The batch of numbers that Randi Rhodes etc. are using had Michigan and Wisconsin listed twice. The blogger who got 'em (Wonkette) said to take them with a huge grain of salt.
Slate’s early leaked polls were much closer to reality but still a couple of points off for Kerry (although not 20), and the final polls were spot-on.
http://www.wonkette.com/archives/a-little-birdie-told-us-024776.php
I saw someone the other night questioning the results of these polls and saying their uniformly inaccurate results were too fishy to be legit. He said for one poll to be off, or even two or three, would be understandable…but that all ten were off and that smacked of tampering. He was pretty adamant that it should be investigated by federal authorities.
Then, lost among many of the columns and articles I’ve read today, was an opinion that the opinion polls were exploited by the Democrat machine in order to discourage voter turnout for Bush. The theory floated was that someone leaked to the Democrat leadership the locations of the various exit polling sites, and that Democrat voters were heavily encouraged to turn out and vote at those sites, and to vote early on. This would have the result, which it did, of making it appear early in the day that Kerry was a shoe-in, and this – given that people like to support a winner and aren’t all that keen on supporting a loser – would have the effect of boosting Kerry’s votes while at the same time diminishing Bush’s.
I have no way of knowing whether these things actually happened or not, but if so it would answer your question about what Kerry (or more accurately, the Democrat party, since Kerry was artificially jazzed by the results himself) would have to gain by the polls’ inaccuracy.
Actually, as far as I know, all they ever found were tiny traces of what might be sarin that were probably left over from when the shell casing might have contained chemical weapons years ago (i.e., when we knew Saddam had these weapons and that he was using them as we supported him). Do you know differently?
And, just to clarify your argument, are you saying that you disagree with the Duelffer Report and believe that Saddam had actual weapons of mass destruction because there were microscopic quantities left on an old shell casing? Or, are you just purposely trying to muddy the waters and spread ignorance?
I am beginning to see how it is that Bush partisans live in a world where even the facts are different.
That’s hardly fair! To a Bush supporter, the facts are not “different”. They are simply not relevent. Not at all the same thing!
So, if you are lodging a neurotic aunt who sees burglars behind every bush, the appropriate response is to avoid locking your doors, lest you encourage her delusions?
You know what the ‘M’ in ‘WMD’ stands for, don’t you?
The polls everyone has been talking about being off aren’t the Wonketter ones - they were the CNN ones before CNN changed them late in the day. CNN, and, for that matter, all the major news organizations who were reporting exit polls had Kerry leading early, and then they changed the exit polls later.
I’m not saying there’s a big conspiracy, mind you - I’m just countering your claims that the exit polls were “bogus. period,” and that the exit polls were off is an “urban myth.”
The exit polls coming out that day were off. South Carolina was too close to call. That’s how off.
There is an amazing correlation between “problems at the voting booth” and whether your candidate won or lost. If your winning at craps there isn’t much point to checking the dice.
This seems like something that would be outright verifiable. I suggest its probably loss-induced delusion.
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I was gonna ask the Dems the same question. I always thought the exit polls were suspect. Now I’m sure.
And here’s one for the Kerry contingent:
Why are you buying into the idea that Bush won “fair and square” when all these problems exist?
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Does anyone know where there is a reliable writeup about what exactly was going on with the exit polls? Were the changes as the day went on due thought to be a real effect (Kerry voters voting earlier) or was there some re-adjusting of the polls as they decided how they have to weight various precincts due to turnout or other such things? (And, what sort of massaging of the data do they generally do anyway in order to try to get a representative sample?)
It would be nice to have a better idea of how exit polling even works. It is sort of a non-trivial problem to make sure you are polling a representative sample, although it seems to have generally worked fairly well in the past…with a few exceptions. (I seem to recall that one case where exit polls have proven unreliable is sometimes when a Black and White candidate are running against each other, with the suspicion being that some Whites will tel the exit pollster that they voted for the Black candidate when they really didn’t.)
Well, wait. Perhaps I need some ignorance eradicated. It was my impression that every mainstream media outfit, including CNN, got their exit polling data from the same place (basically a co-op set up for the purpose) and that they totally embargoed the results until the polls closed, leaks (which may or may not have been based on the polls) to the blogs notwithstanding. Now, I was in transit during the period between when the polls closed and when the media started calling any of the contested states, so I’m not aware of what happened at that exact moment. Did they produce exit polling at that time? And was it based on whole-day results and later refined or, if they did it, was it based on partial-day results which were previously embargoed and subsequently released while the whole-day results were being compiled?
Knowing that would be interesting, and possibly probative. Please help eradicate my ignorance on this subject.
manhattan, I don’t know just when the results of the exit polls were released, but I can tell you how I came to be aware that exit polls were favoring Kerry. Britt Hume, early in the afternoon of election day here in the midwest, was commenting on news coverage of the election. He was speaking to a couple of guests or panelists, I forget which. At any rate, he said that the results of the exit polls weren’t to be released until the polls closed, but that as was commonly the case on election day, the members of the news business were privy to a certain insiders’ “buzz” about how things were likely going, and that the “buzz” that afternoon was that things things were looking “very good” for Kerry.
Then I switched to CNN and Judy Woodruff, a well known liberal, was flitting around all smiles and almost giddy, like a schoolgirl.
Then I logged on to the Straight Dope and saw a post by someone who said Tucker Carlson was virtually conceding the presidency to Kerry.
That was the end of my pre-poll closing experience with the results of exit polls.
Then, two or three days later I saw Dick Morris (I think it was) on t.v. commenting on how extraordinary it was that “all ten” of the exit polls conducted showed Kerry to be way out front, and so early in the game. He suggested shenanigans as I described above in an effort to boost Kerry’s voter turnout and to simultaneously discourage Bush’s.
Just wait until the press get a hold of this! Shouldn’t take more than another 6 months or so. This has got to be the best kept secret in the world!
#1) There were actually a preponderance of Republicans that were up in arms about possible voting machine problems. Especially in Districts that were clearly Democratic. You dont know about them because the liberal media has decided it is “more newsworthy” to write (more) about democrats being somehow “cheated” since there was a deep resentment of their loss in 2000.
#2) Dont unnerstand the question. My apologies.
#3) As I understand exit polling, Pollsters hang around a voting place and ask the people who exit there “who did you vote for?” Depending on the area, it can be more republican, or more democrat or a little of both. No one is forced to swear on an oath to tell the truth about who they voted for. Some democrats might be ashamed that they voted for bush but told the pollsters that they voted for Kerry. Basically, all I am saying exit polls are about as reliable as using spagetti for fish bait.
#4) of course it would bother me. It would so bother me that I would demand to know:
a)how they can rig up all if not most of the machines to favor bush.
b)how can they have the all of the people in charge of the machines be so negligent or be in a vast criminal conspiracy to defraud a national election.
c) how can the voters be so inept or unmindful of the fact that the machines are not recording their votes properly.
d) why arent the Kerry supporters bringing all of the above to light in a court of law with proof and witnesses.
*** Lastly, although I am not a Kerry contingent, but I would think that winning the popular vote 51% to kerry’s 48% to be a clear margin of victory albeit not at all overwhelming. The fallacy is to think that all the voting problems favor Bush. There are some serious voting discrepancies that favor Kerry. All in all, it evens out more or less and unless you can really buy into the vast national conspiracy to elect Bush and make him look good, Bush won fair and square.
For the “vast conspiracy to elect Bush and make him look good” advocates:
If Bush can muster that kind of political and criminal machine to get elected, Dont you think that pretty much means he is quite qualified to run this country?
X~Slayer(ALE)
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041023/NEWS02/410230350
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=5443862&postcount=49
X-Slayer:
I have heard almost nothing in the mainstream media about the possibility of voter fraud. The only person in the mainstream whom I have seen treat the idea positively was Keith Olbherman. There have been a couple of other stories on other networks, but they were both from a skeptical point of view.
The question is asking why all the glitches that have been found have been in Bush’s favor, and none in Kerry’s. Since the OP was posted, a single glitch in Kerry’s favor has been found. But a whole lot of glitches have been found, and all but one were in Bush’s favor.
Exit polls are done in complete confidence, w/ no pollster “hanging around” as you describe. People answering the polls do so voluntarily, on a card, by themselves, in a booth, and leave the card in a box, by themselves, in a booth. Exit polls are generally very accurate–in fact they are used to verify that voting is no fraudulant in other countries. This year’s polls are acknowledged by both sides of the debate to have been very abnormally different from the actual counts. They have different ideas about where this discrepancy came from, but there is no question that there is a very significant discrepancy this year.
I don’t know enough about the situation to be able to say why this isn’t being handled more loudly by Democrats and the Kerry campaign. It could be because there’s nothing there. It could be because they think the noise they would make would just end up making them look bad, even if they were right. My tinfoil hat tells me it could be because Kerry’s nomination was itself rigged and he didn’t know it til he got a call from the Repubs on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. My point is, there could be any number of reasons other than “there’s actually no story here.” As for how they could have rigged up the machines, I’m not sure, but I do know that those who run three of the four companies who make voting machines (including Diebold and ES&S, the main suspected offenders in OH and FL) are known vocal Republican party supporters and fundraisers. I also know that the numbers were looking very pro-Kerry until just a couple of hours before the election was pretty much over, and then the numbers started swinging. This is classic evidence of voter fraud. You have to wait until pretty late so you can know just how many votes to add and where–too early and you might not add enough or you might add too many and make things look too suspicious.
Having said all this, I actually am not committed to a belief that voter fraud occured. I am just bringing this up to show that it is reasonable to believe it at least possible that there was something seriously fraudulent about this election.
-FrL-
You mean the sample is drawn from those who are willing to voluntarily fill out a card? That is fricking ridiculous. No wonder it was skewed towards democrats if that was the case.
I’ve read several accounts of people who were polled after voting by people holding clipboards.
I think not all exit polls are run the same way.
I’m not sure why you think this would skew things towards democrats.
The fact is, exit polls have always been extremely accurate. That is evidence that voluntary polling (btw of every tenth or every twentieth person exiting the polling center–not just anyone who walks up) does not skew results.
This year’s discrepancies were a serious abberation. (Sp?)
-FrL-
The polls used by the media do not work this way. There is one company (can’t remember the name at the moment) which all media bought their information from. I described their methodology.
-FrL-
I think Democrats would be more willing to “share” their vote with someone else. I’d bet on it, in fact.