I’m not especially good at asking questions I don’t know the answer to, but this one really deserves some attention when it hits the front page.
So, “Benchmark Politics” cites an exit poll result — apparently from a DecisionDeskHQ exit poll — that 15% of Sanders supporters in WI, versus 4% of Clinton supporters, didn’t know who they voted for in Bradley v. Kloppenburg, or else voted for Bradley.
Do we know anything about the provenance or methodology of this exit poll? Anything?
I will update with what I/we learn.
Oh-kay: the “Free Beacon” describes how in New Hampshire, “nearly four dozen volunteers” were “in the field” for “the Decision Desk HQ, a fledgling political polling and data operation crafted by a trio of conservative bloggers” — two-thirds of them conducting the exit poll.
Finnigan was especially giddy once it became clear that their sample could exceed 1,000 voters, far larger than he or any member of his team had expected.
The operation was not without snags. Though many of the volunteers had managed to catch flights despite the weather, some were stranded in states ranging from Illinois to Nevada. The rest were forced to work longer shifts and travel to multiple polling places to make up for the lost manpower.
They also dealt with technology issues. A number of the tablets used to gather exit polling data froze up, forcing volunteers to record results by paper. One pair of volunteers working in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, collected data from 205 people, about 10 percent of the total voters in the precinct, by hand. They had to call in each individual result to headquarters to get the data recorded.
Link
I’m willing to consider data from just about anywhere. But, jeepers. (Possibly most disturbing about this story is the implication that up to 20% of the New Hampshire sample — or possibly even more — may have come from one precinct. Ugh. What about Wisconsin? So far the only information I’ve found is the fragments on the Benchmark site.)