Thread on Exit Polls and Voter Analysis: Neither the right or the left should put much, if any stock, in either.

Over the years, after witnessing one horrible blunder after another and the damage they leave in their wake, I truly believe media should abstain from using them.

We often ignore the years when exit polls correctly called the winner, though were still showing serious issues due to at least non-response bias.

Veteran exit pollster Murray Edelman has spoken a lot about this.

Here are some notable, egregious misses.

In 2004, the Kerry Campaign was elated. The Bush Campaign was in shock re Florida. The latter was confident they over-performed exit polls. By night's end, a Kerry exit poll win turned into a historically comfortable Bush win in a razor thin state he barely won 4 years before.

But that still left the Bush Campaign short in Ohio and Iowa, both of which exit polls suggested they would lose.

The loss for Kerry and his supporters was so painful that they continued to argue Bush stole Ohio years after he won a second term.

Why?

Exit polls showed it was mathematically impossible for Bush to win Ohio. That is why Russert and others were openly celebrating before the polls closed.

Hyped expectations leave people entertaining conspiracies rather than attributing misses to known problems with exit polls.