there is high turnout and high vote interest like in 1992 and 2004.
4. It is not just the national exit poll that skews Democratic, but each of the state exit polls also suffers from the same Democratic leanings.
5. The results of the exit polls are also influenced by the demographics of the voters who conduct the exit polls.
After the 2004 election, the National Election Pool completed a study investigating why the exit polls that year showed John Kerry over performing 5.5 net points better than the actual results showed him to have done. Their conclusion was that the primary reason the exit polls was that Kerry voters and Democrats were more likely to participate in the exit polls.
Our investigation of the differences between the exit poll estimates and the actual vote count point to one primary reason: in a number of precincts a higher than average Within Precinct Error most likely due to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters. There has been partisan overstatements in previous elections, more often overstating the Democrat, but occasionally overstating the Republican.
We believe that this will hold true this year. The recent Fox News survey showed that 46% of Obama voters said they were very likely to participate in the exit polls, while just 35% of McCain supporters are.
In fact, even the 2004 exit poll report noted that higher turnout nationally and higher levels of voter interest in both 1992 and 2004 correlated with greater Within Precinct Error.
The overstating of the Democratic vote did not only occur in the national exit polls, but also occurred in the state exit polls. The 2004 exit poll report cited that the Kerry vote was overstated by more than one standard error in 26 states, while the Bush vote was overstated in just four states. So we should also expect the individual state exit polls on Tuesday to be more Democratic as well.
So given that turnout is expected to be even higher than 2004 and that Democrats are more likely to participate in the exit polls, this means we should expect greater fluctuation and variation in the exit polls from the actual election results.
The 2004 exit poll report also showed that the greatest error in the exit poll came in precincts where the interviewer was younger. The completion rates were lower and the refusal rates and Within Precinct Error was higher when the interviewers were under the age of 35.[6] Complicating this is that nearly half the interviewers were under the age of 35, including 35% who were 18-24 and another 15% were 25-34.
Conclusions
Based on the previous exit poll results, we should expect once again that Tuesdays exit poll data could overstate the Obama vote and under represent the McCain vote.
It is important that the campaign make sure the media realizes this, so that when the exit polls do leak, people do not overreact to the early exit poll data. Rather than looking at the exit polls, we should wait until we start seeing actual election results from key precincts and counties to gauge who won the election.