Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Exit Polls

12:51 am
I think we've had our first reversed call of the night. The AP has reversed its prediction that Hillary will win MO, now saying it is too close to call.

11:15 pm
CBS News has exit polls up for all of the states where polls have closed. Here is California's

Just noted on CNN was the huge margin of Asian voters supporting Clinton (73%) over Obama (25%)

NBC has a nice summary of the exit poll results. Here's what they say about race and gender:
"In the Democratic races, Barack Obama led with eight in 10 black voters and Hillary Rodham Clinton led with just over half of whites. Obama’s support among four in 10 whites across 16 states was more than he had captured in earlier primary states. Clinton won six in 10 Hispanic voters. Obama led among white men, while Clinton led among white women.

Obama won in Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, and his home state of Illinois, all states where more than one-fifth of the voters were black. Clinton won in Arkansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, and Oklahoma, states with fewer black voters, but she also won in Tennessee and New Jersey, both states where one-fourth of the voters were black.

Overall, Obama led among men and Clinton led among women, although her advantage among women appeared smaller than was seen in early primary states. An exception was New York, which Clinton represents in the Senate. There, Clinton was competitive among men and gained the support of four in 10 blacks. In Arizona, Obama was more competitive among Hispanics than he was nationally.

In the Republican races, John McCain led among men. He was tied with Mitt Romney among women."

Earlier today, our political science colleagues at the Election Updates blog warned that the California exit poll results could be meaningless because so many voters there cast absentee ballots. Given that early absentee votes might have been more likely to be for Clinton (conventional wisdom would say that since she was doing so well there in polls until recently, and that she has done well among older voters who are more likely to vote absentee) it seems like she might do better there even than the exit polls suggest.

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