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Finally, some voting activists have urged a last-minute push for independent exit polling, parallel to but independent of polling by media groups (whose combined operation suffered a meltdown during the upset Republican electoral triumph in 2002). This sounds like a very good idea.
The 2002 exit poll situation always confused me. First, I just don't comprehend how the system could have failed so stupdendously on election day. But, okay, I'll allow for that possibility. But, more importantly, even if the system wasn't able to deliver timely exit poll results to the networks, why did the results just, for a time, disappear down a hole? And, why was nobody in the media particualrly curious about the raw data?
Some of the data was eventually released - a year later. But, only the data collected for purposes of obtaining an accurate national sample was released. They never released the state level data to anyone.
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This data set is properly sampled and weighted to reflect the views of all voters nationwide in 2002, but it should not be used to analyze voting behavior in individual states. As in previous years, VNS in 2002 developed a national sample and, in a separate process, created statewide samples with different questionnaires and weighting procedures in each state. Nearly all of those state-level interviews are not included in this data set and no valid analysis of individual states can be made without them. Do not select respondents in a specific state and analyze their responses separately; any attempt to do so could easily result in invalid and misleading results.