Georgia 1992

[Arbitrage1980]

This one puzzled me because it was the first state, along with Vermont, to be called for Clinton on election night.  But it ended up being the closest state that year, with Clinton winning by 0.59%.  What happened?  Did the TV networks rely too heavily on flawed exit polling, like they did in 2000 when they prematurely called Florida for Gore?

[Arbitrage1980]

Yeah, flawed exit polls + Democratic media bias. They also called NH for Clinton at poll closing time, and it was very close as well. Not to mention that they projected Democrat Wyche Fowler as the winner in the GA Senate race (Fowler later lost to Republican Paul Coverdell in the runoff).

Yeah, Clinton ended up winning NH by just 1 point (huge shift from 1988 when Bush won it by 20 points; his second best state after Utah).  The liberal media is so dishonest that it's ridiculous.  Bush would have comfortably won Florida in 2000 if they did not prematurely call it for Gore.  The heavily republican panhandle is in central time zone, and lot of Bush voters stayed home when they heard that Gore had already won it.

[Arbitrage1980]

In 1980, some states were early called to Reagan, and his margin was very small.

In 1992, some states that Clinon won narrowly were called early to Clinton, and some states that Bush won were considered too close to call.

In 2004, some states that Kerry won narrowly were called early to Kerry, and some states that Bush Jr. won narrowly were considered too close to call.


Hypothesis:
Exit polls do not reach well the rural areas of the states. So, they overestimated Clinton and Kerry, and overestimated Reagan too. In the southern states, Carter did better in the rural areas.

Why would exit polls be less reliable in rural areas?  From my understanding of how exit polls work, people ask random voters as they are leaving the polling station, who they voted for.  Would rural voters be more inclined to lie than say urban or suburban voters? Or is it simply a numbers issue whereby there are fewer volunteers in rural areas and hence the sample size is too small to make a reliable conclusion?

[Arbitrage1980]

Democratic media bias.

Care to explain how Democratic media bias played a role in networks calling Mississippi and Alabama for Reagan when polls closed? Even though he won both by only 1.3%? Maybe exit polls in the South just suck(ed).

True, but still.. they called so many close states for Clinton as soon as the polls closed, but they didn't even call Oklahoma or North Dakota for Bush at poll closing time.

Clinton actually underperformed his polling expectations; he was expected to win by double digits, so networks thought it would be a pretty safe bet to call states that were most likely gonna go to him. I bet they thought Oklahoma would vote similarly to Arkansas, which wouldn't have been a terrible assumption at the time. There was also a big Perot effect that probably messed up exit polls.

Besides, after the 2000 debacle, networks got a lot less lenient on how soon to call states.

In 1996 Clinton was leading Dole by as much as 15 points, but in the last 2 weeks of the campaign Clinton basically stopped campaigning for himself and instead focused on congressional races.  Perhaps the late polling that year didn't quite capture that effect.