Election Day Exit Polls: "It's Like Hotel California"

[DainBramaged]

After 20 months of buildup, there is a craving for an answer. With a global audience wanting to know the outcome of the 2008 presidential election, and more outlets than ever covering the vote, we wanted to know how the networks are preparing to make sure they get it right. We'll be posting a few stories over the few remaining days of the campaign to let you know what to expect on election night.

Exit Polls

The exit poll fiasco of 2000 helped contribute to an unresolved presidential election that lasted 36 days. In 2004, things weren't much better. The Washington Post called the 2004 exit poll data, "the most inaccurate of any in the past five presidential elections." One change this year, the average age of those conducting the interviews this year is 42-years-old. In 2004, the average age was 34.

Edison Media Research will once again conduct the exit polls to be used by the six major news organizations — ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, NBC and the Associated Press. Three representatives from each of the National Election Pool (NEP) members will be quarantined in a room until 5pmET Tuesday.

Joe Lenski, executive vice-president of Edison, tells TVNewser, "No one outside of one single room sees before 5pm." "It's like Hotel California," Lenski says, referring to the 1976 Eagles hit record. Once the media reps check in, they cannot leave until 5pmET. "They will be escorted to the restroom. Food is brought in. Their cell phone and BlackBerrys and laptops are confiscated."

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/politics/election_day_exit_polls_its_like_hotel_california_99215.asp#more

[whistle]

1. No exit polls by the traditional firms in Central Florida that I know of

[suston96]

2. Exit polling, like all polling, is like horseshoes. Closeness counts.

An occasional ringer is great. But most points are scored by how close to the stake the horseshoe lands.

I have always found that exit polls worked in the past. So have most polls. Something happened in the last two or three presidentials that seemed to indicate that pollsters "worked" their polls to suit the media and public awareness and expectations.

That's too bad. Because if done correctly measuring what voters have actually done or might do at the polls can - for one thing - indicate or suggest that actual results should be questioned.

I firmly believe in election redundancy. And exit polls are the closest thing we have to assuring that redundancy.

[DainBramaged]

3. We got this

[otohara]

7. That Blue Square With The CO In It

makes me proud and giddy.

[Peace Patriot]

4. Oh, they so-o-o-o-o don't want us to get our hands on the REAL exit polls this time.

They were on our TV screens last time, as yet undoctored. Kerry won, by a 3% margin. Then--remember this?--their computer system "went down" for a while, and came back up. Oops, oh, hey, Bush won!

What had happened in that interim? The consortium exit pollster (Edison-Mitofksy) had doctored the exit poll numbers (in impossible, absurd ways--see www.TruthIsAll.net) to force them to fit the results of Diebold & brethren's 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY formulae--in all the shiny new electronic voting machines and central tabulators that had been fast-tracked across the country during the 2002 to 2004 period--which said that Bush won.

But alert bloggers and statistical experts had grabbed screen shots of the REAL exit poll numbers, and spread them around the internet. Ha, ha on the Corpo/Fascist 'news' monopolies! And though the story was double deep-sixed by the five fatcat billionaire CEOs who control all 'news' and 'opinion' in the country (except the internet), and by Bushwhack and Democratic leaders alike, throughout the land, and by corrupt election officials who had spent billions of taxpayer dollars on these election theft machines, and kind of liked the tans they got, and the high-end shopping opportunities, at the Beverly Hilton, sponsored by Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia (August 2005), the story got around. And people started looking into the mindboggling coup d'etat that had occurred in our vote counting system, now controlled, with the 100% non-transparency of 'TRADE SECRET' code, with virtually no audit/recount controls, by those same three rightwing Bushwhacks corporations who were wining and dining our election officials at the Beverly Hilton the following summer.

And election reform activists began to spread the word. ON TOP OF the voter purges and other criminal violations of the Voting Rights Act in Ohio, Florida and other states, in 2004, the counting of the votes of the voters who actually got to vote was completely unverifiable, and extremely vulnerable to insider hacking. One insider hacker, a couple of lines of code, and millions of votes could be swtiched, without detection.

Except for the exit polls--and other exterior, inferential evidence. The exit polls detected the switch. That's why they were doctored to fit Diebold & brethren's results. And then people got to thinking, hey, the grass roots Democrats blew the Pukes away in new voter registration nearly 60/40, in 2004. What happened to all those votes?

But the media was quoting Cheney and Rove. How did you win? "Our get-out-the-vote campaign in the churches." Ah, yes, massa, the media said, that was surely it.

There is NO EVIDENCE for a successful Puke campaign "in the churches." None. Zip. They got the same numbers they got in 2000. The hard evidence--new voter registration--said the opposite. The new voters, the independent voters, and the former Nader voters, combined with all the returning Gore voters, outvoted the Pukes.

But you can't prove it, some Corpo/Fascist shills said. Yeah, well, that's kind of the point of 'TRADE SECRET' voting counting, ain't?

[RagAss]

5. I just hope they understand the consequences of stealing this one.

[DainBramaged]

6. We got this

:smoke:

[avaistheone1]

8. Exit polls don't lie.

http://blog.democrats.com/node/1600/print