Full of Holes (Newsweek/MSNBC) (Exit Polls)

[mountebank]

Commentators depended on the exit polls to predict the winner, but the polls got it wrong (again). Can they be trusted in future elections?
WEB EXCLUSIVE

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6408569/site/newsweek/

<snip>

Their previous consortium, the Voters News Service (VNS), humiliated itself and its media partners in 2000 when its numbers first suggested that Al Gore had won Florida, then George Bush, then that the race that was too close to call.

<snip>

Four years ago, it was the analysts who goofed, drawing faulty conclusions in an election that was too close to call.

Full of holes is exactly what this articles is! Which is it, asshole, the exit polling or the analysts that were wrong in 2000? Maybe it was the missing memory card or the negative votes "added" to Gore's total in Volusia Co. - but don't mention that. I like cognitive dissonance better. This type of reporting is so typical. It's only point is to discredit exit polling, which worked for decades before the year 2000 when its statistical rigor suddenly collapsed.

[eleonora]

1. it's a conspiracy to ban them so next time nobody will know the truth

about anything, oh and forget the paper trail too. We're fucked for decades, my friend

[mountebank]

3. I've been wondering about that, too.

If 2000 wasn't just setting the stage to discredit exit polling for 2002 , 2004, and beyond. Did exit polls really do poorly on Election Night 2000? Seems to me it was the shenanigans in Volusia Co. that led to the confusion.... i.e. human error or fraud.

But I don't think it's as dire as you say. I don't see exit polls ever being banned. And even if the NEW exit polling consortium decides to fold up and leave, I see no reason why other independent organizations couldn't fill the gap.

But will anyone believe them after this campaign to discredit them?

[eleonora]

6. It was suggested on elections night by a repug official

and I can't for the life of me remember who he is. But he mentioned it on tv (I can't remember if it was abc, nbs or cbs, I was surfing between the 3).

[Born Free]

2. exit polls were right

the exit polls didn't match because the exit polls measured where people thought their votes were going, the people didn't know that in reality their votes were not going there. Likewise we have the same thing this time with the voting. The only way to stop this insanity is to fix the voting system to make sure the peoples votes are registered correctly and counted. Each election the GOP peals off a few more candidates, making sure not to do too many to cause alarm and encourage America to do a real investigation of what has been going on. Meanwhile the lapdog media just takes the right wing takings points as gospel.

[DELUSIONAL]

4. Amazing that the knack of taking exit polls for a Prez election

is suddenly forgotten.

Also the exit polls are now considered bogus BUT they keep quoting that people voted on the "values" issue.

So which meme is correct -- that the exit polls are flawed

OR -- that "the" issue was "values"

[mountebank]

5. Exactly! Exit polls are good for everything....

EXCEPT for one question, that being the choice for President. Then people either lie or forget. Or the statistics go haywire. Or, according to that article from The Hill floating around on LBN, the liberal reporters make them up to discourage poor naive red-staters.

[GoBlue]

7. Its seems obvious to me

that the underlying hypocrisy, that has always existed in this country, is out of control once again. And this is just another example.

As far as I can see, the major sources of this hypocrisy are selfishness, pride and religion. And at this time in history those sources have joined forces. Sadly, I think things will get much worse before selfishness, pride and religion discredit themselves once again.

[WillyT]

8. Let Me Get This Straight...

This guy's journalistic credentials include reporting on Mark McGuire's home run record breaking year, and a book on battling robots?

And he has the background to pontificate on statistics, polling, and presidential elections... HOW???

:wtf:

The exit polling was correct. The vote was tampered with. And now it appears that they are tampering with the exit polling. End of story!!!

:mad::nuke::grr:

[AnnitaR]

9. IT WASN'T THE FUCKING EXIT POLLS!!

For the love of god can we please do a Media Blast on this????

It was fucking FRAUD!!!

The media in this country are the biggest bunch of lazy dumb fucks I have ever seen!

[Laughing Mirror]

12. Oh they are not lazy at all

They are quite the busy little bees spinning out this propaganda. That's all this is, pure propaganda, and what better place for it than MSNBC?

Because so many came out to vote, a way must be found to discredit the voting system. This ensures that the people holding the real levers of power retain that power.

Exit polls we use to monitor fair elections in Third World countries cannot any longer be trusted to work in our own.

That is what they want. They will do away with exit polls, no need for them anymore, as they've done away with any way to audit the voting machines. They are spoiling our votes and passing around provisional ballots to us, which they will either throw in the trash or, if they can't do that, will bounce over to their side of the court.

They will stop at nothing to disqualify our votes. Invalidating the voting process makes this possible. The opinions of the public will be held up to examination as suspicious, like that old man with the magnifying glass in Miami four years ago MSNBC keeps showing as he zooms in on a hanging chad.

Well we know it cannot be the way we are counting the votes that's the problem. No that system is infallible, irreproachable. It must be the exit polls, right? Either way, there's a crisis going on in the election process and Jimmy Carter better issue his report soon enough. Wonder which side of the dictatorship he will be on.

[hertopos]

17. Totally agree with you

This is their preemptive strike to our E-fraud investigation.

We need war room!!

Hertopos

[goclark]

14. Thank You Annit R!

[KayLaw]

10. Balls

I can't see myself voting again. I doubt my vote was counted at all. There's no ballot or receipt and the only backup has been " discredited" by the media- except, that is, when they want to use that source to explain to us why people voted the way they did.

[kristndem]

13. In order to ensure my vote was counted

I early voted in the whitest most republican precinct I could find.
On touch screen machines. I figured there was less probability they would screw with thee votes in rethug districts. Don't know if that was a good strategy or not.

[deacon]

11. They are full of crap, this whole thing was orchestrated

cable news can kiss my ass.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

15. This is pure Grade-A bullshit....propaganda offered to an ignorant and...

...largely uncaring general population aimed at destroying any future reliance on exit polls.

And where does that leave us?

It leaves us in the control of a small group of people who control the electronic voting machines and the results they wish to obtain.

[SmokingJacket]

16. They are accurate to 1/10 percent elsewhere...

See Thom Hartmann's article

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1104-38.htm

More to the point, why are the media not reporting this tiny fact?

Oh, right. In on it.

[Beetwasher]

18. They Never Even CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITY OF THE VOTE BEING RIGGED!!!

Fuckers. Even if they think it's remote it' STILL a possibility that would account for the exit polls not correlating with the actual results.

How many decades have they been using exit polls??? They have ALWAYS been VERY accurate. These fucker know that, and they ALSO know there was nothing wrong with them in 2000 that required them to be "revamped" (destroyed). Gore won Florida. Thousands and thousands of Gore votes were destroyed or thrown out or went to Buchanan. The exit polls were RIGHT.

Fuckers fuck. Welcome to Orwell's nightmare.

[Barrett808]

19. Rigged? "The report debunked that as a possibility."

But the survey data this time around certainly created a sense of demoralization among Democrats who had seen the Election Day polling data, leading some of Mr. Kerry's supporters to speculate that the data was accurate but the actual vote was fraudulent. A participant in Mr. Coll's online chat asked him, "What about the possibility that the exit polls are right and the vote count is wrong?'' The report debunked that as a possibility.

It would be interesting to see how.