Publictakeover's Weblog

Red Shift, Explained

According to Hartmann, via Joe Madison, it’s because of uncounted Provisional Ballots.

Why are exit polls so consistently wrong in red states, showing a higher percentage of GOP votes cast in the voting booth than GOP votes counted by exit polls?

Supposedly, the theory now goes, a lot of red states have used purging of the voter rolls, prior to an election, to target Democratic-leaning voters–such as minorities, students and the poor elderly–to force such voters to have to utilize provisional ballots.

Typically, such voters arrive at the polls unaware that they have been purged, and are only able to cast a provisional ballot, not a regular ballot.  If they don’t follow up over the next 48-72 hours and confirm their identity and address, their provisional ballot is then tossed out, uncounted.

The voters, however, will report to exit pollsters that they did indeed vote for the Democratic candidate, creating a discrepancy between the exit poll and the official vote count, a so-called, “red shift.”