Exit Pollster Accurately Predicts Results by Interpreting the Sighs of 400 Voters

LAKEVIEW — Exit pollster Marcus Webb achieved a 100% accuracy rate in Tuesday’s local races using what he calls “the sigh method,” interpreting the exhales of 400 departing voters with what colleagues describe as “unnerving precision.”

“A sigh has grammar,” said Webb, whose business card reads “Marcus Webb, Sigh Sommelier.” “The short puff through the nose? That’s a protest vote. The long exhale with the shoulder drop? Incumbent. The sigh that turns into a laugh? That person voted for the sandwich referendum and feels great about it.”

Webb, a former theater usher, developed the method over six election cycles, cataloging 47 distinct sigh types in a leather-bound journal he calls “the sighclopedia.”

“People lie to pollsters. Nobody lies with a sigh,” Webb said. “A sigh is the soul’s press release.”

His predictions — called in at 7:58 p.m., two minutes before polls closed — matched the certified results exactly, including the razor-thin town sandwich referendum, which he predicted from “a collective exhale that sounded like a deflating bagpipe.”

Local news anchor Diane Frost called the method “either genius or a coincidence wearing a trench coat.” Webb was unbothered. “The numbers speak. Well, the numbers exhale.”

Webb’s book, “Exhale and Conquer,” is due next spring, featuring a chapter on “the hanging chad of sighs” — an exhale so ambiguous it required a recount of breaths. He is also developing a poll-worker workshop titled “Sighs 101: What Your Voters Aren’t Telling You (But Are Exhaling).” The county has pre-registered fourteen staffers. “We all sigh at work,” Sykes said. “Now we’ll know what it means. Honestly, I’m a little afraid to find out.”

Webb’s sighclopedia now includes a 48th entry: “the post-recount sigh” — described as “relief with a hint of disbelief, like a balloon remembering it was once flat.” He demonstrated it twice for this reporter. Both demonstrations were, witnesses confirmed, “devastatingly accurate and a little haunting.”

Webb’s workshop has a waiting list of 60. “We’re adding a second session,” Sykes said. “And possibly a third, for the heavy sighers.” Webb is developing advanced coursework: “Sighs 201: The Sigh-Adjacent Exhale.”

The county’s Office of Electoral Methodology has declined to certify the sigh method, citing “insufficient peer review,” but has invited Webb to present his findings at next year’s poll worker training. “We’re putting him right after the lunch break,” said training coordinator Beth Ann Sykes. “People are relaxed then. They sigh more. He’ll be in his element.”