CNN "explanation" of exit polls

[SophieZ]

Report suggests changes in exit poll methodology

Wednesday, January 19, 2005
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/19/exit.polls/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Exit polls overstated John Kerry's share of the vote on November 2, both nationally and in many states, because more Kerry supporters participated in the survey than Bush voters, according to an internal review of the exit-polling process released Wednesday.

The report said it is difficult to pinpoint precisely why, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit poll than were Bush voters. "There were certainly motivational factors that are impossible to quantify," the report said.


Exit polls overstated John Kerry's share of the vote on November 2, both nationally and in many states, because more Kerry supporters participated in the survey than Bush voters

<laughing> Well, yeah!

compare:
The New York Yankees won the final game of the World Series, 4 to 2. The reason given for the victory was, they crossed the plate four times, compared to their opponents' two.

This CNN "explanation" is FEEBLE.

[Norquist Nemesis]

1. Wouldn't it be logical that

more Kerry voters participated because there WERE more Kerry voters??? Are they suggesting it should have been 50/50 or something? *headspin*

[tridim]

2. "motivational factors that are impossible to quantify"

Yet we'll go ahead and quantify the results anyway because BushCo told us to. Since we have a popular channel on your TeeVee, we trust you the CNN viewer will buy anything we say.

This explanation is laughably pathetic.

[Mistwell]

3. Exit Polls simply are not helpful with this

This is the link:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/20...

The data comes from the Century Foundation, which is a relatively progressive foundation. The data could also be verified from newspapers from those earlier years, if people care to check for the UNWEIGHTED numbers (since the FINAL exit poll data is always weighted to match the election results - just like this time).

Year 1988: Unweighted exit poll Dukakis: 50.3%, Bush: 49.7%. Actual vote deviation 7.7%.

Year 1992: Unweighted exit poll Clinton: 46%, Bush: 33.2%. Actual vote deviation 5.6%.

Year 1996: Unweighted exit poll Clinton: 52.2%, Dole: 37.5%. Actual vote deviation 8.5%.

Year 2000: Unweighted exit poll Gore: 48.5%, Bush: 46.2%. Actual vopte deviation 0.5%.

In each year, the unweighted exit poll results always overstated the Democratic vote, sometimes by MUCH more than 2004.

If people are going to continue to claim that this year the unweighted exit poll "proves" fraud, then they must also show fraud for every single Presidential election since exit polls started (in 1988). They have to show that such fraud took place 1) at a time when there were no electronic voting machines, 2) in a manner which didn't actually get the Republicans the win twice against Clinton and once against Gore (since Gore DID win the popular vote), and in one of the remaining years in a manner which helped them not at all - since they would have won anyway.

The most logical explanation for all of this is that exit polls tend to favor Democratic voters until they are weighted, and the unweighted data is not helpful in calling a close election.

Again - my usual caveat. I believe there was election fraud - I just don't believe exit poll analysis is in any way helpful in showing that fraud. In fact, it's harmful because it is so easily refuted.

[SophieZ]

6. Well, your numbers are interesting.

According to the Collier brothers' book Votescam, votes have been rigged since 1964.

That makes it hard to find data that are clean and honest to compare to, if true.

Although DREs - paperless electronic voting machines - are new, central tabulators for punch card and optical scan machines are NOT new.

Research by people including Bev Harris points to the central tabulator as a major vulnerability, regardless of whether a DRE or punch card or opscan is used. This can be true even in the tabulation of paper absentee ballots that are mailed in.

Fraud? Yes. Hell yes.

Exit polls as proof? Not when the select group of exit pollsters are hired by the 6 major media, the same major media that have deep-sixed most meaningful reporting on election flaws and fraud.

[Donailin]

31. That was sobering

thanks for the reminder.

I think the media is as bad as it can get, I can hardly imagine worse. Folks that should have zero credibility are embraced by the media, that about sums it up. But not just a few, all of them.

And the only Dem with balls is a woman.

[flintdem]

4. Nightline to Cover the report tonight

Also the whole report can be downloaded at:

http://www.exit-poll.net/election-night/EvaluationJan192005.pdf

[dbDESIGN]

5. Sorry for the blasphemy but…

How many Dems voted for Bush beacuse (insert reasons here) and being ashamed of it told the exit pollsters they voted for Kerry?

[TruthIsAll]

7. OK, let me ask you. How many? And what about vice-versa?

You are talking nonsense.

But I understand.
You are new here.

We have to give you some slack.

[Philly Buster]

10. People do lie to pollsters

I have

Using exit polls to prove fraud was dumb from the beginning. It only caused a distraction from real problems with voting.

[davidgmills]

29. So why did you lie?

True confessions please.

[KayLaw]

8. Why would they be ashamed?

They wouldn't know the pollster from Adam. And if they wanted to keep their vote secret, why not just say sorry, I need to get back to work? Face it, Bush cheated and the big corporations that own the media, are going to say and do whatever it takes to help little Lord Farquaad Bush.

[dbDESIGN]

13. You're right, probably no one did that, definitely

not enough to skew the results. I also agree that "*" cheated, the media has abdicated its position as the Forth Estate and gone on to be regime cheerleaders, and a few other things that keep me awake at night about the future of the world.

It is interesting that just asking the question can be seen as an attack.

[artv28]

18. Too stupid to answer the questions

'Kerry is a flip-flopper' was not one of the multiple choice answers.

[KerryOn]

48. Not a single Democrat voted for Bush but...

A few of us Republicans voted for KERRY!

[Yupster]

9. Haven't read the report, but

does it say what percentage of the exit polled people declined to take the poll?

Someone on DU posted a link that said the non-response rate was 50 %. That's hard for me to believe.

But if there was any significant non-response rate at all, how could you assume the non-responders have the same percentage responses as the responders? Especially with guys like Rush Limbaugh telling their followers to hate and mistrust the media.

Just to give a silly example, what if there was a vote asking people whether they were happy or not and an exit poll following it. Half the people agreed to answer the exit poll and the other half brushed past the pollster and told them to fuck off.

When you get the poll results back you find that surprisinly 80 % of the people said in the exit poll that they were happpy while the vote was only 60 % happy. Gee do you think its because the people who told the pollsters to fuck off were lots of the unhappy voters?

I think that's the most likely explanation of why exit polls have always overrepresented Democratic voters. They are just in general nicer people who are less likely to tell the likely young college student exit pollster to fuck off.

Or maye there was a vast conspiracy stretching around the country for the last two decades to steal votes from Democratic candidates.

Sorry, but to me that one's a lot harder for me to believe.

[qwghlmian]

11. The non-response rate in 2000 exit polls

was around 50%. 2004's non-response rate has not been published yet.

Here is an interesting research paper on non-responders and whether non-responder population is similar to responder population (the paper says no, they are not similar).

http://www.duke.edu/~mms16/non_response2000.pdf.

"Our results also lead us to conclude that exit polls are likely to over-represent the opinions of younger and non-white voters. Because non-white voters tend to vote for Democrat candidates, over-representation of this social class will skew an exit poll’s results in that direction."

[euler]

17. This document does not conform to...

....previously established agreements defining what can and cannot count as credible. Duke University is in North Carolina. North Carolina went for Bush. This document is bogus. I'm correct. You're wrong. Do the math.

2+2 = 4 -> 2+2 = 5 = Bush

Get it ?

HAHAHA

[davidgmills]

30. I'll post my response from the other board tracking this issue here too

Just looking at the stats


I doubt they would have skewed that polls very much. A 13% differential between white and others would not amount to that much when whites were 77% of the voting population.

As for younger vs. older the younger category was up to age 40 so I don't think that says much of importance.

The stats all seemed to be Utah based which is heavily Mormon. So I don't know whether these same stats would be universal in the US.

Maybe what this analysis really means is that white Mormons over 40 don't like talking to pollsters.

[qwghlmian]

32. This study shows that the non-responders in

exit polls are not similar to the responders, and skew the polls. This blows out of the water the "pristine raw exit polls" theory that some are pushing. The degree of the skew may be debated, but it is there.

[davidgmills]

35. for Mormons

[qwghlmian]

43. No, not just Mormons - from the same paper -

they cite other studies that show that men respond less than women, and whites less than non-whites. Their study confirms the others.

[davidgmills]

50. but the real skew is the Mormon study

[Igel]

25. Mitofsky does go to great efforts to discuss his "within

precinct error" which is, ultimately, non-response.

Size of precinct, multiple precincts in one place, distance from polling place, age of questionnaire administrator, how recently the interviewer was hired, interference from poll workers and non-official poll denizens, weather ...

I enjoyed reading that in heavily Kerry precincts the error skewed the results to *.

[anaxarchos]

41. Since everyone else is quoting from another thread..

...here's mine:

"Of all of the "black magic" associated with exit-polls, "non-response" is the easiest to deal with.

First, it is much more innocent than some people suggest. The difference between various national responses (80% German versus 50% U.S., etc.) is due to differences in national temperament (if you don't believe that, you haven't been to Germany), whether elections are held on workdays or holidays, the location of polling places, etc. The biggest difference, which may account for the gradual slide of U.S. response from just over 60% to just under 50%, is the growth of the survey questionnaire as U.S. polls have become more and more detailed.

Second, "non-response" is obvious. The pollster knows and corrects for it immediately. It is not something the polling organization has to guess at and correcting for it is fundamental to the methodology. This also applies to correcting for a gradual decrease in "responsiveness".

In order to impact the exit-poll, you have to show not just "non-response" but a CHANGE in "non-response" for the 2004 election that is much greater than that which was accommodated by the exit poll methodology AND that "non-response" must be tilted towards one party (or else it would even out as you say) AND cannot be skewed towards any other criteria (otherwise it would be detectable).

As you might guess, there is no empirical evidence for this whatsoever.

"False-response" is even rarer and it may even be a myth. The typical reference is to a single election in the U.K. in which Conservative voters were purported to have reported voting Labor because they were "too ashamed" to report their actual vote. Even this one instance is controversial and based largely on anecdote. It has no application for the U.S. 2004 elections which were essentially just a rerun of 2000 (and thus corrected in methodology).

Non-response and false-response are just spin. More properly, they are "mussahappened".

As in:

"Since the vote count CAN'T be wrong, the exit poll HAS TO BE wrong. Non-response, that's what 'mussahappened'".

Yeah, that's it.... indubitably."

[mgr]

46. Hidden assumption

You presume that non response is random, since precincts are suspectible to clustering effect, skewed non response due to weather, or locating the pollster sufficiently away from the poll that the parking lot is out of bounds, can alter the pattern of non-response.

BTW, I consider the false response argument facile as well.

Mike

[anaxarchos]

49. Not true...

I'm not presuming that. I presume skewed non-response is detectable (i.e. that it would produce recognizably 'funny results'). I presume that Mitofsky, if such was detected, would have trumpeted it all over the front cover. Therefore, I presume that Mitofsky is presuming random "non-response".

I promise to be more precise.

[Imagevision]

12. Yankee's-- I love the analogy...hahahahahahahaha....!

[libertypirate]

14. That's one way to spin it....

is it easier to believe that they over sampled Kerry voters or more voters voted for Kerry.

The report actually supports both conclusions, you have to wonder why they choose the one that helps junior?

[Igel]

26. You pick every nth voter.

If your interval is 10 (and it varied from site to site), you pick 10, 20th, 30th, 40th ...

You don't pick #21 or #43. If #20 walks on by, you make a note of a non-response; then you pick #30. Otherwise you know your sample's non-random.

You can't oversample Kerry voters; you can just have greater participation by non-Kerry voters. (This is the flip side of "Bush voters declined to answer.)

[Hugin]

15. Well... you see...

When the planets are in this particular order and it's a
Thursday (But, not a full moon). Also, checking to make sure
the moss forms on the north side of the tree. If a blue car
passes going North following the goose migration. When a woman
named Joan wearing a yellow dress speaks to a man named Frank.

You might just get these results... Maybe.

[davidgmills]

33. Don't be giving them any ideas that might make sense

[RaulVB]

16. Ridiculous fairy tale!

But I'm sure will be pushed by "some" here!

Unbelievable that a "TV network" could go so low and act like MOST OF THE AMERICANS ARE IDIOTS!

[Donailin]

27. CNN, the station that still employs Novak

where in reality, or in any other time in history, would have been fired, indicted, and tried for treason. But CNN carries om as though he's done nothing wrong, and worse, they celebrate him and give him the floor as OBJECTIVE commentator on presidents past and present. I just heard him bash Clinton with such impugnity wrt his second inaugural that my mouth fell open. It was so out of line, but it's taken as gospel (brainwashing)as legtimate unbiased opinion by the masses. It is such an insult to my intelligence that I literally get a visceral reaction when he is on. This is the media we are dealing with, the media that celebrates and pretends nothing is wrong when criminals get respect while the innocent are demonized.

[rzemanfl]

28. I agree, every lame excuse in the book, like "weather conditions"

as if Democrats are impervious to the weather and Repugs melt in the rain. Using the accuracy of the exit polls in the Democratic primaries to discredit the November 2nd polls? Huh?

There is lots of credible evidence of machines switching votes to Bush, none whatsoever that I have seen of Repugs refusing to talk to exit pollers.

This report is a crock and its release date is what, "just a coincidence?"

Page after page of crap "proving" shit like election officials are perceived as being nicer to older people. So what?

[corbett]

37. The Whole Thing Is A Joke

I barely could stomach 5 paragraphs of that story. It's nothing but CYA for the looming investigation by the Justice Department.

[TruthIsAll]

65. Investigation by DOJ? You can't be serious. Never happen.

When did anything ever get fully investigated?

Plame?
9/11?
WMD?
Abu Grhaib?
Medicare?
Halliburton?
Enron/Lay?
Energy?
Cheney?
Venezuela?
Haiti?
California Recall?
2002 Senate theft?
2000 SCOTUS theft?

[Land Shark]

19. Not only are the Kerry inferences stronger

Not only are the Kerry inferences stronger (they "oversampled" Kerry voters because there WERE more Kerry voters) and the pro-Bush arguments weaker (young people and non-whites have historically found the presence of authority figures at polls to be something to avoid, not something to flock to, and authority figures at polls can be suppression if it is not handled just right...)

BUT

The coverage page of the report indicates it is to be embargoed until 10 a.m. January 19, so it is available just in time for the inauguration.

there is NO EVIDENCE of an intent to support the President's inauguration. NO EVIDENCE.

[RaulVB]

20. Good catch!

ONE DAY BEFORE THE "INAUGURATION."

Just another "statistical coincidence", that's all!

[qwghlmian]

21. Actually, research shows that it is exactly

the younger voters and the minority voters who are more likely to respond to exit polls.

http://www.duke.edu/~mms16/non_response2000.pdf

"our findings lead us to conclude that non-response rates are positively associated with age and are higher among whites than among non-whites, taken as a group."

"Our results also lead us to conclude that exit polls are likely to over-represent the opinions of younger and non-white voters. Because non-white voters tend to vote for Democrat candidates, over-representation of this social class will skew an exit poll’s results in that direction."

[RaulVB]

22. Can you stop repeating talking points? (n/t)

[justice4all]

40. But doesn't a smart pollster

already know that and adjust the data to account for the per cent of the population that is young, black, female, or whatever?

This shouldn't be any different from making sure that you aren't sampling too many or too few women.

Since the Mitofsky report (as I skimmed it) doesn't refer to a skew caused by age or race, I would assume that they accounted for these. And if they didn't do that, why are they making the big bucks?

[anaxarchos]

42. Bingo..... n/t

[qwghlmian]

45. In order to adjust for all those,

you have to know exactly how much to adjust. The skewing effects vary election to election, and just plugging in numbers from previous election can cause problems. So the adjustments they use are a guessing game. Sometimes they guess wrong.

[googly]

69. qwghlmian.....you are the smartest poster on DU....bar none

why are you so much smarter than the rest of us?
why are you more logical than the rest of us?
why are you more rational than the rest of us?

where did you go to college? I will send my
kids to that college LOL

[Yupster]

63. But it can't be adjusted

Let's just assume that all white men who listen to Rush Limbaugh refuse to answer the exit poll question.

You can adjust for that by asking lots more white men or counting each white man who did answer as 1.3 votes each, but either way, you're not going to get a fair count because the refusenicks would be overwhelmingly Bush voters and you'd compensate by counting likely Kerry voters in their place. You'd have the right number of white men, but a completely skewed sample.

Example. You exit poll two white men, a city worker, and a gun shop owner. The city worker voted for Kerry and the gun shop owner voted for Bush.

The gun shop owner told the exit pollster to go screw herself. The city worker answered the exit poll.

The pollster knows she is now short a white male for her sample so she asks another one. He's a creative writing professor who voted for Kerry.

She now has the right demographics for her poll, but she has a completely screwed up result.

Now would a gunshop owner with a "Rush Is Right" bumper sticker be more likely than average to tell an exit pollster to go screw herself?

Well, yeah - of course he would.

[anaxarchos]

70. Sounds good but not true...

Think about it. Exit polls are unique in two ways:

1) They carry a huge amount of demographic data with them (the survey questions). Overcoming one skew produces another. You have to match in a general way the remaining demographics (age, income, education, religion) or your precinct sticks out like a sore thumb. The problem you point to is easily detectable.

2) They have a historical element. They are "corrected" election to election to "compensate" for what you describe. In order to be a factor, all gun-shop owners (and many many more to be significant) would have to decide to not answer ALL AT ONCE (i.e. in this election only).

It is also not true that these types of issues change election to election (WPE). The opposite is true. They are remarkably stable. Otherwise, exit-polls couldn't even come close with such a small sample.

[Donailin]

23. o man, Raul.

I feel your pain, and I don't mean that as a slight in any way shape I form.

Everything is wrong. :/

[4democracy]

24. Next election they won't release the data until 6:00 pm, I guess they will

have all the bugs worked out by then. So they won't have this pesky little problem of all these professional analysis of the incredible odds it would take for the exit polls to have been accurate. That was one base Rove didn't cover very well, but I am sure it won't happen again!

Election Reform bills need to have some type of oversight on exit polling. There needs to be nonpartisan, heavily regulated polling that is only answerable to the American public, not owned by the media. We all know they cannot be trusted, why trust them with the only widely accepted way to show fraud during an election?

Other countries like Germany and the Ukraine use the polls for that very reason, to uncover any fraud. Surely we can find a way to do it also.

[super simian]

34. Sheesh. What a crock! n/t

[zann725]

36. How typically 'dysfunctional.' Blame Victims for the crime!

Well, we can either roll-over to the lie and accept it...or speak-up and 'fight back?' Which is it?

[mgr]

38. There's a lot to be worried about in this article

1.) Exit poll sample size: 1,480 precinct, approximately 80,000 respondents, means they averaged ~60 persons per precinct. I had assumed that they had responses over or near a 100 voters per precinct, this makes the weighting even more suspect, because it the values per response is weighted more heavily, and would increase the likelihood sampling errors would taint your results. There is little precision in this metric.

2.) Some of explanations offered, are quaint. Distance from the polling location and weather conditions are ones that are fathomable, but the multiple precincts at one voting location and interviewer characteristics beg some questions. The first raises questions about how well NEP preselected their precincts; and the second suggests that they probably did not spend top dollar for the interviewers as they should have(imagine the same class of people that leaflet cars in parking lots). I would assume that they should have paid out a minimum of $400,000 in one day salaries to get good work, anything less, and they are likely to have filled out the responses in a nice warm local bar.

3.) "Exit polls do not support allegations of fraud due to rigging of voting equipment." I don't know what this specifically addresses (type of fraud), but if it is being reweighed to match the reported outcome, I can see how this might be; or if the sampling methodology was so crappy that you could not distinguish the school board election outcome in a precinct (see #1), how in the world could you amplify the results to the presidential election.

4.) The statement is "Kerry voters", but makes no reference to party registration (which they should have polled), I can't wait to see what the respondent records actually show.

5.) To have done the statistical evaluation to come to these talking points, there should be more than 76 pages.

In sum, the report could have been anticipated if the attempt by NEP is to recalibrate the exit polling methods, rather than continue to practice of the past twenty or so years. I'll give them the same BOD I gave TIA--it looks like crap, begs my credulity, but until I get something tangible that refutes the position....I would not use this to predict my next bowel movement, let alone a presidential election.

Mike

[PennyMan]

39. If Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit poll than

were Bush voters then how did Bush end up with a bigger percentage if they didn't poll as many of them.

[4democracy]

44. Logic does not apply here, this is the "Trust Me" administration

that is all we need to know. We are to never ask questions, just believe what we are told!!

[southwood]

47. The "Within Precinct Error" (WPE) in the report itself...

(see post 4 for link) remains a mystery to the authors. Roughly page 30-40 of the report. Interesting are their observations that

1. WPE is larger than in the previous 4 presidential elections
2. WPE used to be more or less random, "while the errors in 2004 were much more in one direction".

I would have expected that the pollsters'explanation of their "failure" would have been more demographic, such as how they missed the rise of exurbia etc. WPE is much harder to explain away. They don't seem to succeed at that and hence put this issue as first on their list for further study (in the conclusions of the report).

It would be nice if knowledgeable folks here were to really scrutinize this report. Also, if and when the actual list of polled precincts is made available, the comparison of exit poll data and election results per precinct will lead to hot spots of "irregularities" which merit further investigation.

[anaxarchos]

62. Why "knowledgable folks"?

You're doing a pretty good job already :-)

Your analysis is dead nuts on.

[althecat]

51. This bit is a straight out lie...

"CNN did not air those inaccurate results or post them on its Web site, and CNN's projections of winners on election night were accurate."

YES THEY BLOODY DID... THAT IS WHERE WE ALL GOT THE INFORMATION...

Morans!!!

[althecat]

52. And this bit has been commented on above..... it beggars beleif

"Exit polls do not support the allegations of fraud due to rigging of voting equipment. Our analysis of the difference between the vote count and the exit poll at each polling location in our sample has found no systematic differences for precincts using touch screen and optical scan voting equipment," the report found.

CLEARLY THESE PEOPLE KNOW NOTHING...

Even if the TS vs Optical Scan comparison were true... it proves nothing. As has been pointed out over and over again.. both systems are compromiseable.

[althecat]

53. And I LOVE this bit

"in every presidential election since 1988, exit polls have overstated support for Democrats nationally -- but the discrepancy in 2004 was more pronounced than in previous years."

TRANSLATION

Every election since 1998 has been rigged and 2004 more so than any other...

[althecat]

54. The full report deserves a close looksee....

Just reading the bit where they discount voting machine fraud - Begins Page 39

[althecat]

55. Take this table... (Page 40)

Type of equipment used
at polling place mean WPE median WPE mean Abs(WPE) N
Paper Ballot -6.0 -11.5 15.7 5
Mechanical Voting Machine -12.7 -12.5 16.8 92
Touch Screen -7.5 -7.6 14.8 272
Punch Cards -9.3 -10.0 15.2 108
Urban Areas
(> 50,000)
Optical Scan -7.2 -5.8 12.3 350
Paper Ballot -1.6 -0.6 10.5 35
Mechanical Voting Machine -3.2 -5.4 14.7 26
Touch Screen -6.0 -4.8 14.8 88
Punch Cards -0.8 -1.7 12.0 50
Rural/Small
Town Areas
(< 50,000)
Optical Scan -4.4 -5.0 13.2 223

Depending on how you want to read it it can be read to show that the election was stolen largely in urban areas and particularly on the "mechanical voting machines".

[althecat]

56. Another priceless bit

12. Swing states:
The WPE was greater in the more competitive “swing” states. For this analysis, the
following were considered swing states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota,
Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Swing state mean WPE median WPE mean Abs(WPE) N
Precinct not in a swing state -6.1 -5.1 13.1 776
Precinct in a swing state -7.9 -8.6 14.8 474
Swing state Completion Rate Refusal Rate Miss Rate
Precinct not in a swing state 0.56 0.34 0.10
Precinct in a swing state 0.50 0.38 0.11
This indicates that voters in the swing states (who were exposed to more paid advertising
and media coverage than voters in non-swing states) were less likely to respond to the
exit poll: but among those who did, more likely to be Kerry voters.

******

TRANSLATION... we are right that there is a swing state bias in the level of poll error, but you can blame that on the advertisers. Or more specifically on the fact that Bush voters don't respond to exit polls as often in places where there is lots of advertising.

[googly]

57. In the end, exit polls are meaningless in close elections, otherwise

we can save BILLIONS spent on counting votes, paying vote processing officials, voting machines, lawsuit expenses, recounts, manual recounts...on and on. Since some people seem to be convinced that exit polls are extremely accurate, let us save the Billions and spend them on more worthwhile causes such as hunger, education and environment.

[RaulVB]

61. Ridiculous statement...

But nor surprising coming from someone who believes exit polls are made "for entertainment purposes."

[googly]

67. well...Raul from Chile, it is the MEDIA who pays for the exit polls

and in USA the TV media is for entertainment. May be in
Chile it is used as a state propaganda machine, but not here
in the oldest democracy in the world, good old USA. Welcome
to the free world.

[RaulVB]

68. You don't talk like a "free" man/woman "googlyguy"

Back to please your masters now!

[Raksha]

58. Wow, FINALLY a chance to vent at the media!

I just sent CNN a nasty e-mail about this story, not getting into too much detail about the exit polls, but mainly just blowing off steam about how they never give a voice to anything even close to a liberal POV. Here it is, for whatever it's worth:

My comment is regarding today's story on "Inside Politics," the one called "Report Suggests Changes in Exit Poll Methodology." That's the one where you assert that for some inexplicable reason, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in exit polls than Bush voters. Well, DUH! That assertion is so unbelievably stupid I have a hard time believing you think you can get it past intelligent readers--unless of course you don't realize you HAVE any intelligent readers. Okay, there might be some truth to that, considering that most of us stopped depending on the corporate media (including CNN) for our news a long time ago. We do however check in occasionally to see if you're still pimping for the Bush administration. Then when we discover (inevitably) that you are, we go back to our favorite blogs and discussion boards where we can get uncensored and unbiased news. I found out today that the readership of the NYT has gone down 25% in recent months, and that makes me incredibly happy. Maybe it needs to go down even more before you guys in the MSM (or what I now call "the corporate media") finally realize that we liberals ALSO have money to spend and until you start being fair with us (and you know damn good and well what that means!) you're not getting any of it. The MORE we can hurt your bottom line the happier we are, because we know that's the only way you'll ever give us a voice in the public debate, even though we are AT LEAST half the American population.

Anyway, did it ever occur to you that the reason more Kerry voters participated in the exit polls is because THERE WERE MORE KERRY VOTERS? In other words, the exit polls were correct all along...but the election was rigged!

xxxxx xxxx

[Yupster]

64. I want them to release

the non-response rate.

If it is anything remotely close to 50 %, then the poll ain't worth a damn. You can't have a statistical sample where the people get to self select themselves. That's just ridiculous.

[anaxarchos]

72. It is 50% and it has always been (OK it was 60%)...

...most of it is innocent (length of questionnaire, traffic at the polling place, etc.).

see #41 above...

[Beth in VT]

59. The headline says

"Response by Kerry Voters Tilted Exit Polls."

Interesting interpretation.

[peacetalksforall]

60. BULL BULL....... CNN IN AN ACCOMPLICE and everyone knows it.

CNN FOX ABC NBC CBS are accomplices to and facilitators of theft along with the polling companies they hired.

They are ACCOMPLICES to a theft and fraud.

In our civic set-up, if someone commits a crime, the victim doesn't have to bring the case to court - branches of law do it for the victim(s)- when they are doing their job correctly. Well, there is no branch of the justice departments of our government who are going to go after them. We no longer have any rule of law in this country so those networks might get away with theft. The takeover is on fire - some are taking over the world, some take us over.

[MarkusQ]

66. For me, one of the most compelling indicators of fraud is the exit polls

Not all the statistical arguments, but the simple fact that they changed them in the middle of the night and have yet to realy come clean about it. It's not proof of anything, but it is awful darned suspicious.

Think about it. If you were auditing a business, and you found that the owner came in in the middle of the night to redo the books, wouldn't you be a tad curious?

--MarkusQ

[hoosierblue]

71. They didn't get it in 2000

they won't get it now. Convincing them there was fraud is hopeless. They don't WANT to believe it, and anyone can make themselves more stupid than they are if they really try.

Work toward fair elections; the past cannot be changed, but the future can.