<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13590-2004Oct31.html>
Managing Editor Steve Coll
Steve Coll
Washington Post Managing Editor
Wednesday, November 3, 2004; 12:00 PM
(snip)
Charlottesville, Va.: What about the possibility that the exit polls are right and the vote count is wrong? I recall fears before the election that untested technology and electronic voting with no paper trail could lead to unreliable results. Those fears seem to have evaporated, probably because there is no way to test them. But that's one way to explain the discrepancy between how people said they voted and how they seem to have voted.
Steve Coll: I see no possibility that the exit polls were right and the vote count was wrong. I see lots of reason to think that -- again, as they have often been in the past -- the exit polls were badly flawed. This was a real problem in our newsroom last night.
The last wave of national exit polls we received, along with many other subscribers, showed Kerry winning the popular vote by 51 percent to 48 percent -- if true, surely enough to carry the electoral college, however the contested states in the midwest broke down. The sample size was so large that it appeared beyond the usual margins of error in polling. Yet the poll was dead wrong. How can this be? You can be sure we'll be asking that question pointedly in the days ahead, as well as producing stories for readers about the issues.
<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13590-2004Oct31.html>