There's at least one counterexample to the claim that exit-polls are more accurate. From the exact same ABC paper:
The final vote estimate released by ABC News, based on data collected October
29-31, was within two points on the Bush percentage and exactly matched the Kerry
percentage of actual vote. [...]
In overall vote, the ABC [pre-election] data were more accurate. The NEP national exit poll
overestimated Kerry’s vote by three percentage points and underestimated the Bush vote
by the same amount, before the data were weighted to the final election result (Edison
Media Research and Mitofsky International, 2004). Among subgroups, there’s close
correspondence between the final vote-weighted exit poll and ABC’s final pre-election
poll (which is not weighted to actual vote).
But this of course could just be a statistical aberration (an outlier), the proverbial exception that confirms the rule; it could well be that on average exit polls are more accurate. If anyone has data to prove that, please post your better answer.
I also found a stats page on UK which says
Prior to 2001 the methods used had been different, and the accuracy of predictions based on exit polls was rather variable — sometimes good, sometimes poor. Perhaps the most famous failure was in 1992, when the forecasts made by both BBC and ITV based on separate exit polls were that the Conservatives would only just get more seats than Labour, resulting in a predicted hung parliament. It turned out that the Conservatives had actually done much better than that in the 1992 election, winning 65 more seats than Labour and achieving a parliamentary majority of 21 seats.

And it doesn't look like simply a matter of gerrymandered seats; the page only give data for 2005 percentage-wise, but it does look impressive

So exit polling can be very good as well; it looks like it all hinges on methodology. Judging by last US presidential election and its exit polls, it doesn't look like this UK methodological innovation has made over the Atlantic just yet. Also note that this latter (UK) page does not compare exit-polling with any pre-election polling.
A case where the pre-election polls got it all wrong but the exit poll was right was in the 2015 UK election:
The unveiling of the results of the exit poll at 10pm on 7th May 2015 has already become
part of election television folklore in the UK. Throughout the election campaign the
opinion polls had suggested that the Conservatives and Labour were neck and neck with
each other. However, the exit poll forecast that the Conservatives would win 316 seats,
while Labour would win just 239. If the exit poll was right, the opinion polls would be
seen to have called the election ‘wrong’.
By 6am the following morning, it was clear that the polls had indeed overestimated
Labour and underestimated Conservative support. On average the final estimates of the
polling companies put the Conservatives on 34% and Labour on 34%. No individual poll
put David Cameron’s party more than a point ahead. Yet in the event the Conservatives
won 38% of the vote in Great Britain, Labour 31%.
This probably explains the FT article. And since people may be curious why the 2015 pre-election polls in the UK were (so) wrong, the same source conclued:
Our conclusion is that the primary cause of the polling miss in 2015 was unrepresentative samples. The methods the pollsters used to collect samples of voters systematically over-represented Labour supporters and under-represented Conservative supporters. The statistical adjustment procedures applied to the raw data did not mitigate this basic problem to any notable degree. The other putative causes can have made, at most, only a small contribution to the total error.