In Case CO Republicans Were Feeling Good about Narrowing the Gender Gap, They Shouldn't

by: Jason Salzman

Fri Nov 16, 2012 at 10:29:45 AM MST

I'm thinking they might have scanned every word in The Denver Post, searching for something good, and found this sentence in a Nov. 6 article:

Although many polls nationally predicted a significant gender gap, Colorado exit polls showed women and men split equally.

Craig Hughes@CraigHughesinCO

Dear Media: The Colorado exit polls are simply not accurate. Trust them at your own risk. Thank you. #copolitics

First, we know the exits originally said that Colorado was tied at 48% for each candidate - when final results are tallied, Obama will carry Colorado by over 5%, so that's a significant miss.  Second, the exits show that Obama's Colorado margin was bigger among men (+5%) than women (+3%) which runs contrary to every single public and private poll conducted over the past two years.  In reality, Obama almost certainly carried women with a double digit margin.  Third, the exits list "NA" for voters aged 18-29, even though they make up 20% of the electorate, a larger portion than voters 65+.  Given those sample sizes, how is it they are unable to show results for voters aged 18-29?

Fourth, there are also exit poll results published by Latino Decisions that show Obama received 87% of the Latino vote, while the networks survey shows 75%.  I'd say 75% seems about right, but that's a pretty big discrepancy.

If people want a look at what the electorate likely was, I'd suggest looking at the poll by Keating Research conducted just prior to the election that showed Obama +4%.  His numbers are more reliable to me than anything I have seen out of the exit polls in this, or previous, cycles (again, ask President Kerry about exit poll reliability).