Election 2012
Pollsters mess with Texas: Lone Star State one of 19 to be excluded from exitpolls
Barack Obama's choice of hat notwithstanding, pollsters believe most Texans willvote for Mitt Romney.Fashion Salon
Mitt Romney is projected to win a majority of votes in Texas.Photo by Jewel Samad/ Getty Images
It's one thing to say a vote in solidly Republican Texas doesn't count. It's another thing not to even count it. The National Election Pool recently announced it will conduct costly exit polls in only 31 states for this year's presidential election.
The pool, which consists of the Associated Press and all five major news networks, has compiled exit poll results for every election since 1992. These are the numbers you see scrolling across your television screen on election night.
The National Election Pool will conduct costly exit polls in only 31 states for this year's presidential election. Texas isn't one of them.
Texas is one of the casualities of this decision, along with Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.
All of the excluded states are projected to be runaway victories for either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney.
In the previous five election cycles, exit polls have taken place in all 50 states. According to the Washington Post, "Voters in the excluded states will still be interviewed as part of a national exit poll, but state-level estimates of the partisan, age or racial makeups of electorates won’t be available as they have been since 1992."
