Reviewing the Exit Polls Again

As has been the case every time a North Carolina poll is released over the last few months, people are again criticizing the 22% representation of African Americans in today's new Research 2000/Daily Kos poll.

They're doing this because the 2004 exit poll said that 26% of the North Carolina electorate was black. The reality, as I've written before, is that it was actually less than 19% black.

Here are the exact figures, courtesy of the State Board of Elections:

3,552,449 people voted in North Carolina in November 2004.
659,656 of them were black.

Do the math and that comes to an 18.6% African American electorate. That is not my opinion, that is a fact. It is somewhat conceivable the black electorate could go up to 22-23% this year but that is most likely the ceiling unless a whole heck of a lot of white people just stay at home this year. I have no doubt blacks will vote in record numbers but I wouldn't be surprised if everybody else does too, so it would take a lot for the proportion of voters who are black to make a huge leap. A 2-3% increase would still be a big deal but hoping for a 6-7% increase in the proportion is dreaming.

The 2004 North Carolina exit poll was also well off in terms of its gender (too female) and age (too young) distributions. The South Carolina exit poll from 2004 is full of mistakes as well.

Anyway the actual results of today's new poll are pretty ho hum. More confirmation that Kay Hagan has Elizabeth Dole's lead back down to single digits, as PPP and Civitas had previously shown, and that Barack Obama is keeping it close against John McCain.