Posted on 11/03/2004 7:04:25 PM PST by quidnunc
By now it is well-known and a part of the 2004 election lore how the exit polls by the major television networks were wrong.
Likely this faux pas will assume its place among wartime stories alongside the mistaken calls on Florida’s vote for one side and then for the other in the 2000 election. But the inaccuracies of the media’s polling deserve more scrutiny and investigation.
Exit polls are almost never wrong. They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots but never do and by substituting actual observation for guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different parts of the state.
So reliable are the surveys that actually tap voters as they leave the polling places that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries. When I worked on Vicente Fox’s campaign in Mexico, for example, I was so fearful that the governing PRI would steal the election that I had the campaign commission two U.S. firms to conduct exit polls to be released immediately after the polls closed to foreclose the possibility of finagling with the returns. When the polls announced a seven-point Fox victory, mobs thronged the streets in a joyous celebration within minutes that made fraud in the actual counting impossible.
But this Tuesday, the networks did get the exit polls wrong. Not just some of them. They got all of the Bush states wrong. So, according to ABC-TV’s exit polls, for example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Iowa, all of which Bush carried. The only swing state the network had going to Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10 points.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1265150/posts
Of course they want to distance themselves from it, and the rest of the old media wants to bury it, and pretend that the poll fairy just dropped them out of the sky, and none of them were responsible for it. They were just trying another Dan Rather "wag the dog" tactic. It didn't work.
Military discharge papers. The number of the form is DD214. It tells you the circumstances of separation from the service. Anything other than "honorable" is not good.
always a conspiracy...
I disagree with Dick Morris' theory/opinion. If for some reason I din't plan to vote (broken back?, eyes gouged out by insane cat?), I would run to the polling place to cast my vote if I heard my candidate was losing.
Oregon doesn't have polling booths. They ALL vote absentee. Hawaii was always a longshot.
"Dick Morris: Those Faulty Exit Polls Were Sabotage"
Given Morris' uncanny ability to restate the obvious, I am of the mind that he will continue to have a successful post-toe sucking career in political punditry.
Another legacy of 2004 is that I will never see the word "blather" without picturing danny boy.
This will be flipped by the floppers.
I don't buy the argument that the polls were tilted Democrate intentionally for the purpose of supressing Republican turnout in the later time zones. If that were the case, why didn't the MSM finish the job and call FL, VA, and the Carolinas for Kerry right away after closing as the exit polls indicated? Even if they had to reverse their calls later, they would have been covered by blaming the false calls on the bad poll results. And there would have been several nets who would have made the same early calls, as they all supposedly were looking at the same poll data. After a CBS called VA, then the others would have been under more pressure to agree and keep up. They could have influenced another POTUS election and blamed the bad info. Do you really think Dan Rather has any shame left to display by now? No way.
Their bias was probably involved, but only that it lead them to imcompetantly conduct the polls, (and possibly find a little of what they hoped and wanted to find). I don't think it was an intentional scam operation.
They may have screwed up the method of selecting the voters that they interviewed. They may have selected too many at the wrong time of day (Do more Dems vote early and more Reps vote late? Maybe yes if Rove's GOTV phone bank reminds a lot of voters to head out the door with a 5 P.M. phone call). They may have collected too many samples in urban areas and overlooked the higher R turnout in the rural locations.
Their biggest error was going ahead and using the data without checking it or re-weighting it so that it was representative (Male/Female, Young/Old, Ethnic/religious background, etc.) of the voting population as a whole.
They screwed up big time, but at least they had the sense to hold off on calling those expected Bush states for Kerry.
And I hope we voters have finally learned to never EVER let some rumored reports of our candidate being up or down affect our decision to actually get out and cast our vote.
I got one of those preprinted absentee ballot request you are talking about. It was a great idea!!
But, I tossed it out, I already requested one.
Lately he's been used more than a towel boy at a bath house. That's his inclination.
I think the consensus is melba.
The Brentwood of Knoxville....but Maryville is right down the road.
;>)
You may not agree with Morris on this, but I do! He probably knows every dirty trick in the book after working for Clinton.
Had an email around 4:00 from a source telling me to ignore exit polls because they were wrong. I was on my way to get ready for a Watch Party so I didn't get the email. BC'04 knew then the exit polls were wrong and tried to warn the media but it didn't work.
One exit poll being off I can understand but 10 -- No Way! This was just one more attack by the media to depress vote and give the election to Kerry.
They have to say that. Bush fooled them. The machines were rigged. Karl Rove got Osama bin Laden to release the video a few days before the election.
There are a few things they can't admit:
1. People understand them.
2. The majority of voters rejected them.
The KNOW they are correct. Therefore, if they lost the election, there must be some other reason. Let's not be too condemning of them. I see some reflections of myself during the Clinton elections over there. I still can't believe he got in the WH twice.
Roger that. I was over there and they were screeching about exit polls being TRUTH and MASSIVE FRAUD because the tallies were radically different, Rove and Diebold being the masterminds.
And something about seven million votes disappearing off their TV screens in an eyeblink, and so much fraud, but nobody will do anything about it.
It is so sad to see people in such pain. OTOH, if they KNOW it's fraud, be like Larry Klayman and sue the RNC or state or county or local precinct. Make a difference! (But it is fantasy, so all they will do is whine for four more years).
What I heard from Michael Barone was that Kerry had a mole in the media that was collecting the data. The campaign sent "voters" to answer the poll questions with fake answers.
He said he had no proof.
A few operatives planted the polls. Then they watched what happened. They knew Drudge would leak it. He's far more concerned about being first than being correct. Once Drudge got it, everyone had it. It was part of the "big secret that wasn't supposed to be leaked", so everyone who got it immediately thought of themselves a a "media insider."
"Vanity is my favorite sin"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.