https://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2012/11/06/forget-the-exit-polls/feed/HotAir is the leading conservative blog for breaking news and commentary covering the Biden administration, politics, media, culture, and current elections.en-usTue, 09 Jun 2026 12:17:36 -0400<![CDATA[Second, the networks almost never &#8220;call&#8221; truly competitive races on exit poll results alone. The decision desk analysts require very high statistical confidence (at least 99.5 percent) before they will consider calling a winner (the ordinary &#8220;margin of error&#8221; on pre-election polls typically uses a 95 percent confidence level). They usually only achieve that confidence for relatively close races after the exit pollsters obtain the actual vote results from the randomly selected precincts at which interviews were completed (and from other larger random samples of precincts) and combine all of the data into some very sophisticated statistical models.]]>Tue, 06 Nov 2012 13:40:09 -0500<![CDATA[Allahpundit]]>https://hotair.com/headlines/2012/11/06/forget-the-exit-polls-n97240