Kevin Drum has set about busting some of the exit poll myths that have already stuck themselves like barnacles to the midterm election results. Here’s the CliffsNotes version:
Myth #1: It was the youth vote that pushed Democrats over the top.
Myth #2: Democrats won a third of the white evangelical vote.
Myth #3: Democrats won by running conservative candidates.
Myth #2 is the one that gets me. Kevin says he has no idea where that one came from, which at first struck me as odd because the one-third figure has been widely reported, including here at TPM, based on an AP story the evening of Election Day.
But look at the key paragraph in the AP piece:
Those early exit polls also showed that three in four voters said corruption was very important to their vote, and they tended to vote Democratic. In a sign of a dispirited GOP base, most white evangelicals said corruption was very important to their vote â and almost a third of them turned to the Democrats.
I, too, first read that as saying one-third of evangelicals voted Democratic. But what I think it’s actually saying is that one-third of those evangelicals who said corruption was very important to their vote went for the Democrats.
Mystery solved? Kevin’s entire post is here.
