It is true that in Washington DC, the most integrated, purely middle class wards were solidly behind Tony Williams, who, though a Democrat, ran as a fiscal conservative and pragmatist, and they might have gone Republican if there had been no alternative. I am not sure how skewed the exit polls are, although I think you may be on to something.
One of the problems is that small samplings cannot pick up subtleties. For example, Jews are now about 2% of the national population, largely declining due to intermarriage. In a sample of 800 people nationwide, you will get about 16 Jews. Most of them will be secular and reform, and there is not likely to be any questioning beyond ethnicity. If the call is made on a Friday night or Saturday morning, none will be Orthodox and few will be Conservative. However, intra- group polling shows a roughly even split among Conservative Jews between the parties, and a strong tilt in favor of Republicans among the Orthodox. Thus, the tilt of the overall Jewish vote towards Democrats is easily exaggerated, since a sampling of 16 people is not likely to be representative (the margin of error is too great).
Polling will eventually start getting more interested in fine tuning, and will be more careful to avoid skewing, but only as clients become more concerned with refining demographic analysis. That day is coming, I think, as people become aware that the sociological picture is much more complicated than they had been led to believe........ |
