No exit (new theory on why Kerry beat * in exit polls–mentions DU)

[kskiska]

A persuasive new theory explains why Kerry beat Bush in Election Day exit polls. Just don't expect those still crying "fraud" to believe it.

By Farhad Manjoo

"May I be the first to say 'Mr. President'?" Bob Shrum, one of the John Kerry's chief campaign advisors, beamed to the senator shortly before the East Coast polls closed on Election Day 2004. Shrum's excitement, if premature, was understandable. Kerry's aides realized the race would be close, but during much of Election Day they were buoyed by positive exit poll results flowing out of key states -- Ohio, critically -- showing their man headed for a win. It wasn't only Kerry's people who were excited by the exits. The poll numbers, which weren't officially released during the vote, but which floated around online as freely as Paris Hilton's sex video, seduced just about everybody on the left into thinking a new day had dawned.

In the end, of course, Ohio went red and liberals were blue. But even before Kerry offered his concession, some on the left began pointing to the exit polls as proof that George W. Bush stole the election. To this day, they claim that the exit polls -- which are compiled through interviews with voters just after they've cast their ballots -- tell us that most Americans attempted to vote for John Kerry. What is off, they say, is the official vote count, corrupted by paperless electronic machines and other methods of chicanery.

Exit poll results were just one item in a long bill of election-fraud particulars that folks began passing around in the aftermath of the election. But over the past seven months, the exits have proved more enduring to the election-was-stolen movement than many of the other early indicators of fraud. Lefty bastions like Democratic Underground are aflame with discussions purporting to prove how the exits show Bush didn't really win.

But a clear consensus among experienced pollsters is finally emerging on what happened with the exits. Last month, at an annual conference of opinion pollsters in Miami Beach, Warren Mitofsky, the veteran pollster who conducted the exit poll for the networks, offered a detailed and convincing explanation of what went wrong with the polls. The reason the exits were off, Mitofsky said, is that interviewers assigned to talk to voters as they left the polls appeared to be slightly more inclined to seek out Kerry voters than Bush voters. Kerry voters were overrepresented in the poll by a small margin, which is why everyone thought that Kerry was going to win. The underlying error, Mitofsky's firm said in a report this January, is "likely due to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters."

more…
http://salon.com/news/feature/2005/06/15/exit_polls/index.html

[Vincardog]

1. BULL$HIT

[ixion]

18. yep, I agree

a big 'ol heapin' pile of it. :grr:

[buddysmellgood]

2. This is the same crap that came out before. This is like saying, the

reason Bush did not win in the exit polls is that too many people voted for Kerry. But don't tell that to the sheeple who still think Bush didn't steal another election.

[Der Blaue Engel]

3. Oh, so THAT'S what it was...overexuberant Kerry seeker-outers

What-effing-ever.

:eyes:

[applegrove]

4. I said those exit polls were not scientific. People walking out of

exit polls are not a 'random sample'. Got knows how much jigging could have gone on. There are ways for Repukes to manipulate exit polls if they give their voters instruction not to talk to anyone or the like. Who knows.

I'd love to find out what the marching orders were to Repuke masses on election day. Especially in Ohio!

Funny how the democratic responders are characterized as "overly enthusiastic". Could be that repukes were "underly responsive". Or perhaps the "overly enthusiastic dem responders" were not even dems but "overly enthusiastic repukes" lying. Not as if the Repukes don't lie ALL DAY LONG!

Just give me the facts and stop trying to 'reframe things'!

Can we get depositions from the Ohio Repuke organizers saying that they didn't encourage their voters or any representative thereof to mess with the exit polls?

[DELUSIONAL]

5. This B.S. theory again -- the bushies didn't want to talk

with a twist -- the pollsters were biased and didn't want to talk to the bushie voters.

[gordianot]

Lefty bastion? It bothers them what the lefties think?

[burrowowl]

6. Oh! BS!

Kerry voters were overrepresented in the poll by a small margin, which is why everyone thought that Kerry was going to win. The underlying error, Mitofsky's firm said in a report this January, is "likely due to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters."

Here in NM I was a judge on 2 Nov! Palast was/is here: NM and Ohio have some good stuff!
Dean said that in 10 days a report will be released.

[BattyDem]

7. Over seven months later ...

and they are STILL trying to explain the exit polls! Here's the thing ... if the exit polls were legitimate, they would have had a plausible, detailed explanation in the very beginning. We're supposed to believe that after all these years, pollsters still don't know how to seek out people in order to get an accurate count? If that were true, this type of error would have shown up long before now, but the fact is, exit polls have always been accurate up until * ran for the White House ... so what does that tell us? :eyes:

[Internut]

24. Wrong.

This is from http://www.tcf.org/publications/pow/nov17_2004.pdf

              Exit Polls      |          Actual             | Error
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~
1988 Dukakis, 50.3 Bush, 49.7 | Dukakis, 45.6  Bush, 53.4   | 8.2% 
1992 Clinton, 46   Bush, 33.2 | Clinton, 42.93 Bush, 37.38  | 7.25%
1996 Clinton, 52.2 Dole, 37.5 | Clinton, 49.24 Dole, 40.71  | 6.17%
2000 Gore,    48.5 Bush, 46.2 | Gore,    48.4  Bush, 47.9   | 1.8%

As you can see, for unweighted exit polls, the errors were much higher in previous years than in 2004.

[BattyDem]

27. A margin of error is always present - that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about a MAJOR error in which the polls don't match the outcome. Why is it that, historically, exit polls have been considered to be so accurate - even with their margin of error - that they are often used to detect fraud?

The fact that the errors always favor Repugs (who end up with higher percentages after the errors have been found) doesn't strike you as being just a little bit odd? :eyes:

Dukakis v. Bush - not only was the exit poll off, the results were the opposite of the prediction.

Gore v. Bush - Even with the "errors" Gore still won, according to the exit poll, yet Bush is pResident.

And we know what happened with Kerry v. Bush.

So why is it that in recent years, any time an exit poll is off in it's "prediction" of the results a Bush ends up in the White House?

[Internut]

28. A margin of error is 1-2%.

The errors in past unweighted exit polls that I showed you are 3-4 times that.

Are you going to revise your statement that "exit polls have always been accurate up until * ran for the White House"?

[BattyDem]

29. No .. because exit polls have always predicted the winner until ...

* ran for the WH. That was my point. The only other time they were wrong (in my lifetime) was when Poppy ran against Dukakis.

On edit: Check out the posts by TruthIsAll is the 2004 Election Results and Discussion. He provides plenty of evidence of exit poll manipulation in the 2004 election ... although I don't understand why a DUer is defending the polls or Bush's election "wins" :shrug:

[Internut]

31. First of all, no -

Duskakis was predicted to win by unweighted exit polls - and didn't. Also - your point was not that the exit polls predicted the winner correctly. You claimed that they were "accurate". They were not - the error in unweighted exit polls was huge.

As for why I would post this - when you post something that is clearly not true (that past exit polls were always accurate), expect to be called on it.

[BattyDem]

32. I already explained ...

why I said what I said. Analyze my words until your heart's content. I know what I meant and for those who misunderstood, I have since clarified my meaning. I'm sorry if that's not enough for you.

[knowbody0]

8. OMG

this is not a detailed and convincing explanation. Who pays his salary?
Lefty bastions?

[Raster]

9. another thing.... the author, farhad manjoo, has written several pieces

for Salon about the exit pools, ALL taking the position that anyone questioning the polls is wrong. Manjoo's main thrust is that there is no real evidence in the exit polls to indicate Kerry won.

In tend to be part of the "bullshit" crowd. I'm sorry, far, far too many "irregularities" took place. You're right about one thing Farhad, I will never believe bush* legitimately won 2004. I will always believe the election was stolen through a wide variety of ways. And furthermore, I will never get over it.

[kansasblue]

10. How do you seek out a Kerry voter?

The average person at the poll is just that... average. What does a Bush voter look like? What does a Kerry voter look like?

[Bread and Circus]

17. That's what I wonder.

[teryang]

11. This article is prospective in application

Trying to legitimize an electoral process WIDELY recognized as illegitimate. NO CORRECTIVE MEASURES HAVE BEEN TAKEN.

The damage done in 2006 will pale next to the succession crisis in 2008. Without legitimate elections, an open power struggle will break out to obtain control over the vote fixers.

Without legitimate constitutional electoral processes, the governmental process of succession of power will result in some strange and unorthodox events (remember 911?).

[Jack Rabbit]

12. This doesn't sound any better than his reluctant Bush voter theory

Were all of his interviewers more inclined to seek out Kerry voters? What made them more inclined to do so? How could they tell a Kerry voter from a Bush voter?

Mitofsky has to come up with a better explanation than this. I'm not going to go so far as to say that exit polls prove that the vote count was somehow rigged, but it's either that or his polling was bad and if it was bad why was it bad.

Mitofsky's own statistics show that more 2000 Bush voters were interviewed than 2000 Gore voters; however, one would expect that almost as many of one as the other to have been interviewed, since Bush got only slightly fewer popular votes than Gore. And since Mitofsky interviewed slightly more Bush voters and this showed that Kerry would win the election, how did Bush win?

I'd still like to see data broken down at a precinct level by the type of voting technology used. I'd like to see, for example, if there was a significantly wider discrepancy between exit polling and tabulated voted in precincts where votes were tabulated by machines without paper trails, and, if so, if that discrepancy consistently favored one candidate in the polling data.

[LuPeRcALiO]

13. In other words, Mitofsky says "my exit polling stinks."

I wonder how and how much they paid him to arrive at that conclusion.

[Technowitch]

14. Story translation:

"Exit Polls Wrong Because Bush Voters Ashamed To Admit They Voted For Him"

Brings a smile to my face, it does. ;)

[ConservativeDemocrat]

34. Additional translation:

"Exit Polls Wrong Because Democrats More Approachable"

You're a young underpaid (or volunteer) poll watcher. You have a choice between talking to a younger, smiling, woman dressed in hip clothes, and an old angry man with a clenched jaw, who looks at you with unconcealed disdain because you're of mixed race.

Who do you go talk to?

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[0rganism]

15. So exit polls work in every country but the United States?

Everyone else has statistical analysts capable of carefully weighting raw exit poll data to make consistently accurate predictions, but for some reason none of them work in the USA since 2000. Fascinating. I'd love to read Farhad's explanation for that.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. Not only that---exit polls have worked

in every election in the United States since the early 1950s, except the ones in 2000 and 2004, if we are to believe the Official Story.

[Internut]

25. exit polls accuracy

This is from http://www.tcf.org/publications/pow/nov17_2004.pdf

              Exit Polls      |          Actual             | Error
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~
1988 Dukakis, 50.3 Bush, 49.7 | Dukakis, 45.6  Bush, 53.4   | 8.2% 
1992 Clinton, 46   Bush, 33.2 | Clinton, 42.93 Bush, 37.38  | 7.25%
1996 Clinton, 52.2 Dole, 37.5 | Clinton, 49.24 Dole, 40.71  | 6.17%
2000 Gore,    48.5 Bush, 46.2 | Gore,    48.4  Bush, 47.9   | 1.8%

As you can see, for unweighted exit polls, the errors were much higher in previous years than in 2004.

[LuPeRcALiO]

26. funny how exit poll "errors" have consistently favored Dems.

Maybe we're not looking at a new phenomenon, just a new technique?

[BattyDem]

30. I said the same thing ...

although I said, "They always favor Repugs", meaning that once the "mistakes" are cleared up, the Repugs end up doing much better than in the original poll.

Funny how that works, huh? :eyes:

[LuPeRcALiO]

33. and you're right.

"Weighting" polls by adjusting them to match actual vote tallies does not exactly make them more accurate.

[Bread and Circus]

16. "(pollsters) slightly more inclined to seek out Kerry voters" ..ermmm....

WTF?!? Seems like yet another and differing reason for why everything seems so FUBAR. Note this is different than the rBr explanation we received before. Obviously that didn't stand up to their internal analysis, so now they have this load of BS to sell us. I don't trust Mitofsky et. al. I am not buying it.

[ixion]

19. the REAL reason there are more Kerry voters in the poll, is simply

because there were more Kerry voters.

Anything else is spin, IMO.

[Tommymac]

35. BINGO!!!!!!! nt

[salin]

20. Were some bush voters embarrassed to admit their vote?

it happened in the senate race with David Duke - few folks admitted voting (or planning to vote for him) - but then he got a decent vote count at the election (thankfully not decent enough to win- but far different than what people were willing to admit.)

[CJCRANE]

21. Pathetic

[Dora]

23. BS

"inclined to seek out Kerry voters"

Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

[newscott]

36. If it looks like bullshit, and smells like bullshit

then by golly, it's bullshit!

[iconoclastNYC]

37. I can't believe how they ignore the COUNTLESS irregularities

Why the hell would this be different this time around? You don't think Ford voters would have been less likely to be exit polled than Carter voters? Give me a break.

People refuse to believe that an election could be stolen in a few key states. Like it would be so difficult. It wouldn't be that difficult.

[Matilda]

38. Of course!

The Kerry voters stood out in the crowd because of the shining
stars on their foreheads. That explains everything!