UPDATE: I quoted a report by Capitol Weekly that stated that the Capitol Weekly / Open California Exit Poll was weighted thusly:

This result is based on at least 21,554 respondents, weighted by geography, party registration, age, ethnicity and gender to match the voters who have already cast ballots as of June 4, according to Political Data Inc. The online version provides a congressional-level breakdown, is weighted to age and will continue to collect survey responses through Election Day, accounting for some variations.

This varies for what was stated about the survey here by Capitol Weekly & CA120 Democratic Absentee Voter Exit Poll:

This Capitol Weekly / Open California Exit Poll utilizes online surveys sent by email to California voters who have been reported by Political Data Inc. as having returned their June 7th Absentee Ballot. Results are intended to reflect the Absentee Voting pool and give insight to trends among voters who participate prior to Election Day. Open California polling is overseen by Jonathan Brown, Sextant Strategies and Research mailto:jb@sextant-research.com. Data and Dashboard by Paul Mitchell of Political Data Inc mailto:paul@politicaldata.com and Alan Nigel Yan mailto:alanyan@berkeley.edu. Results of surveys will be ongoing through Election Day. The survey of Democratic and Non-Partisan respondents is weighted by age. Non-partisan voters are screened for having obtained a Democratic Presidential ballot. For more information or updates follow us at http://twiter.com/CA_120

While I am at a loss to explain the difference between the two, based on that statement in Capitol Weekly & CA120 Democratic Absentee Voter Exit Poll, I can only assume the report in Capitol Weekly about its own poll weighting was false, and I must retract the portion of this post that was cited from Capitol Weekly & CA120 Democratic Absentee Voter Exit Poll as it is inaccurate and thus misleading.

My apologies to all.

Steve

* * * *

Even in exit polls with the NY Times seal of approval, Hillary still did way better than expected.

According to a Capitol Weekly early-voter exit poll, Hillary Clinton was leading Bernie Sanders by less than 10% in the Los Angeles area vote-by-mail balloting ahead of last Tuesday. According to results posted to the Los Angeles County website, Clinton was winning vote-by-mail ballots by 66.6-33.4%, for a discrepancy of more than 23%. The discrepancy cannot be easily explained by demographic factors: the results of the Capitol Weekly exit poll were weighted by age and race. Moreover, the exit poll had 21,000 respondents, and was praised--prior to election night--by mainstream elections journalists, including Nate Cohn of the New York Times.

Twenty-one thousand respondents. That's a very respectable size for the absentee ballots, even for California, if the Washington Post is to be believed. It truly is an astounding coincidence how an exit poll with a sample size that large could be off by 23 percentage points. And one that was specifically weighted to take into consideration age and race, factors that were known to benefit Hillary more than Bernie.

A poll that surveyed absentee voters by sending emails to people known to have returned their June 7th ballot as of June 4, 2016. Not guessed at, not presumed, but people they knew had voted,"weighted by geography, party registration, age, ethnicity and gender to match the voters who have already cast ballots..." That poll was weighted for age. Using such weighting eliminated the effect that younger, male Sanders voters were over-represented in the poll. In other words, they had already adjusted their raw data to account for that.

Indeed, this was the most Clinton-favorable poll of the many that were conducted. All the rest had Clinton leading by only two percent (2%) with margins of error ranging from 4-5 percent. So how could this most-favorable Clinton poll still screw it up that badly? Such a respected polling company, too. I mean I could understand it being off by say 10%, even though that figure would still likely far exceed the poll's margin of error, but 23 percent? That's simply astounding to me.

Exit polls this year really do suck. At least in the Democratic primaries, anyway.