Exit Polls Conspiracy Theory

I would like to present to you my thoughts about the Exit Polls debacle on Election Day using shear plain old common sense.

The bottom line of the facts is that the Exit Polls do not match up with the raw vote data. This is impossible (according to Dick Morris who says that in all his years, he's never seen exit polls to be wrong. Exit Polls historically have a margin of error of about 1%. The exit polls show Kerry winning PA by 9%... he won by less than 1%. This is one example... there are many, many more.)

Juan Williams, FoxNews (around 8:00pm): The Exit Polls are always reliable. For there to be this much of a difference means something's wrong. The Diebold (the company that makes the touch screen voting machines) machines may have been tampered with. Brit: Are you really saying that you'd rather believe the exit polls than the raw vote data? Juan: Yes

Susan Estrich (during her segment with the FoxNews panel, she repeated this same line at least half a dozen times): Either ALL the exit polls are wrong, which is highly unlikely, or George Bush is going to lose. Brit: But the raw vote data doesn't seem to be matching up. Susan: Again, either ALL the exit polls are wrong, which is highly unlikely, or George Bush is going to lose.

For some reason, both Juan and Susan were defending the validity of the exit polls and wanted us to believe the exit polls before we believed the raw vote data.

By 9pm, FoxNews Decision Desk had thrown out the Exit Polls and based their state-by-state projections solely on the raw vote data and historical vote data because of the massive discrepancies between the exit polls and the raw vote data.

As we all know, around 2pm on Tuesday, the "early exit polls" were leaked to Drudge.

Within an hour of being leaked on Drudge, the blogger's had gotten a hold of it and the word spread. Talk radio got a hold of it (including Rush) and Republicans across the country became depressed. Even the Bush Campaign (admitting such on Wednesday) was somber.

Within an hour after that, bloggers had gotten to the exit poll data and found that 56% of those polled were women. This may have be a statistic that was easy to find... maybe even included in the leak itself.

Later in the evening, Susan Estrich was faced with this "56% Women" information but her defense of the exit polls continued with "Maybe that just means more women are voting." Again wanting us to believe that the exit polls are accurate and that the raw vote data wasn't.

By 4:30pm that day, most Republicans seemed to believe that the exit polls were leaked in an attempt to depress Republicans and get them to think that the election was over and that there was no use in voting thus suppressing Republican turnout.

My problem with this is that if any Democratic leaning group wanted to leak a story, I highly doubt that Matt Drudge would be the first one they call.

The counter-argument to that is, if the intent was to get the leaked information out to Republicans, then Drudge is exactly who you would want it leaked to. Maybe both points are correct. I go on.

Exit Poll horserace data is NEVER reported before the counting of actual votes. Exit Polls are used to provide turnout and demographical data to each new organization so that each news organization can make their own state-by-state projections over the course of the evening as to who won which states. Reporting exit poll data as some sort of early projection on a winner is never done, if not just for journalist integrity (not that CBS and the NYTimes fall into that category.) Conclusion: this leak itself is very suspicious.

Furthermore, leaking erroneous data six hours before the first actual results are counted doesn't make any sense. The leakers of such data would have to assume that internet bloggers, the same ones who caught the CBS forged documents within hours of them being unveiled, would also find problems with the data. Such findings would make its way to the Republicans the same exact way the original leak did. The exit poll data would be debunked before rush hour. If anything, that would enrage Republicans and make them vote more, not less.

Today (Wednesday), Dick Morris was on O'Reilly. Dick said something that really caught my ear and all of sudden a light bulb went off for me. My Conspiracy Theory formed.

Dick Morris: Exit Polls are never wrong. They've been used for 30 years and I've never seen them be wrong. For them to be wrong here shows that they were juiced. Exit Polls are so accurate that when I observe foreign elections, we use exit polls as a way of confirming the actual vote to make sure that the gov't didn't tamper with the vote.

Wait... come again? So in other countries, Exit Polls are used as a basis on which to challenge the validity of an election? Isn't that interesting.

Notice too that Dick Morris is taking the opposite side of the argument that Juan and Susan made. Here, Dick is saying that we should believe the raw data before we believe the exit polls. That conclusion should seem to most people as the appropriate first conclusion to make. So why would Juan and Susan jump to the opposite conclusion first?

Here's another question... if the Exit Polls are wrong... and they've never been wrong before... why are they wrong now?

According to the head of Opinion Dynamics who was also on O'Reilly tonight (I can't remember his name, but it was a Greek name), said that some firm (Edison Thomas Group or something like that) is the polling firm used by the media to conduct the exit polls nationwide. They're the same one that has always been used.

If one were to suspect that the exit polls were tampered with or juiced, could they point to Edison as the culprit? Obviously, Edison won't be used next time around. For them to be this wrong shows that they can't ever be used again. Why would Edison, who's earned a paycheck from the networks for decades, shoot themselves in the foot and intentionally compile bogus exit polls thus getting themselves fired? I don't think they would. They've never been wrong before... they know what they're doing. But they were wrong this time.

Maybe the reporters of the leaked data were wrong and misreported the actual data? Nope... checking with the actual exit poll data shows that indeed the reporting of the exit poll data was fine. The data itself was erroneous.

It's highly doubtful that Edison would intentionally compile bogus data. So the only option left is what Dick Morris suspects... the polling places were juiced with Democrats. There's no other way to explain it other than that more Democrats participated in the exit polls than are statistically normal.... even after a professional polling firm like Edison accounts for such statistics (they've never been wrong before... they know what they're doing.)

The polling firm knows what county they're in. They know the normal historical demographic. And they know the normal turnout. They adjust for these factors when compiling the data and have gotten very good at doing so. They weight such statistics to make sure they are getting an even sample and giving reliable data. This is what they do and they're very good at it to the tune of a 1% margin of error.

So the only answer is that there must have been a statistically abnormal number of democrats at the exit polling places. The number of democrats participating in exit polls must have been so skewed that it way overcompensated for the usual weighting of historical statistics. Mathematically, that's the only option left.

So basically, on this fact only, we deduce that democrat operatives flooded republican counties and volunteered to be exit polled. Thus skewing the numbers without Edison knowing the difference. That's a scenario they wouldn't and couldn't accommodate.

Now... why? Why would democrats WANT the exit polls to be wrong? And then, why would two well known Democrat media figures DEFEND the validity of the very same exit polls?

If democrat operatives flooded the exit poll booths, they were obviously very well organized seeing as how the 2pm leak showed Kerry winning every single close state except for West Virginia. This means that the juicing of the exit polls occurred nationwide, not just 'here and there". You need a very well organized effort to accomplish such a thing.

But the, why would these well organized democrat operatives leak this bogus exit poll data to Drudge?

Whoever organized the juicing of the exit polls wanted the exit polls to be wrong... and wanted the fact that they were wrong to remain unknown until late in the evening or even late into the week.

The goal was to make sure that the "never-wrong" exit polls and the raw vote data were different. But they wanted this 'realization' of a massive discrepancy between the Exit Polls and raw vote to surface during the evening while the vote totals were coming in... not at 2pm.

They wanted the the exit polls and raw votes to be so different that the only course of action would be for the media to call into question the validity of the raw vote data... even if just on it's face and even if just for a few hours (or days.)

My theory is that the goal was for the raw votes to start coming in around 8pm, and then for 'someone' to say "Hey, this isn't even close to the exit polls. SOMETHING is wrong. SOMETHING smells fishy. This could be evidence of some kind of fraud. This needs to investigated."

Thus, the validity of the election would be called into doubt. An official investigation would have to be launched. And by the time anyone learned the truth, the mere suggestion of massive fraud by the Republicans would already be out to and ingrained in the general public via the cooperating media.

This could then be grounds for massive lawsuits at the most, or at the least, solid grounds to make the claim that the election is... again... illegitimate.

I am inclined to believe that that someone who disagreed with this Operation Juice plan leaked the story to Drudge... along with the "56% women" statistic, to make sure that by the time the polls closed and the votes started coming in, there was already solid doubt about the exit polls. The 2pm leak caused the whole Operation Juice plan to break down because it offered more than enough time for the exit polls' validity to be questioned and debunked. Whoever leaked this was either an incredibly stupid operative... or a dissenting operative who hoped that the data would be debunked in time so that when the discrepancies between the exit poll data and the raw vote data came in, the exit polls would already be in doubt thus ensuring that the raw vote data would be believed first.

I believe that after the 2pm leak, the organizers of the Operation Juice had to backtrack and do some damage control in an attempt to make sure the plan would still work. They had to make sure the talking points got out including: exit polls are never wrong and we should believe exit polls before we believe the raw vote.

Hence... Juan Williams and Susan Estrich defending the exit polls and claiming their own conspiracy theories on national television in the midst of the reporting of a federal election... thus attempting to call into question the validity of the election and laying the foundation for calling for an investigation.

Juan and Susan were either in on it, knew of it, or at the very least, got the talking points memo. But somehow they knew they had to defend the validity of the exit polls.

Exit Polls Favoring Kerry: 'There's Something Very Wrong' Susan Jones, CNSNews.com Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2004 http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/11/3/75739.shtml

Sabato 'Steamed' About Exit Polls Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2004 10:38 a.m. EST http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/11/3/105442.shtml

Dick Morris Comments Throught the Night http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/11/2/204250.shtml

EXIT-POLL OUTRAGE By DICK MORRIS November 3, 2004 http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/31590.htm

Maybe this will help:

""Mitofsky International is a survey research company founded by Warren J. Mitofsky in 1993. Its primary business is conducting exit polls for major elections around the world. It does this work exclusively for news organizations. Mitofsky has directed exit polls and quick counts since 1967 for almost 3,000 electoral contests in United States, Mexico, Russia and the Philippines.

"From 1967 to 1990, Mitofsky was executive director of the CBS News election and survey unit, and was an executive producer of its election night broadcasts. He conducted the first exit polls for CBS in 1967, and developed the projection and analysis system used successfully by CBS and Voter News Service. He started the CBS News/New York Times Poll in 1975 and directed it for CBS for its first 15 years."

The very fact these people are connected to CBS/NYT .. I can connect the dots.

With all of the bogus information about who voted for whom, basically saying the exit polls were no good, then is not all of the other information the talking heads keep talking about also bogus? I don't believe there can be any reliable information obtained from the exit polls. In essenced, all we really know is that President Bush won and John Kerry lost.

This influenced the stock market and sports futures markets.

Somebody made a ton selling short.

Or watching it tank then quickly buying in.

What big money guy with manipulation history was involved in campaign 2004?

George Soros?

Oh - Soros is above tampering in politics and money for profit!

Make a good book.

I think the exit polls were preloaded with biased pollies. This was a criminal attempt to influence an election. It should be investigate. The guilty should be prosecuted.

It looks like some DUmmies are cooking up their own little conspiracy theory. Need some bright Freeper to bust them early.

http://www.newstarget.com/002076.html

Dman, gotta say this sounds plausible. Someone obviously cooked the books, and your theory makes sense. I saw Susan and Juan do their thing, and they both were very careful to bring it up several times.

Anyone who spent any time at all reading posts at DU would discover how delusional and radical the posters are. They can't even get two words out without a four letter expletive peppering the sentence.

I wonder if Americans,in great numbers,just determined that they had been manipulated long enough by the media and politicians and decided "turnabout is fair play". So they simply,looked at the question as one that really wasn't anyone elses' business and justified their wrong answer as a little white lie that the intrusive interviewers deserved.I think it was the collective unconcious at work.

Urge the elected politicians to formally investigate. There is much more to find! I smell union election tactics being applied to disenfranchise (i.e., suppres) Republican voters. It will be significant to know who blew the whistle on what was happening - who gave it to Drudge.

I think it was simple, the specific booth in which the exit polls were to take place was leaked to the Dems, who packed their voters to those booth to skew to exit poll data.

The goal was 2 prong. 1) Have the data leaded early to discourage Rep turnout. 2) Had the election been closer than it actually was, have the discrepency be the reason to cherry pick and demand recounts in any state in which the vote was close.

Mort Kondrake on Fox suggested the same thing yesterday... that the polling locations were identified by democrats and the exit polls were "juiced" by flooding the polls early in the day to influence the exit polls. Nothing illegal about it, but it is a bit sinister. These actions serve only to poison such polls in the future.

What if Republicans intentionally lied about supporting Kerry and thereby supressed the Rats' steal the vote efforts?

One of the things missing in the Rats' Ohio recount efforts was the emotional cover or justification. This is the "We've been wronged because XXXXXX, and therefore we need recounts" that the butterfly ballots provided in Florida.

We know in Colorado, the Rats' had plans to invent challenges amid allegations of voter irregularities and intimidation. Maybe the favorable exit poll data supressed these efforts as well?

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