Exit polls yield some very interesting information

While some people may deride voter exit polls, they really are one of the best ways to find out all kinds of things about an election and the citizens who participate in them.

As is usually the case, the Deseret News' pollster, Dan Jones & Associates, conducted an exit poll for KSL-TV on Nov. 4. The immediate results were used on KSL the night of the election to predict — before the votes were actually counted — who would win in different races or ballot issues.

I like to study the demographics of such exit polls, looking a bit deeper, if you will, to see trends and voting patterns underneath the candidate favoritisms.

And the results from the Nov. 4 exit poll show a great willingness on the part of LDS and politically independent voters to cast a ballot for a Democrat. (Jones' exit poll, along with his pre-election poll for the newspaper and TV station, also shows he had a good year — producing some of the most accurate polls when compared to actual vote totals.)

Who knows if 2008 is a trend year or just a reflection of deep, real displeasure of the job President George W. Bush and some national Republicans have done over the last eight years? Certainly the meltdown of the national economy and financial systems the final weeks before the vote impacted results.

And considering the Democratic wave that flowed in many states this year, Utah remains one of the most Republican states in the nation. Only moderate gains were made here by the minority party in Salt Lake County positions and the Utah Legislature.

Still, there were some significant wins for Utah Democrats. And the leadership elections in the Utah House and Senate also reflected a desire for change — a displeasure in some quarters in how things have been going.

Here are some of the more interesting results of Jones' exit poll on Nov. 4:

The Barack Obama and John McCain contest in Utah broke out clearly along party lines — 94 percent of Democrats voted for Obama, 90 percent of the Republicans voted for McCain. Since there are more Republicans than Democrats in Utah, of course McCain won here. Still, Obama actually won by a few hundred votes in Salt Lake County, nothing to sneeze at in a presidential race in Utah.

Obama picked up most of the politically independent votes, 48 percent to 43 percent across the state. That also is good news for Democrats, since it shows that independent voters, even in some conservative parts of Utah, were willing to consider the Democratic Party's presidential nominee.