Salon: Exit polls in 2004 were wrong; Bush won

[quaoar]

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

No exit
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

June 15, 2005 | "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."

[Cassandra]

1. Bullshit!

Not a worthwhile explanation of why, suddenly, only American exit polls don't correlate to the vote.

[windbreeze]

75. my exact reaction...

LOL...and if you believe that, we have a bridge in Arizona to sell you...
windbreeze

[Cassandra]

77. I already have a bridge for sale

here in NY. ;-)

[GreenPartyVoter]

85. Thought the same thing

[Carla in Ca]

148. Exactly

Doesn't that mean that perhaps there were more Kerry voters at the poles?

Here is my LTTE at Salon:

Nice try, Farhad.

"Kerry voters were overrepresented in the polls".

Ah, yeah, because there were more people there voting for Kerry! Now, when you want to investigate the counting of those votes, then we have a real discussion.

[Imagevision]

184. Conyers must have some late breaking stuff on Ohio otherwise

why would this chump rehash the election fraud

[Imagevision]

185. The election was rigged for Bush - end of story!!

[TruthIsAll]

190. HIS ARTICLE LINKS TO DU: THE JUNE 14 THREAD OF LINKS

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x377962#378149

[bicentennial_baby]

2. We're a "lefty bastion"

Heh, we've been called much worse!

[kenny blankenship]

3. Not sure why that is regarded as persuasive

but I haven't read the whole article. It really doesn't sound like the kind of theory that would attract unanimity from the pollsters, except as a CYA reflex maybe.

[quaoar]

5. The most interesting part of the article

is at the very end, when they interview Elizabeth Liddle.

[kenny blankenship]

149. Still missing the "persuasion"

I dunno maybe I need to drink more.

[Imagevision]

188. Isn't Salon the ones who produced Jeff Gannon/Guckhert

The white house pleasure boy - the one they planted to ask Bush and/or McClellan pre-planned questions?

That speaks for itself

DSM-DSM-DSM!!!!....now!

[LuPeRcALiO]

4. "a clear consensus among experienced pollsters is finally emerging"

Baloney. It's the same crap from the same pollster, Mitofsky, who evidently earns a handsome salary from trashing his own poll.

[Sir Jeffrey]

6. So, the premise here...

Is that the exit polls were off because more Kerry voters participated in the poll than Bush voters. Um, okay...despite the fact that to prove this premise one has to assume that no fraud was perpetrated, thus making the vote tally accurate. I'm not convinced. There is no way Mitofsky KNOWS that or COULD KNOW that unless he concludes beforehand that the vote was not corrupted.

Not to mention that this phenomenon ONLY happened in the states with electronic voting machines.

This "detailed" explanation is nothing new. Mitofsky tried to push this bs explanation months ago.

[Donailin]

58. the premise here is this

setting up the explanation for next time around. "If the exit polls are contrary to the outcome it's because the folks who voted for the loser participated more"

Just getting ready for 2006.

That's why it's IMPERATIVE to get going on the impeachment process.

[billbuckhead]

7. This sounds like a bunch of bullshit

Those shy Bush voters.

[Dinocrat]

8. Rigged from the start........

I don't know why people get away with writing nonsense like this. Its painfully apparent that the vote counts were rigged from the start. We all know the CIA has used voter fraud and rigged vote counting machines in LAtin American countries to enact "democratic change" in communist countries. How difficult would it be to spruce up a couple thousand of those for use in the US, name Ohio and Florida? What we need to check is the contractor's list for the CIA and other money pits for "black ops" and see if Diebold or any subsidiaries are listed there.

[droidamus2]

9. Doesn't make sense

Until the interviewer does the interview how would they know that the person was a Bush or Kerry voter. So his assertion that they 'sought out' Kerry voters doesn't make sense to me. What was their criteria, 'if you had all your teeth you must be a Kerry voter'.

[area51]

86. Welcome.

Welcome to DU, droidamus2.

[wisteria]

90. Agree and very funny! n/t

[TankLV]

92. If you were other than obviously white and christian, you were a dem.

If you didn't drive a nice new car, you were a dem.

If you VOTED IN GREATER NUMBERS, as opposed to NOT BEING THERE, you were a dem - opps, that supports the idea that MORE DEMS VOTED overall - scratch that last one! Sorry agent Mike!

[Yupster]

95. An interesting point

Let's say there was a precinct with 200 voters who voted exactly 100 Democratic and 100 Republican.

You had a Democratic and Republican precinct chairman from 100 miles away looking at each person coming out of the polling place on closed circuit tv. Each were asked to pick which 100 voted for their side.

I wonder how well they would do?

Picking 50 right out of 100 wuld be random guesses.

My guess is each of them would do way better than that.

How would you do it?

Well, I'd start with simple demographics. Since African-Americans vote nine to one Democratic, I'd pick all 20 of them and figure I got 18 right. Hispanics vote Democratic at least 60-40, so I'd pick pretty much all of them. I'd pick more women than men since women vote more Democratic. More young people than old.

I bet there would be a few real shocks, but overall, I bet an experienced party person from either side could get 70 % right answers at least. I think I could anyway.

[autorank]

10. SALON Lies, The National Exit Polls are the"smoking gun"

This Salon article is disinformation. There are many statisticians who think that the National Exit Polls are a "smoking gun." In fact, we have a wonderful resoruce here, TruthIsAll who takes the data, analyzes the bull shit "reluctant Bush responder" excuse and destroys it, and sets the record straight.

Check out these links:

Reluctant Bush Reponder "Liepothesis" Demolished

Great history of national Exit polls

The left, on occasion, eats it's young. There are a bunch of "professoinal" skeptics out there who would have you believe that these polls (through 12:25am election eve) were flawed. Well, they weren't until they were "fixed" after 12:25 to conform with the known results.

Do not believe this bull ship from salon, it's a FALSE FLAG.

Go read the TIA analysis. He shows his work and assumptions and provides you with the ability to run them yourself.

Denying the validity of these polls serves the political end of negatting the DNC's new interest in election fraud (Dean's recent DNC speech) and promoting the "fixed" Carter-Baker Commission on elections.

[AX10]

19. Why does Salon claim this? Have they been "Roved"?

If so, I will never go them again.

[autorank]

24. They've been Roved for sure. I've subscribed from Day!. I just cancelled

Screw them!!!!!

[Al-CIAda]

21. Yes, go to the 2004 election results forum. TruthIsAll has volumes

of research and analysis on this.

The 'shy Bush voter' is a bogus lie. I guess they have made their choice. Salon, by trotting this discredited 'theory' once again is complicit in the treason.

[autorank]

27. Myman Al-CIAda speaks the truth!!! Rock on!!!

:yourock:

[ArkDem]

35. You are definately on rock solid ground when you use

TruthIsAll as a scource. He is a mathematical and statisical genius!:smoke:

[JRob]

143. It's coming from every fucking direction...

Repub's screwing us, Dem's screwing us, the Media screwing us...

Jesus fucking Christ what is is going to take to shake people out of this fucking spell?

The country needs to be bitch-slapped so they'll put down the Big Mac and Coke long enough to put on their Nike's, jump into their BMW and drive somewhere to get involved. After the fill up a Exxon/Mobil.

Holy SHIT!!!

by-the-way thanks for the TruthIsAll tip...

[Blue Belle]

45. If you've read all the articles that Farahd Manjoo...

has written on this subject, the 180 Degree turn he's done is enough to make your head explode. First, he writes articles prior to the election on how the black box voting machines are rigged - and then he takes the anti-fraud side to his post election articles. It's ridiculous.

The only reason why I read Salon anymore is for their "War Room" posts and Joe Conason articles (I also love Heather Harvelinski).

[autorank]

51. I called to cancel, mentioned this dude. They were not happy.

I suggested that whomever edits the publication might want to read and understand the issue. Thanks for this history.

I've subscribed to Salon since day 1. I think I'll just transfer it to a PDA membership.

[Blue Belle]

53. I think that was a good move.

I think I'll do the same!

:toast:

[autorank]

137. Great, I told them there would be more.

The lady wanted me to talk to the author. I said, nah, he's obviously insincere or lazy. He wouldn't understand. Then she askedk me to voice my complaints to the editor. I said no, but just tell him/her to actually read the stuff they publish with a critical eye.

We've had a "visitor" over in Elections who was endorsing that crack pot notion. Very strange.

:toast: to you!

[Blue Belle]

151. I can't tell you how...

many letters to the editor I wrote in regard to their crappy coverage of the election fraud. They wouldn't investigate anything!! They just repeated the same Republican talking point crap that the rest of the mainstream did... in fact, the only thing they did investigate was to prove the "Tin Foil Hat Conspiracy Theorists" wrong. Farhad Manjoo was slimed big time in his own magazine's reader feedback page... I guess I wasn't the only one who was fed up with his change of heart.

[quaoar]

152. Heck

If they give you the chance to actually talk to a real live person you should take it.

If they don't hear any complaints they think nobody has any complaints.

[autorank]

169. Oh, I did talk to a live person...I had her deliver the messages.as well

She was really pissed too, not at me but, it seemed at Morjoo or who ever he is. We'll see. They can't decide whose side they're on, especially when they print poorly reasoned and documented drive. I'm glad you put it up there. While I'm a good paying subscriber, I'm obviously not checking in enough...but alas, it's not all over (haha).

[LittleClarkie]

66. I love Conason

Intelligent and with a good heart and a great writing style.

[Blue Belle]

69. Me too.

He's the only reason why I listen to Franken on Fridays too! :-)

[johnaries]

11. Just a variation on the Reluctant Bush Responder, which has already

been discredited. TIA has done some excellent work on the RBR theory in the 2004 Elections Forum.

[porkrind]

12. Bullshit.

Common sense tells us they stole it.

[Contrary1]

13. If this is what happened...

(not in a million years) Salon must be saying that Bush voters were too
ashamed to admit they supported the Idiot Son. Can't imagine why.

[Sparkly]

14. "more inclined to seek out Kerry voters"?!

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.

How did they manage that? How did they know how people voted until they asked them?

[Enraged_Ape]

18. From their "I Voted for John Kerry" t-shirts...

that they weren't supposed to be wearing into the polling station.

:eyes:

[quaoar]

22. According to the article

the interviewers were young and sought out other young people who seemed friendlier. And supposedly Kerry voters were more willing to talk to a pollster than Bush voters, thus seemed more friendly.

What I don't get is the explanation of the "math error" at the end of the article by Liddle.

[wisteria]

91. i don't buy this explanation.

Surely, the interviewers were trained well enough to recognize their responsibility was to gather accurate information.They would of had to realize that seeking out young, friendlier people would not provide accurate data or a fair cross section of American voters.

[Internut]

94. The training the interviewers received was

miniscule, and for most of them it was on the phone. US exit polls are done "on the cheap" - they cost 10M or so. The kind of exit polls that you would like to see, with the training, breadth, and thoroughness that would be enough to use them to audit elections, would cost at least 10 times as much if not more.

[LuPeRcALiO]

108. It doesn't have to be fancy.

Every fifth person who crosses a certain line in the pavement for example.

[Internut]

118. The refusal rates in exit polls hover around 50%

so what does the interviewer do when that fifth person refuses to answer?

The "book" says wait for the next fifth person to come by. Mitofsky in one of his interviews mentioned a few cases he knew of where his interviewers just took the next person, or took the wife of the refuser instead, etc. That was not correct procedure, but how much do you want to bet it happened a lot?

All kinds of things (some non-obvious) may influence partisan refusal rates. There has been a documented experiment on responder bias. One polling company put three interviewing teams out - one had a colorful folder over their pad of questionnaires that featured "color logos of the national media organizations" and "the words 'survey of voters,' 'short' and 'confidential.'" The second team used the folder and offered a pen featuring logos of the sponsoring news organizations. A third "control" team used the traditional interviewing technique without any use of a special folder or pen.

The result: having the folder with the logos has significantly increased responder rate (giving out pens did not have a significant effect) - that is, more people agreed to take the poll - but it also significantly skewed the results of the "folder" interviews to the Democratic side. The authors concluded:

"The reason for the overstatement of the Democratic voters in the Folder Conditions is not entirely clear and needs to be investigated further. Clearly some message was communicated in the Folder Conditions that led to proportionately fewer Republicans filling it out. One hypothesis is that the highlighted color logos of the national news organizations on the folder were perceived negatively by Republicans and positively by Democrats, leading to differential nonresponse between the groups."

The paper was presented at the 1998 AAPOR Conference - authored by Daniel Merkle, Murray Edelman, Kathy Dykeman and Chris Brogan.

[LuPeRcALiO]

120. Interesting. Two comments:

1) What was the "folder" factor in 2004? If Mitofsky's identified one, I haven't heard about it, and

2) The error in 2000 was 1.8% (according to Internut's figures), so they must be doing something right!

[Internut]

122. The "folder factor" that Mitofsky suggested in one

of his interviews, AFAIR, was age (younger interviewers seemed to have skewed Democratic results) and education (interviewers with graduate education had skewed Democratic results). As anecdotal evidence suggests (see Yupster's posts) standing next to MoveOn tables has probably influenced things in at least a few cases. etc. etc.

[LuPeRcALiO]

124. okay but that's the kind of random interference

that cancels itself out. He really hasn't identified a single reason why the entire sample would skew toward Kerry, just some hypothetical instances where individual interviews might. Similar speculations could be made about favoring Bush voters.

[Internut]

126. Look - there are 50% of people who exit polls who refuse

to answer questions. It is eminently reasonable to think that the refusal rate may be influenced somewhat by voting preference. The differences do not have to be huge. Mitofsky estimates that as little as 6% difference (55% of Republicans refusing but only 47% of Democrats refusing) would account for the errors that he saw.

Since there is evidence from foreign elections that there is such a phenomenon as polling bias by voting preference (the documented "Shy Tory" effect in UK, which is taken into account by the pollsters there in order to produce accurate polls) it is not inconceivable that a similar thing could be happening here.

[LuPeRcALiO]

but there's still no explanation

why more Bush than Kerry voters MIGHT have refused an exit poll, and there's absolutely no data to support it.

Frankly, I see this whole line of speculation as a ludicrously flimsy cover-up.

[Internut]

129. See my post #128. n/t

[LuPeRcALiO]

130. Sorry, there's no data to support that theory.

So that's not an explanation.

[stickdog]

157. It's bullshit. Why were they suddenly shy this time?

[stickdog]

156. Or the fraud-o-matic machines were simply rigged with 5 minutes effort.

Which explanation is simpler?

[FogerRox]

44. must have been the Kerry buttons on the voters shirts---right?

>wink<

[flpoljunkie]

15. Mitofsky's explanation seems to be "fixed around" a silly hypothesis.

Yet, he continues to get away with it in the pliant and corrrupted media world we live in today.

His explanation still smells to me.

[The Magistrate]

32. Hard To Say, Ma'am

One of my odder bits of casual employment in the past was a day's work as an exit-poll interviewer in a local election. There were two of us at the precinct, and after the first couple of hours of it, we were able to predict with absolute accuracy whether a person we approached would in fact agree to answer the questions, or refuse. Persons who agreed and persons who refused seemed to represent distinct personality types, with different facial expressions and body language. It does not seem impossible or implausible to me that this could have reflected different voting patterns. That poll, for the record, proved wildly innaccurate as to the exact margin by which the incumbent Mayor won, but this seemed to me owing to poor design: we were pulled out with an hour left to go in the voting, so that we interviewed mostly the stay at homes, and completely missed people who showed up after work. That, certainly, was not a feature of the exit polling in the '04 elections.

[flpoljunkie]

34. Then the Mitofsky polltakers failed to follow their instructions--Mitofsky

does not say this; he only presumes it. Why did he not try to find out?

[The Magistrate]

36. That Would Be True, Ma'am

We were supposed to station ourselves outside the door to the place, and to ask voters who turned in one direction on leaving the door to respind, but it was not possible to do this, as the exit was down a stair alongside a wall, and everyone had to go one way from there to reach the street a good distance off. We settled for asking every other person who exited, as this seemed to preserve the intent of the directive. It seems likely to me, the world being what it is, that any general directive must have been a similarly poor fit with many actual places of activity.

Disregard of instructions entirely may well have occured, though. It is not a profession, after all, and the people employed for the task frequently supplied by temporary agencies. My comments are not so much in support of the specifics of the article, but only relating to the basic proposition that persons who voted one way or another may have been more or less likely to answer the questions. My own experience leads me to suspect that may be so, as it certainly seemed to be so in that particular election.

[flpoljunkie]

39. Your point is well taken, but should not Mitofsy be able to account for

this factor--which you so readily discovered--in his polling?

[The Magistrate]

40. That Is Beyond My Capacity To Comment, Ma'am

It would seem difficult to devise any mechanism that could cope with a different rate of response by different personality types: that problem seems inherent to the process. Similarly, it really is not possible to craft a general directive that will smoothly fit in all applications to particular cases. It seems to me in an endeavour such as this, even the most skilled professionals must spend a good deal of their time crossing fingers and hoping for the best....

[flpoljunkie]

41. Or perhaps they could just do what they were told, Magistrate.

Although that may be expecting a bit much from not properly trained and inexperience poll takers.

[Yupster]

88. After the election, another DU'er

reported a similar problem.

She was a college student who worked an exit poll in this last election.

She said the problem in her case was they were very close to a Move On table which was not on purpose, but was really the only place they were able to be because of just the geography of the voting place.

She said that some voters shied as far away from them as they could and others walked right up to them.

Since the exit-pollsters were college students, and the Move On people were obvious Kerry supporters, the young DU'er said she had no confidence that they were getting a good sample of voters.

They got young people who were willing to walk right up to a Move On table.

Again, this was just one person's experience.

To me the best election day coverage was by the New York Times magazine which had a reporter following the head of the Ohio ACT organization who worked his butt off for months registering new Kerry voters and then getting them to the polls. I think he was head of the Clark campaign in Ohio before joining ACT.

Anyway, he was elated by the first exit polls, but grew less confident each hour as the newer releases got closer and closer.

By the evening, he went around to Republican precincts and lost his confidence as he saw the turnout numbers. By the time the polls closed, he was still hopeful, but resigned that the numbers looked like a loss.

The most interesting vignette of the story was a long line at a Democratic polling place. It started to rain, and he ordered a rented McDonald's truck to go to the polling places and give the people on line free food. There he met the local county chairman who surprised him by pointing to a new development across the highway and telling him that his precinct was not the overwhelmingly Democratic precinct that the history said it was.

I don't know if this story is still in the NY Times magazine archives, but it was well worth the read with great pictures too.

Anyway, no stories or figures matter when talking conspiracies.

You can never disprove a conspiracy theory. Does the guy on the ground who worked for months think he lost? Well that just means they got to him too. There's no point to it.

Those who believe in conspiracies will die believing in them and there's nothing that will change their minds.

[flpoljunkie]

42. Magistrate, could you also accurately predict who they had voted for?

You indicated that you could correctly guess if they would afree to be questioned.

[Kindigger]

16. I don't doubt that it was fixed, but....

I spent that whole day, and night making calls to all registered voters in my county. My opening line was "this is ___ calling from (polling place). I'm calling to remind you to please vote today. If you've already voted, can I ask who you voted for? (on my script).

I imagine the callers who told me "go to Hell, it's none of your f*ing business" were * voters.

I'd taken down their addresses, and planned to follow up with ohh let's say....eggs, tomatoes, burning dog crap in a bag.....but I forgot about it.

Sometimes I meet people in town, and wonder if they were "one of them".

[Al-CIAda]

17. Recycled, repackaged bullshit. n/t

[AX10]

20. Bull!!! The BBC exit polls projected the EXACT NUMBER OF SEATS...

THAT LABOUR WON! So don't tell me that we could not build an accurate exit poll.

They also got the vote percentages correct too. "Salon.com" is nothing more than a SELLOUT! I could give a damn less if it were shut down.

:mad:

[Internut]

37. Interestingly enough, one of the reasons that Brit exit

polls are so accurate is because they take the "shy Tory" effect into account (the equivalent of "reluctant Bush responder" in the US):

http://pollingreport.co.uk/blog/index.php?m=20050205

The theory behind “Shy Tories” is that many people who tell pollsters they don’t know how they will vote or refuse to tell pollsters how they will vote, are actually just embarrassed to admit to voting in a socially unacceptable way. The evidence for this is largely drawn from panel studies before and after the 1992 & 1997 elections, which revealed that people who said “Don’t Know” before the election were disproportionately more likely to admit to having voted Conservative after the election. Attitudinal studies of those who refused to say how they voted both before and after the election, pointed to them too being disproportionately Conservative.

In an attempt to deal with this problem, ICM (and now Populus) reallocate a proportion of the people who say they don’t know how they’ll vote, or refuse to answer, according to how they say they voted at the previous election. When ICM first started doing this, they re-allocted 60% of don’t knows in this way - a decision that was broadly vindicated in 1997 when ICM were the best performing pollster and panel studies showed that between 55% and 59% of people saying don’t know ended up voting in the same way as they did in 1992. ICM’s system clearly worked for them again in 2001, when they were again the best performing pollster.

[sadiesworld]

57. That article doesn't have anything to do with exit polls.

Nice try.

[Internut]

59. It is quite reasonable to assume that the same

"shy tories" that lied or refused to respond to pre-election pollsters would do the same to exit pollsters. That's not such a big leap.

In fact, the "shy tory effect" was "discovered" in 1992, when UK pre-election polls predicted a Labor lead of 0.8%, exit polls predicted a hung parliament with a Labor majority. Exit polls predicted a 4% Tory lead, with a hung parliament with Tories as the largest party. The results, of course, were that John Major won with a 23-sear majority - a big Tory victory. That disaster of an exit poll and pre-election polls was what prompted the research that led to the "shy tory" adjustments in current polling in UK. (see http://www.alba.org.uk/polls/accuracy.html)

[stickdog]

160. Or that UK machines were rigged first. Or that in UK Labor voters are

the bigger bullies of the two voting blocks -- unlike here.

[stickdog]

159. Being AGAINST Bush is more often socially unacceptable here.

But let's just postulate the "shy Limbaugh" effect, shall we? :sarcasm:

[Al-CIAda]

23. Ukraine anyone? n/t

[autorank]

43. Exit polls are always valid when Republicans run them! Hypocrites!

[UCLA Dem]

25. Why though? * supports are pretty vocal people? Doesn't make sense.

[autorank]

31. That's what I thought too. This will blow your mind.

A simple analysis of where the "reluctant Bush responders" were shows that they were primarily in the EAST, you know those shy people who hide their feelings and rarely speak up on politics. Having lived there 10 years, I can tell you that this is both factually courrect and counter-intuitive on a massive scale.

This is all "false flag" crap now. They know Dean is going to hit them hard on voter suppression and voting rights violations, starting with OH and FL (he's said so publically in the past two days). They know the next step is to show this evidence. And they know that after all of their "debating" and "on one hand, then on the other" arguments are addressed, they have nothing but a BIG FAT LIE BASED ON STATISTICAL IMPOSSIBILITIES.

The show is abouti to begin. The "false flag" operatoins are undersay. We will prevail.

rBr's Mostly in the EAST-WTF?


(btw, great work out there handling steroid-boy, friend was at the recent LA demonstration and sait it was amazing)

[DuaneBidoux]

26. How do you "seek" out a Kerry voter?

[Jack Rabbit]

28. Also discussed in Editorials/Other Articles

Please click here.

My post from that thread:

This doesn't sound any better than (Mitofsky's) 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.

[autorank]

29. "Our evidence versus their evidence" -- Great one from TIA

Well, here is a nice "text" piece from our resident mathematicianl You know, Salon knows about DU. How do you think they missed this and the other pieces demolishing the "reluctant Bush responder" "Liepothesis"?

TruthIsAll Donating Member (1000+ posts)
Sat May-07-05 11:30 AM
Original message
Our Evidence vs. Their Evidence


Edited on Sat May-07-05 12:22 PM by TruthIsAll

OUR EVIDENCE

We know Kerry led the pre-election state polls.
We know Kerry led the pre-election national polls.

We know Kerry led the post-election state exit polls, 51-48%.
We know Kerry led the post-election national exit poll, 51-48%

We know documented voting machine “glitches” favored Bush 99% of the time.

We know the media and E-M will not release detailed raw precinct data.
We know Blackwell refused to testify before Conyers.
We know Mitofsky refused to testify before Conyers.

We know that there were over 21 million new voters.
We know Kerry won the vast majority (57-62%) of new voters.

We know there were 3 million former Nader voters.
We kknow Kerry won Nader voters by 71%-21% over Bush.

We know Party ID averaged 39% Dem/35% Rep/26% Independent in the prior three elections.
We know Party ID was 38/35/27 for the first 13047 National Exit Poll respondents.
We know it was changed to 37/37/24 for the final 613 in the 13660 Final.

We know Kerry, like Gore, won the female vote 54/46% up until the final 660 respondents.
We know it was changed to 51% in the 13660 Final.

We know Bush 2000 voters represented an IMPOSSIBLE 43% of the 2004 electorate in the final 13660 Exit poll.
We know it was changed from 41% in the first 13047
We know that Bush had 50.456 mm votes in 2000.
We know that about 3.5% of them have since died.
We know, therefore, that the Bush percentage could not have been higher than 39.8% (48.69/122.26).
We know that with the 39.8/40.2% weighting, Kerry won by 52.4-46.7%, or SEVEN million votes.


We know the 2000 election was stolen - by Bush in Florida where 175,000 punch cards (70% of them Gore votes) were spoiled.
We know SCOTUS stopped the recount and voted 5-4 for Bush.

We know the 2002 election was stolen (ask Max Cleland).

We know that the National Exit Poll MoE is under 1%.
We know because we checked the NEP margin of error table.
We know because we did the simple MoE calculation.
We know that Kerry won the Natioanl Poll by over 3%, 51-48%.
We know the odds are astronomical that the deviation was triple the MoE.

We know that 42 of 50 states deviated from the exit polls to Bush. We know that includes ALL 22 states in the Eastern Time Zone.

We know that 16 states deviated beyond the exit poll MoE for Bush, and none did for Kerry.

We know that touch screen voting machines became widely used in 2004.

We know that Republicans fought against paper ballots for Diebold and ESS touch screens.

We know that ALL Diebold ATMs provide a paper receipt.

We know that the deviation trend from the exit polls to the vote was approaching ZERO until 2000, when there was a dramatic reversal.

We know that scores of newspapers which supported Bush in 2000 supported Kerry in 2004.

We know that Kerry won the Ohio Exit Poll, by at least 51-48%.

We know the media will not report in any of the above.


THEIR EVIDENCE:
Something we don't know.
The rBr hypothesis: Bush voters were reluctant to speak to exit pollsters.

But..
We know that many Republican voters deserted Bush for Kerry.
We know there were hardly any Gore Democrats who voted for Bush.

Ladies and Gentleman of the Jury:
Have you reached a verdict?

[agincourt]

30. The Bush voters,

wore long red underwear, toted shotguns, and were always spitting recycled tobacco when they went to the polls, so the pollsters were just plain darn scared of asking them any questions. Sure we're sure.

[brentspeak]

33. If a person was dumb enough to donate money to Bev Harris

then their allegations of "election fraud" should be taken with a grain of salt.

I do want Kenneth Blackwell to answer questions about his conduct on Election Day, however.

[Mad_Dem_X]

38. Uh, HELLO! There WERE more Kerry voters!!!

?????????????:banghead:

[Touchdown]

46. Hmm. Fahrad Manjoo. Sounds familiar. Oh' Yeah, this guy!

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/11/10/voting/index.html

Was the election stolen?
The system is clearly broken. But there is no evidence that Bush won because of voter fraud.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Farhad Manjoo



Nov. 10, 2004 | Did John Kerry actually win the presidency? If you've spent any time online this week, you've no doubt heard this argument: The election was stolen. Corrupt officials, rigged voting machines, a sleepy media and a Democratic Party that's been less than fully aggressive in its efforts to counter Republican dirty tricks came together to subvert the true will of the people.

According to proponents of this theory, proof of electoral fraud abounds. The journalist Greg Palast argues that in Ohio, there were probably enough "spoiled" punch-card ballots -- ballots tossed out by counting machines -- to make up Bush's margin over Kerry. Keith Olbermann points out that in some voting precincts in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, there were more votes cast than registered voters -- for instance, in the Fairview Park area, 13,342 registered voters cast 18,472 ballots. Isn't that odd? Then there's the analysis by a former high school math teacher named Kathy Dopp, which seems to show that in counties using optical-scan voting systems in Florida, people registered as Democrats voted for Bush at an usually high rate. Did they really mean to do that, or did the voting machines corrupt their votes?

There are dozens of other points of concern. In Broward County, Florida, the counting software has been counting votes backwards. In Franklin County, Ohio, Bush was somehow given 4,000 more votes than he'd actually won. Citing vague security concerns, officials in Warren County, Ohio, locked down the vote-counting building on election night, preventing the media from observing the count. And what about those exit polls? Could it be that they were correct in their prediction of a Kerry win? To judge from the tone of the e-mail pouring into our in boxes here at Salon, not to mention the panicky posts on lefty sites like Democratic Underground, it's clear that many online find these arguments quite convincing. For many, it's difficult to believe that the election the nation held last week was completely on the level.

In fact, it probably wasn't; Election Day 2004, like all national elections, saw its share of glitches, ineptitude, fraud and intimidation. The Election Incident Reporting System, a national database of election irregularities compiled by volunteers working with various voting-rights groups, lists 30,000 such incidents for 2004. They range from the tragic (a voter who "didn't know how to read") to the alarming ("Two African-American voters were arrested at the polling place before they had the opportunity to vote").

TD says; More in the archives. Different whistle, same tune, different day. I smell an agenda from Manjoo.

[Love Bug]

47. Can hardly wait to see the letters dissecting Manjoo

I don't know why they keep him on staff.

[Carolab]

93. Here's another Manjoo election "piece".

Hacking democracy?

Computerized vote-counting machines are sweeping the country. But they can be hacked -- and right now there's no way to be sure they haven't been.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Farhad Manjoo

Feb. 20, 2003 | During the past five months, Bev Harris has e-mailed to news organizations a series of reports that detail alarming problems in the high-tech voting machinery currently sweeping its way through American democracy. But almost no one is paying attention.

Harris is a literary publicist and writer whose investigations into the secret world of voting equipment firms have led some to call her the Erin Brockovich of elections. Harris has discovered, for example, that Diebold, the company that supplied touch-screen voting machines to Georgia during the 2002 election, made its system's sensitive software files available on a public Internet site. She has reported on the certification process for machines coming onto the market -- revealing that the software code running the equipment is seldom thoroughly reviewed and can often be changed with mysteriously installed "patches" just prior to an election. And in perhaps her most eyebrow-raising coup, she found that Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, used to run the company that built most of the machines that count votes in his state -- and that he still owns a stake in the firm.

Harris hasn't been alone in making such discoveries. A small group of writers, technologists and activists is working hard to convince elections officials all over the country that their rush to upgrade aging punch-card machines with seemingly more reliable touch-screen systems is dangerous. But so far neither the general public nor elections officials appear too worried.

It's not hard to see why: If you look at some of the conspiracy theory rhetoric on the Web spawned by the work of Harris and others, it becomes all too easy to dismiss the whole campaign as sour grapes. There is no smoking-gun evidence to support the conclusion that Hagel's landslide Senate victory in 2002 benefited from voter fraud. The same is true for several unexpected Republican victories in Georgia last year -- during which the entire state used touch-screen machines for the first time.

But Harris herself is no conspiracy nut. Her facts check out. Nor is she an ideologue. Her stories on voting machines are based not on her politics but on serious, in-depth investigative reporting. Since October, she's spoken to dozens of people in the voting world, from elections officials to "systems certifiers" to engineers whom she calls whistle-blowers. She's detailed some of her findings on her Web site, but she says they aren't the whole story -- which she'll tell in a book, "Black Box Voting," to be published in May.

http://salon.com/tech/feature/2003/02/20/voting_machines/index.html

[ibegurpard]

48. Someone COULD convince me that exit polls were wrong...

...and that there was no fraud. This sure isn't it, though. Thoroughly unconvincing.

[dchill]

49. Persuasive to whom???

Elephants and ostriches?

Mitofsky has been floundering and fishing for the "explanation" for the discrepancy in the polls for almost eight months, and this is the best he can do? It is just another fraud - Karl Rove's exit polls were right, but an organization of professionals with years of experience suddenly gets results so far outside the margin of error that it is statistically impossible.

Oh, and no one - amateur or professional - is allowed to see the Edison/Mitofsky data. But Bush's "win" is measured by the last 660 votes, collected after the polls were closed.

Farhad Manjoo is an ostrich (at best) and I am a Conspiracy Theorist. God's in His heaven, and all's right with the world.

[ClassWarrior]

64. My sentiment exactly.

This is a coincidence theory.

NGU.

[merkins]

50. Salon's Manjoo did a hitjob on Krugman earlier...

Daily Howler has the scoop on Farhad Manjoo's cheapshots trying to derail Krugman:

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh060405.shtml

Man and to think a year ago I was a daily reader of Salon..
So long sweetheart its been swell knowing you..

[dchill]

54. Oh, yeah -

THAT Farhad Manjoo.

[dchill]

52. P.S. - Mitofsky is technically correct -

Exit-pollsters WERE more likely to approach Kerry voters - since there were millions more of them than Bush voters.

He doesn't even have to lie about this one...

[TruthIsAll]

55. lol

.

[Mad_Dem_X]

146. Exactly - there were more Kerry voters to approach!

DUH!!!

[Generator]

56. I think poster #10 is spot on-disinformation

Why NOW huh? This January report came out in January. We all discussed it here-back then.
But today, June 15th-now that Chimpboy has his first inklings that the piper might actually have to be paid-we see this little article.

Salon is my husband's favorite. Exactly the type of winking, smartypants stuff I have grown to hate. It's not about being clever anymore. There are people dying and democracy is at stake.

And us nuts, conspiracy theorists, lefty weirdos are willing to risk being called names as long as the truth is not sold out for safety or whatever the reason is that Salon decided TODAY this is news.

[Tuesday_Morning]

147. Y'know, Gen, I feel exactly the same.

<< Exactly the type of winking, smartypants stuff I have grown to hate. It's not about being clever anymore. There are people dying and democracy is at stake.<<

I used to be a Salon regular but since the election DU's been my sanity saver.

[dchill]

154. Yes! I knew there was something about Salon ...

that I didn't like. That's it! "winking, smartypants stuff" indeed!

[quaoar]

60. I'd like to know what's up with Elizabeth Liddle

The excerpt below is from the end of the Salon article.

Can anyone comment of what she says?



USCV's charge against Mitofsky's data isn't easy to refute. Its analysis did seem to make sense, and some who'd been inclined to believe Mitofsky did see some truth in USCV's analysis. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Elizabeth Liddle arrived on the scene. Liddle is a 53-year-old professional musician and graduate student in psychology who lives in the U.K. She is a self-confessed fraudster and says stories she heard about voting problems in many states, especially in Ohio, led her to place very little trust in the outcome of the U.S. election. But as she began to study USCV's analysis, she soon discovered something that undermined the fraudsters' position: a math error.

This wasn't a simple math error, nor is it an especially easy error to explain. But through a series of intriguing calculations, Liddle revealed that the measurement USCV was using to prove that polls were more off in Bush precincts than in Kerry precincts was something of a "bent yardstick." It turns out, as Liddle proved, that due to a mathematical artifact, the error only appeared to be higher in Bush precincts than in Kerry precincts; actually, the average error across precincts was more or less the same. And that means that USCV's "implausible" pattern -- one that required more Kerry exit poll respondents in Bush precincts -- disappeared.

The discovery surprised everyone involved in the debate. Mark Blumenthal, of Mystery Pollster, says that Liddle's work basically stuck the final nail in the coffin of any theories purporting to show that the exit polls proved the election was stolen. O'Dell, who'd signed on to the original USCV report, was swayed by Liddle's work into his position that exit poll analysis can't prove that the election was rigged. At the polling conference in Florida, Mitofsky praised Liddle for her contribution, and he presented new data based on her work that shows there's no pattern of increasing error in strong Bush precincts.

Not everyone, of course, is convinced. Baiman of USCV says that Liddle and O'Dell are simply wrong, and that he doesn't see how Liddle's mathematical proof affects his analysis showing vote fraud. But Liddle says that her work should serve as a guide for the election reform movement. She agrees with O'Dell that focusing on the exits has distracted people from trying to fix how elections are run in the United States. "Why aren't people looking at voter suppression?" she asks. "Why aren't people investigating the long lines at the polls?" She adds: "I think the exit polls might have seduced people" into thinking that Kerry could have won. But Kerry didn't win, and it's time to fight about the future.

[Internut]

61. Do a search on the name -

or look here

http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2005/04/the_liddle_mode.html

[quaoar]

65. OK, I found this DU thread that she started

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=366252&mesg_id=366252

[Awsi Dooger]

62. No kidding

I've looked at result after result and it's obvious the numbers were legit and Bush the correct winner. I'm not saying there weren't the typical voter suppression techniques in Ohio and elsewhere, but no question the actual vote tallies very much represent the will of the people who actually made it to the polls last year. In state after state, especially ones without electronic voting or any type of claimed voting irregularity, the bellwether counties reported a lean toward Bush and the GOP more than in 2000. Remarkably consistent to the point I could virtually predict the result within a few hundredths simply by looking at the 2000 and 2002 numbers beforehand. The statewide partisan index charts that I compile and post on DU occasionally fall smack in line. Not a single number screams at phony, something wildly out of line with previous partisan trends or relationship to other similar states.

Remember, after the 2002 election Truth Is All and other conspiracy goofs were ignoring the leaked early exit poll info entirely, because you had numbers that naughtily refuted their agenda, like Chambliss significantly ahead of Cleland in Georgia. In that case they detoured to the earlier pre-election polls to "prove" their case. After 2004 they embraced early exit polls, completely and ignorantly ignoring how those early exit poll numbers made absolutely zero sense in relation to the long established and very predictable partisan trends of the given state. When I stick the supposed numbers via early exit polls in my partisan index chart, the computer virtually wants to roll over in a seizure of laughter. You've got 6 and 8 point moves out of nowhere, compared to 2000 or any prior partisan indication.

We lost to an incumbent with basically a 50/50 approval number. Not exactly a disgrace. Due to 9/11 and fear, hispanics and white women shifting to the GOP in small but critical percentage. Reclaiming their trust and support should be our focus, along with re-establishing GOTV superiority.

[stickdog]

161. Did you compare hand counted counties to machine counted

vis a vis Bush vs. Gore and Bush vs. Kerry results?

Because I did, and you're full of shit.

[Supersedeas]

63. New THEORY: pollsters more inclined to seek out Kerry voters???

How is that more plausible than that the REVISIONISTS pollsters seek out ANY explanation other than that the exit polls where are true representation of the actual vote.

Lets do linguistic arcrobatics in order to legitimize an irrational result!!! Ready GO!!

[Arugula Latte]

67. We fucking KNEW they were going to try to steal Ohio.

Why the FUCK didn't Kerry fight?

[Toots]

68. In all the years of "exit polling" they have never been wrong except

Florida 2000. Since then they have been quite wrong because of all those Kerry voters...

[Internut]

70. Accuracy of exit polls myth:

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.

[MAlibdem]

71. looks to me like dems are overestimated across the board

so kerry loss with kerry exit poll win would follow trend...

[LuPeRcALiO]

78. If the "error" has been consistently trending down

as shown in these figures, that suggests that the error in 2004 was at least one point below 1.8%, which leaves .8% max.

[Internut]

79. Four points do not a trend make.

There is absolutely no statistical significance to a "trend" like that.

[LuPeRcALiO]

80. They make a trend alright

with at least as much "statistical significance" as to your claim that exit polls are inaccurate.

[Internut]

81. Huh? I showed you that the unweighted exit polls

are historically inaccurate. In three out of last four exit polls, the error was way higher than in 2004. There is no "statistical significance" involved, it is just a fact. If you dispute those numbers, go ahead and do that, but closing your eyes, ears and humming loudly is not an argument.

[LuPeRcALiO]

82. And I showed you that your figures mean something else.

Statistics don't lie, but statisticians do. Sorry.

[Internut]

83. The FACT that past exit polls were even more inaccurate

than in 2004 has nothing to do with statistics. It is a true/false statement (true in this case). The "trend" is not a true/false thing, it is a statistical concept, and needs quite a bit more than four points to have any significance. But you know that, you're just trying to obfuscate for some reason.

[LuPeRcALiO]

84. Four steadily declining figures make a trend.

On a graph, they would make a declining curve, with 2004 coming very close to zero.

If you want to deny that, fine, but it's a fact.

[Internut]

87. Whatever floats your boat. n/t

[Yupster]

100. Internut

There have been a multitude of occasions where people have said that exit polls are never wrong with someone showing that exit polls are very often wrong, but it doesn't seem to make any difference. The next day someone else will say that exit polls are never wrong.

I think it's pointless.

The believers believe. For whatever reason they need to believe. It's kind of sick, but they must believe. They'll go to their graves believing.

There's even a post here saying they want proof there was no fraud as if that was even logically possible.

[LuPeRcALiO]

103. Plenty of people think the SS "crisis" is bogus too.

Oh wait, they're right.

[Yupster]

105. Vrrrroooooooommmmm

Well I must admit. That went right over my head.

[dchill]

168. Republicans have been stealing votes for decades.

That's all the data from this article shows. Exit polling is a far more exact measuring tool of voter intent than our corrupted "election" system. Please give this idea some consideration, and take note that the last line in your ref shows that Gore actually won both the exit and actual polls.

"2000 Gore, 48.5 Bush, 46.2 | Gore, 48.4 Bush, 47.9 | 1.8%"

I live in PA, where the Bush "Red Shift" was 3%, wheras in my county the undervote for president on the Unilect Patriot machines was 8%. Kerry, of course, won PA - but that does not disprove a massive effort to steal votes here.

What you are advocating - that the exit polls were flawed uniformly across most of the country, is implausible to the point of impossible.

[distantearlywarning]

72. What do "Kerry voters" look like?

How did the pollsters know which ones they were?

This is ludicrous. Every new explanation this idiot gives is worse and worse.

[fujiyama]

73. I'm not going to argue

with this idea that exit polls aren't flawed. They are and they haven't always matched up.

That said, Manjoo is still a dick. He's a pretensous and smug ass hole from the articles I read, atleast those having to do with politics.

He should stick to the tech articles, though he's still a prick there as well - but not as much.

[sendero]

74. Oh I see...

... it is all as simple as that.

For decades, these polls were (not perfect, but very good) reliable but in this particular election more Kerry voters wanted to be exit polled.

What happened to the "Kerry supporters came early in the day and Bush later because they work" theory? It was just as ridiculous, just as unprovable and hence just as dismissable.

Really, if an idea like that is worthy of a Salon article, I should be writing 10 of them a day.

[are_we_united_yet]

76. OK Farhad I'm convinced. Excuse me a second.....

:puke:

[wisteria]

89. So the polls were wrong because the interviewers didn't

want to interview those mean old Bush voters. Now tell me, how do you accurately distinguish a Bush voter from a Kerry voter. An interviewer may make assumptions, but how accurate are these assumptions. We are suppose to believe that interviewers ACCURATELY sought out Kerry voters more times than Bush voters. This is a real scientific explanation isn't it? Sorry, this is not good and sound reasoning- its faulty reasoning. I don't buy it.

[Yupster]

104. Wisteria

As American politics is so demographically divided, do you really think you couldn't do a pretty good job of identifying Bush and Kerry voters at a beter than random average?

If there were 200 voters and 100 voted each for Kerry and Bush you tried to pick which 100 you think voted for Kerry you think you could just get 50 correct out of 100?

That seems unreasonable to me.

For starters, African-Americans voted 90-10. That alone would get you over the 50 vote random vote if you just guessed on everyone else. And if you're going to guess, just pick the 100 women, and you'll get more Kerry votes. Just guess the 100 youngest people and you'll get more Kerry voters. Just guess the 100 people without wedding rings and you'll get more Kerry voters. Just guess the 100 people who look happiest and you'll get more than 50 Kerry votes.

And it's not a matter of "accurately distinguishing" between Kerry and Bush voters.

You're not trying to explain a 100 % deviation here. We're looking to explain a 3 % deviation, and only a tiny shift from the norm would explain that. Especially if fully half the voters refuse to talk to exit pollsters. Is that half of refusenicks an accurate random sample of all voters? I don't know why you'd assume it was.

[LuPeRcALiO]

106. I've done some data collection

not exit polling, but something similar, and the instructions for randomizing samples are very explicit and methodical: every fifth person who crosses a certain line in the pavement, for example. All this business about "spotting" Kerry voters is ludicrous.

[Yupster]

109. But half of those chosen people

refuse to answer your poll.

Are those half a representative random sample?

Why would you think they were?

Can you have a self-selected random sample?

[LuPeRcALiO]

112. My experience was that very few people refused.

It was more often the case that people looked disappointed that they didn't get asked.

[Yupster]

114. I don't have any experience

I was an election judge for quite a few cycles but have never done an exit poll.

It's just everything I've read on the subject has been between a about half of all refused. In the DU exit polls wars throughout December, I never saw it challenged in article after article that a significant number of people refused to fill out the surveys.

Maybe you're just exra nice, or live in a very Democratic neighborhood.

[quaoar]

110. Except that..

not all the interviewers followed those instructions because it might have been raining or they might have been hassled by poll workers or whatever.

[LuPeRcALiO]

113. Possibly, but the likelihood is that random interference like that

cancels itself out. For example, if I miss the fifth person for some reason, I get the sixth, and then I get the tenth and so on.

[Yupster]

123. You're assuming it's random interference

and study after study in different countries over decades says that it is not random interference.

This is a stupid example, but hear me out.

There have been many surveys of average penis length.

Some surveys have asked doctors to measure penises. There have also been surveys done in Cancun over spring break where vacationers are invited to go into a tent and get measured. There have also been on-line surveys where men are just asked their size.

Guess what?

The results are waaaay different.

The most inaccurate are the on-line surveys where it's assumed that everyone just kind of rounds up a bit.

But there is also a significant difference between the doctor measures and tent measures. (The doctor measures are significantly shorter).

Now why would that be?

The doctor survey is supposed to have a better random sample than the beach survey. Does it? So if one beach guy says no, the next guy says yes, so what's the problem?

Well, you think that a guy with a 4" penis might be a little less likely to want to get measured than a guy with a 7 " penis? Yeah, I think he probably would.

Anyway what does that have to do with exit polls (insert Republicans have small penis jokes here).

Maybe Republicans are more likely to listen to Rush Limbaugh who has been telling his listeners to hate and avoid anyone in the media for the last 15 years. Maybe more exit pollsters "look" more like demographically Democratic voters (female, young) and therefore just get a higher response rate from similar looking people. If 100 NRA members are voting in two different precincts (50 each) and the exit pollster in one is a college woman, and the exit pollster in the other is a 40 year old white guy in a camouflage jacket, do you think that each of the exit pollsters will get the same refusal rate?

Is anything done to see that the exit pollsters are a random sample of demographics themselves?

Maybe stay at home moms, which are more likely to be Republicans than working women are not as comfortable expressing an opinion?

I just don't think there's any reason to assume that the very high refusal rate is just a random rate. I think there's every reason to believe that certain kinds of people refuse more than other kinds, and just a small skew in that number would blow the poll for 5 % easy.

[quaoar]

145. Works for me

Republicans shy away from pollsters because they have tiny dicks.

[wisteria]

127. Your explanation is plausible when you take a smaller sampling.

I have to concede that. I still however, disagree with Bush supporters being less willing to be interviewed,therefore polling was inaccurately leaning to wards Kerry. Is there an explanation for this occurrence? Why would one group of voters be more willing to be interviewed while another refuses.Also, why was the polling so inaccurate during just this election? Both the democrats and the Republicans had large numbers of first time voters. There is also the question of the polls taken right before election day that had Kerry leading. Again, are we to assume Bush supports were less willing to be interviewed right before the election also?

[Internut]

128. Yet again - the "exit polls are always accurate" myth:

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.

As for your other question - "Bush supporters being less willing to be interviewed" - there are precedents of poll responder bias being influenced by the responder's (or non-responder's as the case may be) voting preference. UK exit polls had failed miserably in 1992 - because they did not take into effect the "Shy Tory" effect - that is, the fact that Tories (Conservatives) disproportionately lied to the pollsters or refused to respond. When the polling companies started correcting for that effect their accuracy has dramatically improved.

The "shy tory effect" was "discovered" in 1992, when UK pre-election polls predicted a Labor lead of 0.8%, which would have meant a hung parliament with a Labor majority. Exit polls predicted a 4% Tory lead, which would have meant a hung parliament with Tories as the largest party. The results, of course, were that John Major won with a 23-seat majority - a big Tory victory. That disaster of an exit poll and pre-election polls was what prompted the research that led to the "shy tory" adjustments in current polling in UK. (see http://www.alba.org.uk/polls/accuracy.html )

[LuPeRcALiO]

131. So how many shy Tories voted in 2004?

Try again.

[Internut]

132. You keep saying that you don't think it is possible

that the refusal rate can be influenced (even slightly) by who the responder voted for. I showed you the precedent where that happened. Precedent, in case you don't understand the concept, does not mean exact equivalence. It shows that such thing is quite possible. Did it happen in this case? - you may believe it did or did not. But the possibility of it happening is clear.

[LuPeRcALiO]

134. No, I'm saying there's no evidence that it occurred in 2004.

Nice theory though.

[stickdog]

162. I dispute those numbers. Produce an unbiased source, please.

[Internut]

165. Here it is

http://www.tcf.org/publications/pow/nov17_2004.pdf

TCF: The Century Foundation http://www.tcf.org/about.asp

Our Mission

The Century Foundation conducts public policy research and analyses of economic, social, and foreign policy issues, including inequality, retirement security, election reform, media studies, homeland security, and international affairs. The foundation produces books, reports, and other publications, convenes task forces and working groups, and operates eight informational Web sites. With offices in New York City and Washington, D.C., The Century Foundation is nonprofit and nonpartisan. It was founded in 1919 by Edward A. Filene.

The author: Ruy Teixeira:

Ruy Teixeira is one of America’s leading political analysts. His books include The Emerging Democratic Majority (with John Judis), The Forgotten Majority – Why the White Working Class Still Matters (with Joel Rogers) and The Disappearing American Voter.

His Web site:

http://www.emergingdemocraticmajorityweblog.com/donkeyrising/

Yes. He is biased. Pro-Democratic-Party biased.

[stickdog]

170. The whole point of the document is to prove there was no vote fraud.

Considering the controversy in dispute, that is the very definition of bias.

[Yupster]

136. Gosh

"I still however, disagree with Bush supporters being less willing to be interviewed,therefore polling was inaccurately leaning to wards Kerry. Is there an explanation for this occurrence?"

There are all kinds of explanations. Who knows which explanations carry more weight than others, but since this is an effect that shows up in election after election, it certainly seems to be happening. Have some Republican voters been brainwashed to hate anyone who looks like the media? Are more Republicans just unhappier or more paranoid than more Democrats? Are they less comfortable talking to younger people who don't look like them? Are they just in a bigger rush getting back to their office or corralling their kids? Who knows which effect adds 1/2 of a percent here or there.

"Why would one group of voters be more willing to be interviewed while another refuses.Also, why was the polling so inaccurate during just this election?"

Again, the exit polls are inaccurate during almost every election, and they always seem to skew a bit toward the Democratic candidate. I know some will say that just proves that the Bush machine is even more cancer-like than they thought and now the proof is there that they've been stealing elections for over 20 years now.

"Both the democrats and the Republicans had large numbers of first time voters. There is also the question of the polls taken right before election day that had Kerry leading. Again, are we to assume Bush supports were less willing to be interviewed right before the election also?"

This I'm afraid is just false information that has been posted on DU over and over again over the last eight months. The polls right before the election were very close. More showed Bush a bit ahead than Kerry.

Right before the election, I followed the polls very closely and they were mostly all within just a few points of each other. I assumed Kerry would win thinking he'd get the last undecideds.

After the election, charts started going up on DU showing Kerry ahead in the pre-election polls. I thought this sounded wrong, so I went back and looked at the polls and what I found was disturbing.

To use just one example, the PEW Poll's final pre-eletion poll was Bush wins by 51-48%. In other words, they hit it exactly on the head. Yet this poster was using the final PEW Poll on his chart showing that Kerry was ahead.

I asked him where he was getting his info from since the PEW Poll did not show what he said it was showing and indeed showed the exact opposite. His response was that the final PEW Poll showed Bush was ahead 51-48 among LIKELY voters. However among REGISTERED voters, Kerry was ahead and he used the Registered Voters poll for his chart.

Well, that was the last time I paid any attention to that poster's analysis because anyone willing to manipulate numbers to that extent can show aything he wants to in a close election like this one was.

He'll continue to get "you rock" "you the man" and "you tell em the truth" from the true believers for years to come, but when you're working numbers and abuse them as much as he did, there's no more interest from me in his work.

[Mythsaje]

96. Oh, cripes

<<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." >>

And the way we arrived at this conclusion?

We pulled it out of our asses, of course.

Sure. Yeah. Whatever.

[Name removed]

97. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[ThoughtCriminal]

98. And amazingly, the bias has a strong correlation with

purple states with no paper trail. Yes, if you're a pollster in one of these magic places, you can tell if a person voted of Kerry or Bush just by looking at them! With that kind of talent, why bother the voter? Just visually profile them as they leave.

[Internut]

99. The two highest deviations were

Vermont (blue state, paper ballots only) and New Hampshire (purple state, paper ballots, the partial recount done by Ida Briggs (sp?) found that the official results were correct).

[ThoughtCriminal]

111. Better check that

Fairly certain New Hampshire has non-paper electronic ballots.

[Internut]

121. Not from what I have seen -

Ida Briggs recounted paper ballots there.

According to this article:

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65736,00.html

New Hampshire used either paper ballots or paper ballots that were optically scanned. Quote from Ida Briggs: "Thank God New Hampshire has a paper trail so we can just sit down and count the paper ballots."

The article also says: "New Hampshire passed a law in 1994 requiring all voting machines to produce a paper trail, so the paper can easily be used to verify the vote results."

[ThoughtCriminal]

139. Thanks - Worth reading

the entire article.

[stickdog]

164. She DID NOT recount the opscan ballots. And the paper ballots were

screwed to Kerry MUCH MORE than the opscan ballots when compared to Bush vs. Gore results.

[stickdog]

163. Bullshit. Produce the evidence for these bullshit claims.

[Internut]

166. And if I do, will you apologize for your tone?

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0411/S00270.htm

Vermont: red shift 5% - the highest of all the states
New Hampshire: red shift 4.9% - the second highest of all the states

[stickdog]

171. And where is the evidence that the NH "shift" had ANYTHING to do

with NH's hand counted precincts?

On the contrary, an analysis of NH voting that considers Bush vs. Gore 2000 results against Bush vs. Kerry 2004 results shows that Kerry registered a much higher net gain percentage (vs. Gore) in hand counted precincts than machine counted precincts.

This effect has NOTHING to do with exit polling, but EVERYTHING to do with possible fraudulent machine counts.

[Internut]

176. The post to which I responded claimed that the

bias was highest in "purple states with no paper trail.". I showed that the bias was, in fact, highest, in blue state with paper ballots (Vermont) and second highest it purple state with paper ballots (New Hampshire).

Ida Briggs, by the way, picked the precincts to recount by finding the ones that deviated most from the 2000 Bush vs. Gore results. In her recounts she found that the official results were, in fact, correct.

[stickdog]

177. Who counted the opscan ballots and what procedure was used?

I couldn't find that information.

[Internut]

179. From this article:

http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65736,00.html

you can see that Ida Briggs definitely recounted some precincts that were machine-counted. Message her (she is on DU under "IdaBriggs") and ask her how she did it.

[stickdog]

180. Here's the gig.

Did the recount identify any significant discrepancies in any other races? Because this would be consistent with ballot substitution.

Chain of custody is everything in a hand recount -- and in a spot-check recount, ballot substitution is a significant risk. It would be difficult to substitute ballots that would agree on all races, but very easy to substitute ballots that agree on one race.

Issues like: Who has keys to the ballot vault; when is it open; is there a running security videotape in the vault (and if so, can we see the tapes?), when was the vault's door open (in some places, staff memberes are walking in and out during business hours).

In a situation where you don't have video of access, and a clear chain of custody with citizen observation allowed for any movement of the ballots from the vault to anywhere else, you've got a recount that doesn't really prove anything. Inside access -- poof -- new ballots or ballot substitution is a snap.

There are ballot handling procedures that include ballot accounting at each polling place -- number of ballots received, number voted on, number blank, number spoiled. However, no one really checks on this either, and for the significant numbers of absentee ballots, I have not seen the same ballot accounting followed rigorously. And, of course, with inside access and poor chain of custody procedures, the accounting would come out just fine.

For true chain of custody, we need public citizens allowed to observe ANY ballot handling or transfer; videotape of the ballot vault, available to the public with FOIA requests, and we need very good accounting of ballots, strict adherence to the requirement to print serial numbers on ballots, and accountability also for invoices for all cardstock orders, and ballot orders.

There are really two attack points here: Ballot substitution, using legitimate ballots from other precincts that have the same races, or ballot replacement, using new, fake ballots or using the facsimile ballot capability of the Diebold system. For ballot substitution using real ballots from other precincts, the EASIEST way to impede ballot substitution is to allow any recount to randomly select 2 more races on the ballot as a control recount. It would be complicated to do ballot substitution if you have to match 3 or more races.

[Internut]

181. As I said, PM "IdaBriggs" and I am sure

she will be happy to tell you how she recounted.

[Kurovski]

101. Wow. How do you seek out Kerry voters? psychic powers?

Why would pollsters hire people so incompetant?

This is purest, "eat-it" grade horseshit.

I'm tired of so many folks insulting Americans by believing we're so ignorant and/or such cowering little chickenshits (TERRA!) that we would actually vote in this ridiculous and dangerous group.

[LSK]

102. hmmm, everytime I have voted, i had no way to tell who voted what

But of course we have to feed the spin machine, dont we.

[Yupster]

107. So demographics just doesn't matter at all

If there's an inner city precinct in Detroit with 200 Arican-American voters on line, the Republican pollwatcher is thinking "oh boy, I hope another 100 voters get in line before the polls close, because I bet these voters are for us."

So you just don't have a clue of who votes for whom?

Women and men are equally likely to vote Republican and Democratic. So are young and old? So are blue collar and white collar? So are Hispanics and African-Americans. So are parents and singles.

Sorry, but I think pretty much any poll watcher who's been doing it a while could do a pretty good job of telling who voted for who with a much better than 50-50 random chance.

[LSK]

115. do me a favor, drive across the country

Stop in 30 random cities and towns and go to main street at noon, and take 100 people at random and try to guess who they would vote for.

[Yupster]

119. I could get 55 % right

just by picking the 50 women.

I bet I could get over 60 % for sure and probably over 65 %.

I'm sure there would be some real shockers, but I don't think I'd have any trouble getting over 55 %.

You really don't think you'd have a clue? You don't think you could even get 55 % right?

Out of the 100 people there would be 12 African-Americans. You wouldn't have any hint who they would be more likely to have voted for?

There would be 15 Hispanics. You wouldn't feel confident that most times a majority of them wuld vote one way or the other?

There would be 15 college kids. You just would think they'd break 50-50?

You'd see 15 stay at home moms with four kids each. You'd just assume a 50-50 split?

There would be five professors and five stockbrokers. And you'd assume there was an equal chance of each goup voting either way?

Sorry, I don't believe that. I think pretty much anyone could at least get 60 right out of 100 and a 60-40 split in America is a statitically significant Reagan-Mondale type of landslide.

[Hippo_Tron]

116. Alright explain this to me, is 53.2% outside of the margin of error?

Assuming you have the standard margin of 3 to 4 points. If Kerry had 53.2% does that mean that barring a strong third party candidate (which there was none), Bush had approximately 46.8% of the vote and therefore Kerry was winning by about 6 points. Or is it that Kerry was 3.2% over 50% and therefore he was still within the margin of error?

Somebody explain this to me

[Yupster]

125. Sorry

I don't understand the question.

Kerry had 53.2 % of what?

Don't want to be a pain. I really don't know what you're asking.

[Hippo_Tron]

133. The article said that the exit polls showed Kerry with 53.2%...

In Ohio. Polls usually have a 3 to 4% margin of error, I'm assuming that this is the case with these polls. What I am trying to figure out is what exactly a margin of error means.

Let's assume that the poll shows Kerry with 53% and Bush with 47% with 4% margin of error. What I am trying to understand is what does that 4% margin of error mean. Does that mean that a possible scenario is that you take 4 points from Kerry and add 4 points to Bush therefore it is possible that the actual total will be Bush 51%, Kerry 49%. This means that Kerry's lead was within the margin of error, because there is a chance that Bush could win.

OR

Does the 4% margin of error just mean that we are talking about 4 points total, in which case the worst possible scenario would be that you subtract only 2 points from Kerry's total and add 2 points to Bush's total which would be Kerry 51%, Bush 49%, which would be a total of 4 points different from the exit poll in which case Kerry was winning outside of the margin of error, meaning that barring some extreme circumstances, there was no way that Kerry could lose Ohio.

Am I making any sense?

[Yupster]

138. Yes you are

If a poll has Kerry 53-47, then that means that Kerry has between 57-49 and Bush has between 51-43. There's always a disclaimer that says something like those ranges are correct in 19 of 20 polls. That's to account for the odd poll called an outlyer which show up from time to time that's just completely out of whack with other similar polls.

However, that all assumes a good random sample to begin with.

For example, if you have 100 black and 100 white balls and shuffle them in a bag and pull one out 1,000 different times, you may get a prediction of a white ball being pulled 50 % of the time with a 2 % margin of error.

However, if the back balls are a little heavier than the white balls and naturally just shuffle themselves to the bottom of the bag, then your margin of error doesn't mean squat because you didn't start out with a random sample to begin with. So, are the Republican voters just a little heavier than the Democratic voters and therefore hiding in the bottom of the bag a little more?

Since in election after election the Democratic candidate exit polls better than he tallies, it sure seems like it, unless there's this vast conspiracy that's been stealing elections for 20 years now.

[TruthIsAll]

140. The MoE was 2.21%; the odds: 1 in 106

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x364450


If you believe the Exit Poll, Kerry won OH by 160,000 votes.
If you believe the Vote, Bush won by 119,000 votes.

If Kerry won this solid Republican state by 51-48%, you just
KNOW he had to do 1-2% better nationally.

Which means he won the election by 6-8 million votes.


OHIO EXIT POLL
1,963 Respondents
Updated: 12:21 a.m.		

CATEGORY	BUSH	 KERRY

GENDER	      47.94%	52.06%
RACE/GENDER	47.99%	51.01%
RACE		47.86%	50.14%
AGE		48.31%	51.39%
INCOME	      45.91%	51.62%

EDUCATION	48.77%	50.94%
PARTY ID	47.18%	51.20%
IDEOLOGY	48.03%	50.97%
VOTED BEFORE  49.30%	 50.70%
RELIGION	49.08%	50.66%

WHENDECIDED	48.22%	49.68%
BUSH JOB	48.42%	49.10%
COMMUNITY 1	48.94%	51.68%
COMMUNITY 2   48.42%	51.33%
REGION	      48.58%	52.07%

VOTE SENATE	48.04%	51.96%
			
AVERAGE	      48.19%	51.03%
VOTES		2.711	2.871

ACTUAL	      50.82%	48.71%
VOTES		2.859	2.740
			
MoE		2.21%	
PROB		1 IN	106

[glitch]

117. Manjoo will never look at the evidence - he'd have to admit how wrong he

was all along. Too vested.

[renate]

135. This isn't the first "there was no fraud" article this guy has written

or anyway, not the first "the fraud wasn't THAT big a deal" article:

Was the election stolen?
The system is clearly broken. But there is no evidence that Bush won because of voter fraud
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/11/10/voting/index.html

Not that someone with an opposing point of view is automatically 100% wrong--until somebody from Diebold comes out with his hands up we'll never know precisely everything that happened, despite the data that have stink all over them. But this latest article does not reflect a change of opinion for this writer.

Of course, he's hardly the first member of the media to have an agenda.

On edit: Whoops--I see I'm not the first person on this thread to say this about him, either. I guess I should read an entire thread before running my mouth off....

[Warren DeMontague]

141. Next he will explain how Ken Blackwell did such a great job of protecting

access to voter registration and polls in a timely fashion, and ensuring fair representation.

What a load of fucking bull.

[JRob]

142. Give me a fucking break, this is weak theory is pure SHIT!

You can not convince me, with all claims and irregularities, refusal to provide paper records, long waits isolated in Dem districts...

With everything that is going down; Iraq, DSM's, the systematic tightening of our freedoms, social programs, corporate gouging, scandals, media complicity, pension breaking etc., etc., etc. you're going to attempt to dismiss the possibility the there was fraud because some "suit" put forward some GOP serving theory.

Again give me a fucking break... Maybe it's true, but it being "likely due to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters."

BWA HAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!

[JRob]

144. Farhad Manjoo email: [e-mail]

"Lefty bastions like Democratic Underground are aflame with discussions purporting to prove how the exits show Bush didn't really win."

[EFerrari]

150. This POS was debunked MONTHS ago.

And Bu$h is STILL not my President.

[johnnyrocket]

153. NOW they're just making shit up!!!

Holy crap, just ignore the Schiavo autopsy science, ignore the science of polling, ignore the science of evolution, JUST IGNORE FACTS!

It's come to this: The truth has lost credibility in todays political world, just live in your own little miserable world, and you'll be able to believe anything.


Pathetic.

[EFerrari]

167. Worse. They're RECYCLING made up sh#t! n/t

[stickdog]

155. If that's a PERSUASIVE theory, I'd hate to see one simply invented to

explain the discrepancy.

[Dr Fate]

158. Is this not "old news?"

n/t

[slor]

172. SLOR:"Salon article in 2005 is wrong; bush cheated"

n/t

[Pacifist Patriot]

173. Oh for Pete's Sake.

Any idiot can see the fallacy in that claim. Short of campaign paraphenalia, how exactly is a pollster supposed to know what kind of voter he/she is talking to until AFTER the questions are asked?

Nice dodge away from the rBr theory, but this one is even worse!

[OneTwentyoNine]

174. People actually PAY to read this shit??

This FOX style propaganda would be bad enough if it was free,but who the hell pays for this crap...Freepers??

Yeah,the exit polls were SO fucked up that CNN declared Kerry the winner in Ohio ALL THE WAY until 2:00am the next morning,when they quickly changed the numbers.

[Snivi Yllom]

175. this should be in GD2004

But isn't this rehashing the obvious?

and BTW, as I predicted I have not heard a peep about election reform since the Ohio election photo op staged in January.

[MadHound]

178. This has been run up the flag pole before, under different guises

And the question that shoots it right back down is how did the pollsters differentiate between a Kerry voter and a Bush voter? What, did we all walk around that day with a big fat K or B on our foreheads that somehow magically appeared the minute we voted?

Gee dumbfuck, use some logic! The reason that you polled more Kerry voters is because there were more people who voted for Kerry! Get it!

Disappointing to see Salon retreading this discredited and illogical arguement once more.

[pat_k]

182. Where's the proof that Bush won?

They try their best to put us down with claims that we have no definitive proof that Kerry won on Nov 2. They don’t understand why we continue to tenaciously press our case. They don’t understand why our numbers grow daily. They just don’t get it.

It is pretty simple.

Our efforts to conduct the forensic investigation required to determine who the voters elected on November 2, 2004 have been blocked. As a consequence, there is no proof that Bush won. It is impossible to prove whether or not the voters actually elected the man that took the oath of office.

The reported results don’t prove anything. That tally is meaningless when an election is wide open to corruption by systematic vote suppression, data manipulation, human and machine error, and willful fraud.

An election is not just a count of votes. It is the method by which the voters make their will known. When long lines prevent countless voters in Democratic-leaning precincts from voting, how can the election be a measure of the voters will?

We don’t need to prove fraud occurred. They need to prove it didn’t.

We don’t need to prove Kerry won. They need to prove he didn’t.

We know there were lines. We know there was suppression. We demand investigation because we know how critical it is for the public to have confidence in the results. When every effort to investigate has been blocked it would be irrational not to be suspicious.

I won't stop crying "stolen election" until forensic investigation yields results that are open to public scrutiny and instill public confidence. I won't stop crying "coup 2000" until the majority pulls a constitutional basis for their decision in Bush v. Gore out of their. . . uh. . . hat

[jsw_81]

183. Interesting article

But why do I suspect that the nutjob conspiracy crowd won't buy it? If there's one thing I've learned over the years it's that extremists -- on both sides -- will hold on to wacky, unfounded theories and ignore solid evidence over and over again unless it conforms with their worldview. Sad.

[Imagevision]

186. Just the facts - lets just stick with what Blackwell did in Ohio!!

[LuPeRcALiO]

187. what solid evidence?

The only solid evidence is the exit polling, and that points to a Kerry victory. Incidentally Bush and Kerry's private exit polling pointed in the same direction.

[pat_k]

189. Who made sure there was no evidence?

Republicans blocked investigation. As noted in my post above, in absence of investigation, we can't know which slate of electors the voters in Ohio selected.

Those who claim Ohio for Bush continue to undermine their own claim by burying their heads in the sand. They cannot prove Bush won. They don't want to know the truth. They have fought every attempt to investigate or audit the results. They cling to their unfounded belief and fool themselves into thinking it has some basis in reality.

[ngGale]

191. Yep, try and give that lie some cover to...

the bases are getting loaded.

[Nikki Stone 1]

192. How exactly did they measure this:

"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. "

Did they do a self-report attitude survey AFTER the fact? If so, I would consider it highly suspect.

It sounds more like covering their asses.

[pat_k]

193. It is simple logic. for people that reason in circles

Obviously, they must have sought out more Kerry voters because the exit polls found that more people voted for Kerry than the election restuls.

In other words, the difference between the exit polls and the election results EXPLAINS the difference between the exit polls and the election restuls.