A Closer Look at Those Wisconsin Exit Polls

The Democrats emerged from Tuesday's recall election with two consolation prizes. The first is that they flipped a seat in the Wisconsin state Senate, taking control of that body (which won’t convene again until after the 2012 elections).

The second, and most frequently cited, is that exit polls found President Obama ahead of Mitt Romney by seven points in Wisconsin. As Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos summarized, “[a] seven-point lead, Obama over 50 percent, despite lacking participation of one of Obama's biggest constituencies (young voters), does not suggest a particularly close race this November. If Republicans want to dump their millions (and they'll have plenty of those) here, they're free to do so.”

But was this finding of the exit poll correct? We can’t know for certain, but there are four reasons to at least raise an eyebrow. The first is the wording of the question, which asked whether respondents planned to vote for Obama, Romney, or not vote. Missing from the choices? “Don’t know.” READ MORE