EXCELLENT Canadian study in exit polling

[RaulVB]

Sorry, naysayers, they just keep coming...

Very ACCURATE, EVEN MORE AFTER 4:00 PM!!!

http://www.cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2004/Docherty%20and%20others.pdf

[YNGW]

1. Why are you spending so much time on this subject?

Just wondering.

[RaulVB]

2. Why don't you ask that question to the people challenging US exit polls?

Just wondering...

[YNGW]

7. For a good reason...

I don't care if they challenge or not. But at this point, people either believe the election was rigged or they don't. I don't. Of course, the only reply I and others seem to get is that if we disagree with those who do believe it was rigged then we aren't approaching this with an "open mind" and all the other BS that's flung because they can't stand that others don't see it they way they do.

So once again, what's the point?

[RaulVB]

8. Free speech...

Yours and mine.

Healthy practice!

[YNGW]

10. No Argument There

But the question remains, why try and convince people who have examined the same evidences you have but have reached a different conclusion? Why the "here's more, in your face" stuff? Cause I'm here to let you know, that won't work.

[RaulVB]

11. Follow you own path. I follow mine (n/t)

[NickiWitch]

19. Don't feed into this person's ego.

It sounds like this guy/gal just wants to ruffle feathers.

If someone *still* thinks the election was just dandy and there wasn't something goofy going on after reading all the evidence not just here on DU but *all over the place* on the web, than they are either *really* naive or a secret * lover.

I'm right behind you on this path.

Peace!

[RaulVB]

20. Peace to you...Thanks! (n/t)

[YNGW]

26. Ah Yes

The old "If you don't see it the way I do then you're either stupid or the enemy."

Seems I mentioned that attitude in a previous post. Oh yeah, the "you're not being open-minded" thing.

Thanks. Some here never disappoint.

And that right after RaulVB and I peacefully agree to disagree.

[RaulVB]

30. Oh, yes...

I disagree with your view. I don't challenge your right to have it.

Regards.

[YNGW]

33. Thank You

And likewise back to you.

Peace.

[NickiWitch]

36. I never called you stupid or the enemy

I believe I used the word "naive".

I'm not arguing your point of view. I most definitely don't agree with it, but I'm never going to tell you or anyone else you have to share my point of view.

I guess I don't like seeing people bullied around.

Peace

[SmokingJacket]

45. At least he's providing evidence for his POV.

You're just mocking him.

[Joe Chi Minh]

29. You really

are thick, aren't you. Read the Wikipedia article at this URL:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._presidential_election_controversy,_voting_machines

... then go back to school. Sunday school, being particularly important.

[YNGW]

32. I have

I've examined as much or more as have others, I'm betting. I don't believe anything was unusual. I'm not the only one at this site who have publicly said so.

Now, why is it that you (and others) can't seem to accept that I (and others) have reached a different conclusion as you without having to either outright state or otherwise imply that unless I and others agree with you we somehow just don't get it or need to be "schooled"?

My point to Raul was that consistently doing "in you face unbelievers" isn't going to work. I figured he probably knew that deep down, but I did want to find out why knowing that he thought it would still work. I thought the conversation went well.

[mgr]

13. Wait just a minute here

Are you saying that you do not think the exit polling shows that the election was rigged, or are you saying that you do not believe there were irregularities in counting the vote that may have changed the election's outcome? I will tell you that I would agree with you on the first position, but am strongly supportive of the second alternative.


If you are of the second position, I would like to hear your argument. I get knocked around a lot as a naysayer by the fanatics, and I don't fancy ad hominen arguments by myself or others. I think that the second position does not have the strong emotional advocacy that the exit polling ayesayers have, and you may not be as familiar with it. The position far stronger than the one advocated in this thread, as the empirical and statistical evidence seem to hold together that there were irregularities on such a magnitude to have altered the presidential election's outcome.

Mike

[YNGW]

14. In Brief...

I believe everything was on the up and up.

I'm at work and just got a desk-full. Maybe some other time.

[Pacifist Patriot]

24. Everything?

I'll admit the exit poll analyses leave me cold. I'm not a mathematician and can hardly follow the pro / con arguments so they are pretty much moot as far as I'm concerned. However, the testimony presented on November 13/14 in Columbus and on December 8 in Washington leaves no doubt in my mind that "everything" was hardly on the up and up.

[MarkusQ]

34. I do not agree.

I think the election was clearly rigged.

I am a life long Republican, and think Kerry would have made a mediocre president at best. But the day after the election, before I'd ever even heard of DU, I suspected the election was rigged. In part, because of the exit polls, and (even more) because of the way they were quietly changed in the middle of the night. Also in part, because I live in a very "red" state and personal know many Republicans who did not vote for Bush. So I started looking into it.

After looking just a little bit, it becomes obvious how it was rigged: systematic voter disenfranchisement, possibly (but not necessarily) combined with machine tampering. If you do the math, it becomes obvious that long lines, if they occur more frequently in some precincts, are enough just by themselves to flip a close election. I'm not a big fan of the theories about the guy whose dog got shot, if only because Occam's razor says that the easiest, safest way to rig an election such as this one is to raise an eyebrow here and give a wink there, and let racism and bigotry do the dirty work for you.

--MarkusQ

[L. Coyote]

40. "...let racism and bigotry do the dirty work for you."

Not to mention religious delusions! If furthering the Rapture justifies starting wars ....

[ColoradoDemocrat]

46. I don't understand you

I was raised on consensus, and I believe your conclusions are part of the whole reality.

However, I don't understand how you jumped in to this thread, or even this discussion forum, if you feel everything was on the up and up. I'm interested in the topic of this thread, but the posts went far and away from the topic, almost making the whole thread not what I was looking for.

[BrklynLiberal]

3. This is another indication that the election was stolen and therefore

another piece of strong evidence to be used in the fight for election reform.
If we do not do something NOW to change how the elections are run, we might as well just forget about ever getting back the House, the Senate and the Presidency. Every election will be determined by the machines owned the Rightwingers, and voter intimidation and suppression will continued unabated, since they will know they can get away with it. And that will be if the Democratic voters will even bother to come to the polls if they know their vote won't even count since the Democratic politicians did not bother to stand up and fight for it.

[New Earth]

4. not it's not

it's already been 'debunked' :eyes:

[RaulVB]

5. Right, Faye...

I "don't believe in exit polls anymore..."

"They" opened my eyes...:evilgrin:

[Carolab]

6. Really, by whom?

I had not heard that. Please provide a link to the "debunking".

[New Earth]

9. sarkazm

go read the 'debunkers' in the other exit poll threads on this page. (3 of which have been banned already w00t)

[Carolab]

12. Help me! Can you give some links?

Please? I'm lazy.

[New Earth]

15. well, read through this one. some messages are deleted though.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=279921&mesg_id=279921

[Carolab]

17. Oh, that one. I already read it.

In fact, I posted to it. This doesn't debunk exit polls being wrong.

[New Earth]

18. I KNOW

I WAS BEING SARCASITC :hi: :hi: :hi: :)

[RaulVB]

22. Ha, ha...Faye!

B-)

[Carolab]

27. Oh!

DOH!

[euler]

23. Read post #21

[euler]

25. deleted

[BrklynLiberal]

16. Go to this link and watch the video and then defend your assertion that

this election wasn't stolen.
These scenes represent only what was able to be caught on film, and only what happened in one araa of one state. If you think this was not happening all over the country you are very naive, at best.
The machine tampering, of course, could not be caught on film.

http://votecobb.org/

[euler]

21. Wow. I posted that same link yesterday....

....right here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=279921&mesg_id=280137&page=

Stop the presses !! RaulVB and euler have linked to the same document in support of their argument.

It's a long paper. Did you read the whole thing? I'm not sure that you really want to be praising the content of this paper, given your previous remarks on this topic. In fact, this paper destroys your entire thesis on exit polls. Hey, just remember, you linked to it - so suffer the consequences.

After conducting the exit poll, the author found that the "sample overestimates the 2003 Liberal vote by about 5 per cent, and underestimates the Progressive Conservative and 'other' party votes each by about 2 per cent. Because departures this large cannot be explained simply as chance variation, we must consider other possible explanatory factors."

He goes on to test and rule out several different possibilities for the anomaly, and finally concludes:

"Either voters misreported their vote to our interviewers or Liberal voters were simply more willing to reveal their preference to us. Although hard evidence is hard to come by, both have been suspected in cases of U.S. exit poll distortions. In the 1989 Virginia gubernatorial election, for example, Bishop and Fisher (1995) ascribed the over report of support for a black candidate for governor to misrepresentation by voters arising from a social desirability bias. Elsewhere, there has been speculation that differential willingness to co-operate by partisan cohorts accounted for the under report of Ross Perot support in 1992 exit polls and the over report of Pat Buchanan votes in 1992 and 1996 primary elections."

I suspect you may take issue with a few things in this quote. For example, the past "U.S. exit poll distortions." After all, exit polls are always accurate.

What about "the misrepresentation by voters arising from a social desirability bias." Surely, you don't believe that some voters would lie to the exit pollster, do you ?

After all his analysis, he comes to a conclusion:

"Liberal voters were simply more willing to reveal their preference to interviewers."

Say it ain't so, RaulVB, say it ain't so.

Now look at this:

Exit polling has been a fixture of election night coverage in other political systems for many years. However the approach is of varying value in different systems...For example, in nations employing pure proportional representation electoral systems like Israel, a massive nationwide exit poll is an effective and immediately-available alternative to the official vote counts taking place around the country. In more complex systems, the translation of votes into seats is usually much less direct. In the United States, exit polls play a more corroborative and explanatory role, as they are utilized alongside the hard official counts to provide context and highlight trends that portend the formal vote count. Exit polls have always been media driven. In the US, the first exit poll was conducted in Kentucky by CBS in 1967. This poll was not conducted to predict the results so much as it was for analytical.

Time and time again, I've tried to explain that not all exit polls are equal. Exit polls conducted in the US are media driven. Media driven polls are not designed to verify the actual vote count. As the author notes: "the approach (to exit polls) is of varying value in different systems." We value explanation, not verification. In Europe the values are flipped. YOU CAN"T COMPARE THE CAPABILITIES OF US EXIT POLLS TO THE CAPABILITIES OF UKRAINE EXIT POLLS for this reason.

Hey, RaulVB, are you sorry you attached your name to this study yet ?

The problem with exit polls resurfaced in the 2000 U.S. presidential election. By the 1990’s the large US media outlets decided to pool resources and conduct one omnibus exit poll. Without competing polls, there could be no immediate check on accuracy. The American example, particularly in 2000, illustrates that, as with any poll, election day exit polls can generate faulty results, and can be abused if their users are more concerned with getting questions answered quickly rather than accurately.

There's that inaccuracy thing again - "election day exit polls can generate faulty results"

"In two cases, we were obliged to substitute alternate polling locations for the sites originally intended, because of the degree of resistance exhibited by election officials. Clearly, these obstacles undermined our sampling procedure as interviewers were frequently denied systematic access to the potential population, leading to many missed selections.

Undermined sampling procedures? Missed selections? Someone missed the memo - exit polls are perfect instruments.

For example, researchers in U.S. exit polls have found that employment status distinguishes voters in different time periods over the day. Perhaps not surprisingly, those who are most time-constrained – that is, those who have regular employment outside the home – tend to vote after work. Might it be the case, then, that those who tend to be more involved outside the home, might also feel more comfortable interacting with the likes of our young student interviewers? Such a “comfort factor” – what others have called the “social isolation” hypothesis might help to explain both the greater reticence of older voters to participate in our survey as well as this higher participation rate among late afternoon and early evening voters."

I'll stop here. The point is made.

RaulVB, do you read what you link too ? Was 26 pages too much ?

[tex-wyo-dem]

31. euler, quick question...

If exit polls paid for by the media in the U.S. are not designed to verify the vote, then why do they seem to rely upon them during election night to make calls/predictions on states? I know that they have actual vote totals being reported precinct by precinct, which in conjuction with the exit polls can show voting patterns, but never do they wait until 100% of the votes have been counted to call a state, even if it is very close. Therefore, they must rely upon exit polling to some degree to actually call a state.

If I'm the media and pay for this service, I would want my exit poll to be as acurate as possible with regards to actual vote verification to be able to make calls on election night as soon as possible...but, hey, that's just me.

[euler]

44. Here you go:....

Yes, networks do call elections based on exit pol, but only if the race isn't close in that state.

http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2004/11/the_difference_.html

"The network "decision desks" use these tabulations to "call" winners, but only in states where the leader's margin far exceeds statistical significance (the tests of statistical significance assume "confidence levels" of at least 99%, not 95%)."

This means, that the battleground states will never be called early, because the design of the exit polls in the US (thus far) don't make exit polls accurate enough to make the calls with any certainty.

Here is what one network has to say about calling elections. As you can tell, they really aren't all that enamored with calling election based on exit polls. The reason - inaccuracy (GASP)

Everything below comes from: Television's Performance on Election Night 2000 A Report for CNN

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/stories/02/02/cnn.report/cnn.pdf

On the question of exit polling, Schneider, who is CNN’s political analyst, said there are more serious problems with the accuracy of the polls than in the past due to non-responses and a rise in absentee voting. He said that taking exit poll information
from one source (VNS) is “inherently risky,” and that he favors ending their use as “a primary tool in projecting results.”

As to whether CNN would consider ending the use of exit polling to project winners, Bedingfield said more study is needed to find out if there is a real decline in the accuracy of exit polls which make them too flawed to use. He noted that Judy Woodruff, one of the CNN anchors, favors ending their use for projections but that her argument has not won out so far. It turns out that others of the on-air team also oppose exit poll-based projections.

But polls are statistical calculations, not factual realities. They are imperfect measures of voter intent and actual voting, especially in very close elections. The overall record of polls in “calling,” or, more accurately, “projecting,” elections appears to be highly successful. In fact, most of those calls are made in states and elections where the outcome is relatively clear-cut and not necessarily evidence of the efficacy of the polling system in today’s voting environment. In the 2000 election, the exit polls, as reported
through Voters News Service, were off in 10 per cent of the election calls.

Exit polling is extremely valuable as a source of post-election information about the electorate. But it has lost much of the value it had for projecting election results in close elections. The number of people who decline to respond to exit polls, combined with the increase in the number of early and absentee voters who are not reached by exit polls, are making the results of such polls less reliable with each election cycle. In any case, exit polls, whether accurate or not, are self-generated news. Their use by television networks to project election results is an attempt to forecast what is not

yet known — the actual vote count — but which will be known within a few hours when the votes are counted. This, combined with the questionable reliability of the exit polls and statistical analysis of a few sample precincts, led to serious mistakes committed by
the networks in an attempt to gain a few minutes of competitive advantage.

[davidgmills]

35. I keep pointing to what Freeman says about polls being "wrong"

First, the theories posited as to why they were "wrong" are almost always unsubstantiated theories.

We see it here. Some group didn't want to talk to pollsters. Bunk. Prove it. No proof. Just a theory.

Second. How can you say the polls were "wrong" unless you can prove the count was "right."

I have challenged many people to prove to me that the counts from 1960, 64, 68, 72 ... 00 and 04 were correct. No one can. No one can tell me what the margin of error for the count is.

We know we can't count a census anywhere near right. Nobody even seems to dispute this. The last census may have been off by six million people. Experts believe that statistics would be a much more accurate means of determining US population. And there is very little incentive to rig a census. The stakes are just not that high. There was one billion dollars spent on this election. Them's pretty high stakes in my book.

So before you tell me not to buy an exit poll, sell me on the idea that I should buy the count.

[rdmccur]

39. You said it well!

[glitch]

41. Very true - and it's also possible that both the exit polls and the counts

are wrong. Since they won't release the raw data, methodology or even where the exit polls were taken, and since they refuse to verify the vote count, there is no reason to believe any part of the process.

For all we know they skewed the exit polls for * too, they must've known they were going to have to, judging from all their skewed pre-election polls. But they didn't get it quite right, hence the middle of the night correction.
There is certainly no reason to trust the word of any of the principal parties involved.
Just say no to faith-based elections. Period.

[pauldp]

47. Yeah Baby! Good Point!

To the fraud naysayers I say:
Fine, you want to believe that the Republican leadership would not take advantage of a system they worked so hard to put in place (the death of HR 2239 and other paper trail bills prove this) and stop short of massive fraud when they had they ability to pull it off almost without a trace? No problem, just prove to me the count is correct, and I'll seriously consider your point of view. I respect your position as I repect Christians and Muslims and Jews even though much of their belief systems in my opinion fly in the face of reason and logic.

[euler]

28. So, do you still endorse this paper or not ?

[mpmusicny]

37. Taking a middle ground here

This experiment was conducted in one single riding (such a nice old English word, don't you think?) under clearly adverse conditions. It showed, amongst other things, that young people were more prepared to participate, and that the result differed from the published one by as much as five percent - in that one county. Very interesting.

I don't think this does much to explain why exit polls deviated in favor of the same candidate in nearly every STATE of the USA on November 2.

[euler]

43. I'm sorry, my real job is taking more of my time now.

However, your answer is here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=279921#280137

[FogerRox]

38. I noticed on Page 9 it was brought how in 1989 Gov IIRc that

exit polls were off--- a blackman vs a whiteman.
I hope nobody wants to use that to say Kerry/Bush exits polls were------- I think you get my drift

[NationalEnquirer]

42. REDARDLESS

Seriously, I dont exactly know what went on, even if Bush DID win legitimately, the fact is, there is a terrible STENCH in the room.
Voting needs to be reformed, big time.
We must push for this, because as far as Democracy is concerned, it is the VERY FOUNDATION OF ALL WE HOLD DEAR.

[spooked911]

48. While I tend to believe the election WAS stolen, this paper will just make

people say that the US polls were flawed, or that the US exit polls weren't designed to strictly pick a winner.

What we need is the raw data and what precincts they polled in Nov 2004. THEN, we could get somewhere.

[RaulVB]

49. Not at all

The study shows that tendencies and voting patterns can be very accurately described by exit polls everywhere and that they get MORE ACCURATE AS THE DAY GOES BY, after 4:00 PM.

Kerry was winning at 5:00 PM!

Some people coud say whatever, I would ask them:

WHY IS IT THAT MITOFSKY DIDN'T GIVE THE MONEY BACK THEN?