Behold The Power Of Polling!, or: Helluva Way To Report On An Election

BREAKING: Donald Trump, who tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and inspired a deadly riot at the Capitol in a desperate attempt to keep himself in power, has filed to run for president again in 2024. https://t.co/iqIcaN3SZA

— NPR (@NPR) November 16, 2022

NPR buried the lede:

 Exit polls showed inflation to be the top issue with midterm election voters overall. They said they trusted Republicans more on the issue than Democrats by a wide margin. And the electorate was nearly three-quarters white, reversing a decades-long trend of a decline in white voters as a share of the midterm electorate.

And yet, Republicans underachieved — and fingers are being pointed in Trump's direction, even from within his own party.

Well, except...oh, just take Florida as an example:

During his speech at Mar-a-Lago, Trump says he will push for "same day voting," voter ID and paper ballots. More than 5 million votes in Fla - where Republicans dominated - were cast either by mail or through early voting. There were about 7.7M votes cast overall

— Gary Fineout (@fineout) November 16, 2022

So roughly 2/3rds of voters were not available in Florida for an "exit poll," and conventional wisdom is that Republicans vote in higher numbers on election day than do Democrats or independents, which means the polling sample already skews towards people responding to GOP talking points, which means....

These exit polls are absolutely meaningless.  GOP voters answering the polls "trusted Republicans more on the issue than Democrats by a wide margin."  Gee, whodathunkit?  Not sure how they determined the electorate was "nearly three-quarters white."  Exit polls, again?

"And yet, Republicans underachieved...."  A euphemism for face-planted, I think.  The exit polls don't explain that because you're blindly feeling the leg of the elephant and wondering why it trumpets, and where does that noise come from what is obviously a tree?