Hillary Advisor’s Anti-Chavez Past
Written by Cyril Mychalejko
Friday, 08 June 2007
Senator Hillary Clinton’s top advisor, Mark Penn, in addition to being involved with anti-union campaigns, also attempted to have Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez defeated in his 2004 recall referendum.
His firm at the time, Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, released inaccurate and improbable exit polls suggesting that 59 percent of people voted in favor of recalling Chavez (four hours before the polls even closed). After all of the votes were in and counted 59 percent of Venezuelans actually voted against the recall.
Penn, at the time, claimed to have little knowledge of the poll but told the AP his partner Doug Schoen "believes there were more problems with the voting than with the exit poll."
Coincidentally, Penn’s firm decided to use the U.S.-funded anti-Chavez group Sumate to do the fieldwork for the poll. Sumate, who at the time received tens of thousands of dollars from the National Endowment for Democracy, also helped organize the recall.
More recently, the firm again released dubious polls suggesting that Chavez was at risk of being overtaken by his opponent Manuel Rosales in last year’s election. Somehow Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates was completely off again in their research as Chavez won overwhelmingly with 60 percent of the vote.
Senator Clinton’s position on Venezuela has not yet been defined on the campaign trail.
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/767/68/~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Penn & Schoen's Inaccurate and Dishonest "Exit Poll" on Chávez Vote
Maneuver by U.S. Political Consultants Violated Venezuelan Law and Professional Ethics Codes
By Al Giordano
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
August 19, 2004
CARACAS, VENEZUELA AND SOMEWHERE IN AMÉRICA: The United States-based, British-owned, political consulting firm bearing the names of pollsters Mark Penn, Doug Schoen, and Michael Berland, committed a crime under Venezuelan election law on Sunday: It violated the law against releasing "exit poll" data before polls had closed.
In the firm's own press release, Penn, Schoen & Berland admitted that they knew they were releasing the supposed "exit poll" information while voting was still underway:
"New York, August 15, 2004, 7:30pm EST - With Venezuela's voting set to end at 8:00pm EST according to election officials, final exit poll results from Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, an independent New York-based polling firm, show a major victory for the 'Yes' movement, defeating Chavez in the Venezuelan presidential recall referendum."
The careless and malicious approach that Penn, Schoen & Berland displayed with the Venezuela referendum on the continued tenure of President Hugo Chávez can be seen by the hour when the firm put out its press release: Voting in Venezuela had already been extended another two-and-a-half hours, until 10 p.m. (it would later be extended past midnight) so that all the millions of Venezuelan citizens still waiting on line to vote would be able to cast their ballots.
Thus, the gringo-British polling firm played fast and loose with the facts, and the law, in ways that it would never have been able to get away with in the United States on an election day. Justice demands that it not get away with this unethical behavior in Latin America either. To wit: If the pollsters and Penn, Schoen & Berland knew that polling hours had already been extended when they released their poll, then the pollsters clearly intended to deceive. But if the pollsters did not know what had already been announced in the news media in Venezuela, that would indicate a level of reckless disregard for the truth and incompetence as pollsters, as well as laziness at the hour the pollsters were supposedly tracking the vote, that will seriously stain the firm's ability to meddle credibly in Latin American elections - or any elections anywhere - ever again.
Kind reader, it gets even worse: Penn, Schoen & Berland's "exit poll" now turns out to have been wrong... not just a little bit wrong... but a lot wrong. And beyond being very, very, inaccurate, the firm deceived the public in how it represented this sloppily conducted survey that ignored the basic methodology that all serious pollsters undertake: the "exit poll" resulted to be inaccurate by a total of 36 percentage points! Penn, Schoen & Berland got the "Yes" vote - the anti-Chavez vote - wrong by 18 percentage points, and the pro-Chavez "No" vote wrong by another 18 percentage points... and the firm must now be forced to face the music of its own deception: "a 36-point margin of error" simply does not credibly exist in the field of professional polling.
Now it comes out that the poll, according to Associated Press, was not conducted by the firm's own employees, as falsely stated by the firm's press release, but, rather, by a partisan, U.S.-government funded, anti-Chávez, activist group, Súmate, which paid the firm of Penn, Schoen, and Berland, apparently, for no more than the lease to misuse Penn, Schoen & Berland's names to give credibility to incompetent and/or dishonest results. The early release of these false results was obviously intended to discredit the real results and cast a shadow on the final tally of the most fair, clean, and participated democratic referendum in Latin American history.
More:
http://www.narconews.com/Issue34/article1046.html~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~U.S. Poll Firm in Hot Water in Venezuela
U.S. Polling Firm Lands in Middle of Venezuela Referendum Dispute After Predicting Wrong Outcome
The Associated Press
CARACAS, Venezuela Aug. 19, 2004 — A U.S. firm's exit poll that said President Hugo Chavez would lose a recall referendum has landed in the center of a controversy following his resounding victory.
"Exit Poll Results Show Major Defeat for Chavez," the survey, conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, asserted even as Sunday's voting was still on. But in fact, the opposite was true Chavez ended up trouncing his enemies and capturing 59 percent of the vote.
Any casual observer of the 2000 U.S. presidential elections knows exit polls can at times be unreliable. But the poll has become an issue here because the opposition, which mounted the drive to force the leftist leader from office, insists it shows the results from the vote itself were fraudulent. The opposition also claims electronic voting machines were rigged, but has provided no evidence.
Election officials banned publication or broadcast of any exit polls during the historic vote on whether to oust Chavez, a populist who has sought to help the poor and is reviled by the wealthy, who accuse him of stoking class divisions.
But results of the Penn, Schoen & Berland survey were sent out by fax and e-mail to media outlets and opposition offices more than four hours before polls closed. It predicted just the opposite of what happened, saying 59 percent had voted in favor of recalling Chavez.
Cesar Gaviria, secretary general of the Organization of American States who monitored the referendum, said the poll must have had a tremendous impact on Chavez's opponents, who felt they were about to complete their two-year drive to oust him.
More:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/08/296520.html?c=on
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