What went wrong in exit polls that gave Prodi the lead in vote....(Yikes)

[truthpusher]

http://www.fox23news.com/news/world/story.aspx?content_id=0AAA9311-ABC6-44FF-B0EA-4A613AA2306E

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What went wrong in exit polls that gave Prodi the lead in vote too close to call?
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ROME (AP) - Politicians who rarely agreed on anything else agreed that the vote was too close to call. So why did exit polls hours earlier Monday give Romano Prodi a strong edge over Premier Silvio Berlusconi?

Don't look to the pollsters for an answer, at least not immediately.

"It's very strange this thing," said an exasperated Serafino Ruperto, spokesman for the Nexus polling organization.

A minute after polling stations closed, state TV and media mogul Berlusconi's own private networks broadcast Nexus exit polls showing center-left leader Prodi garnering between 50 percent to 54 percent of the vote in the parliamentary election, compared to 45-to-49 percent for Berlusconi's conservative bloc.

Forty-five minutes later, another Nexus poll confirmed that.

(snip)

link: http://www.fox23news.com/news/world/story.aspx?content_id=0AAA9311-ABC6-44FF-B0EA-4A613AA2306E

[Vincardog]

1. What kind of vote counting machines did they use? Exit Polls work

everywhere except where the Black Boxes are at work.

[skipos]

27. Exit polls have been off in many elections, even in the early 90s

There is a lot of analysis of this stuff online. There are a lot of people who think exit polls are always accurate, and it isn't true.

[400Years]

28. are you making a baseless claim or can you back that up?

[madokie]

29. Yes I want to see the proof too.

[skipos]

31. Are you asking because you really want to know? Or are you just

looking to fight? Most DUers get really angry when you point out past instances of exit polls being off, and there are quite a few of them. If people believe 2004 and/or 2000 was stolen that is fine, but anyone who thinks that exit polls are infallible probably hasn't done any research into the matter.

Here is one article about this issue.
http://www.hfienberg.com/clips/exitpolls.htm

I have others somewhere on my computer, but I am not going to take the time to dig them up unless you are really interested.

[400Years]

32. I want to see an article written before Nov. 7th 2000.

It is easy for someone to retroactively make this claim.

[annabanana]

2. yeah, OK fox.... it was faulty exit polls

sure...
just like '04

dicks

[TomInTib]

3. Same thing that went "wrong" in exit polling in the US..

electronic voting.

[bullimiami]

4. WHERE THE EXIT POLLS ARE WRONG SOMEONE IS TAMPERING

THE VOTES.

Simple yet true. The news media wont admit it because it implicates the US election system.

[valerief]

5. And, more specifically, it implicates the winners of the elections. n/t

[arcos]

6. Not necessarily true, exit polls have been failing worldwide lately... nt

[NYC]

8. When the exit polls and the votes don't match, how do we know

which one is wrong?

[arcos]

16. Well, the votes are the ones that actually matter...

You have to make sure that they are actually counted... if not, why have voting at all?

[NYC]

18. Joseph Stalin said

It's not the votes that count; it's who counts the votes.

[arcos]

21. Right, but the issue should be resolved with the actual votes...

Not with polls.

I simply cannot understand why US citizens accept political operatives such as Secretaries of State counting the votes.

[NYC]

22. What are you talking about?

[arcos]

23. Vote counting...

Political operatives shouldn't be counting the votes like they do in the USA, where I think concern about exit polls may make more sense.

I don't know exactly who counts the votes in Italy, but irregularities are scarce. In cases like this, I certainly tend to think that exit polls failed, and not that someone is messing with the counting. Now, if this were Florida or Ohio....

[NYC]

26. I hope Italy has an honest vote count.

I have no confidence in it here.

[TexasLawyer]

9. weird

Formerly very accurate exit polling started to go haywire when DRE voting machines came on the scene. Wonder why?

[arcos]

15. I can remember several elections where it failed...

As I mentioned below, Bolivia last December... Costa Rica last February...

In neither country are DRE or other e-voting methods used, and the left wingers did better than expected.

[applegrove]

20. Yes. Exit polls have been failing. That we know for sure.

[bullimiami]

24. take a wild guess why? its not the exit polls.

they never failed in the US until bushco and the new repukes came to prominence. because our elections were clean enough to mostly stay within the MOE. Exit polls have long been an established and accepted way to verify election integrity. Any attempt to explain that away is an excersize in doublethink.

[arcos]

25. You said it... in the US...

The fact that it happens in the US doesn't mean that vote rigging takes place in all other countries in the world. I already names two examples of what I said: Bolivia in December and Costa Rica in February. In both cases, the left wingers, Evo Morales and Ottón Solís, did much better than exit polls said.

[bullimiami]

30. how much better. i didnt see any condemnation from

election observers about either.

[TomInTib]

7. Here is your explanation..

Electronic voting comes to Italy (as do conspiracy theories)
By Eric Sylvers International Herald Tribune

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5, 2006

MILAN When Lucio Stanca, the minister of innovation and technology, began preparing Italy for electronic vote counting a few years ago, there were some naysayers. But test runs for European Parliament elections in 2004 and Italian regional elections in 2005 silenced the critics - temporarily.

With the arrival of the April 9 and 10 general elections, the dress rehearsals are over. Electronic vote tabulating will move beyond the test phase in Italy for the first time: It will be used in four of the nation's 20 regions and will affect a fifth of the population.

Detractors worry that mischief will mar the count, especially if there is a close race in any of the four regions, which have many undecided voters.

Silvio Berlusconi, who has been prime minister for five years, is running against Romani Prodi, a former president of the European Commission who heads a vast coalition of center-left parties.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/04/news/rome.php


Prodi has maintained a lead in opinion surveys but Berlusconi can never be counted out.

Some of Berlusconi's critics have seized on the electronic voting issue as a chance to confront the prime minister

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

12. Which Is Why This WON'T Get Reported Any Further....

It will be silenced as quickly as the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections were silenced here. A few hours of discussion, followed by a quick "spin" explanation by the Italian media....a mere 90% owned by b himself....and it will all go away.

I'm not sure if the Italian media even would have a Keith Olbermann to follow it for a month, like Keith did here, but I doubt it, not that it would matter.

He's here, and so is King george, and there is No Way Out now. It's becoming more hopeless every day.

Can anyone give me a reason to think otherwise? Realistically?

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

10. How Can We Deal?

How is our existence on this planet, for however long each of us has left, supposed to truly mean anything, when it is growing Very Very Very apparent that there is No Way Out.

All the talk we see and discuss 24/7 here at DU, is irrelevant, and just false hope, when we see such Obvious treachery, which goes unchallenged, and results in rewards for those guilty of FRAUD.

I really don't see much future for us as human beings, despite the small percentage of those who care, and would like peace and harmony. It is of no consequence, as there is no way for us to overcome what is in charge of our very existence and freedom in the world in general. And most likely, much of it is a direct result of us in Amerika. Or at least many of our fellow citizens, knowingly or unknowingly contributing to our very demise.

[MADem]

14. Good frigging question!!

When the "official" (i.e. BUY THIS PREDIGESTED BULLSHIT) polls say they are within two points of each other, yet the exit polls show a ten point spread, there's cheatin' goin' on....

[arcos]

11. Exit polls CAN fail...

They failed in Bolivia, and Evo Morales got way more than exit polls predicted.
They failed in Costa Rica, and Oscar Arias barely won the elections by 1% although exit polls gave him up to a 13% lead.

Sure, they are USUALLY right, in most countries, but that doesn't mean they can't fail. Yes, they CAN fail and they actually DO, all the time.

[MADem]

13. Holy shit, that is way outside the margins

Almost a ten point swing??? After claiming they were polling within two points of each other??? 45 at the low end for Sylvio, 54 at the high end for Prodi?

That is just inconceivable, that they could be "off" by that much. Usually, when you cheat, you cheat INSIDE the margins. Nefarious deeds????

If Sylvio wins by five votes and they call it a mandate, we'll know.

He controls the media, after all....

[glitch]

17. If you are stealing the vote of course you'll rig the exit polls too

Not quite so easy estimating how much you'll have to rig, apparently.

Edit to add: synching the polls to match the count must be fairly new technology, still in development. I am sure they'll work the bugs out.

[Junkdrawer]

19. Perhaps the photons from the touch-screen displays temporarily...

scrambles the exit-poll-response reactions of the voters.

Hey - makes as much sense as anything else I've heard.