McCain Memo on Exit Polls

Amanda Carpenter | November 03, 2008 4:34 PM

John McCain's Chief Pollster Bill McInturff released a memo warning supporters not to be jolted by exit polls in the Democrats' favor on Election Day.

"Exit polls in 20004 show that the exit polls overstate the Democratic candidate's support," the memo said. "Therefore, we would discourage a rush to judgment based on exit polls and wait until there has been a representative sampling of actual tabulated results from a variety of counties and precincts in a state."

The National Election Pool determined that exit polls showed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry polling 5.5 percent better than the actual results concluded.

Members of the McCain campaign are expecting tomorrow's exit polls to heavily favor Barack Obama. McInturff said Obama supporters are more likely to participate in exit polls than those who will vote for McCain.

"It is important that the campaign make sure the media realizes this, so that when the exit polls do leak, people do not overreact to the early exit poll data," McInturff instructed. "Rather than looking at the exit polls, we should wait until we start seeing actual election results from key precincts and counties to gauge who won the election."