Sen. McCain's (Ariz.) lead pollster Bill McInturff said in the memo that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to participate in exit polls, which are supposed to give an indication of Election Day performances even before East Coast polls close. The memo warns the media and the campaigns to wait for actual election results before reacting.

McInturff said that, because turnout is projected to be even higher than the record numbers of 2004, he is expecting “greater fluctuation and variation in the exit polls from the actual election results.”

“It is important that the campaign make sure the media realizes this, so that when the exit polls leak, people do not overreact to the early exit poll data,” McInturff stated. “Rather than looking at exit polls, we should wait until we start seeing actual election results from key precincts and counties to gauge who won the election.”

McInturff noted that, after the 2004 exit polls were so wildly off, the National Election Pool, which conducts the polls with the TV networks, studied what went wrong and discovered that “Kerry voters and Democrats were more likely to participate in the exit polls.”

Kerry overperformed by 5.5 net points in exit polls on Election Day 2004.

McInturff said a recent Fox News Channel poll showed that 46 percent of supporters of Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) said they were “very likely” to participate in an exit poll while only 35 percent of McCain supporters said the same.

McInturff warned that the 2004 flaws occurred on both the national and state levels.

“Based on the previous exit poll results, we should expect once again that Tuesday’s exit poll data could overstate the Obama vote and under-represent the McCain vote,” the pollster said.