Posted on 11/04/2004 2:00:15 PM PST by Perdogg
Tuesday's election was marked by some of the most outrageous spinning seen in recent years. "The level of disinformation out there early on was remarkable," says a Republican political consultant in Washington. "Both sides were doing it, but I have to say the Democrats and their operatives did a remarkable job of shaking things up."
Across D.C., consultants were emailing notices to their clients, both political and business, attempting to spin an election day that was barely hours old.
Take political consultant Michael Frisby's email to clients around 11 a.m. Tuesday:
Latest news development is the unprecedented decision by the Bush campaign to add two more Election Day appearances in Ohio. (They had surprisingly scheduled one yesterday). The Kerry camp says the President is responding to election morning reports of heavy voting in Democratic areas of Pennsylvania and Florida, which may make those states difficult for him to now win. By their account, President Bush appears to be making his last stand in Ohio, which he must now win if Florida and Pennsylvania fall to Kerry. One development has occurred in President Bush's favor: it is raining in Ohio. Republicans, particularly former Ohio Gov. Jim Rhodes, repeatedly pulled out close statewide races in Ohio after rain depressed the Democratic turnout in Northern Ohio. The Dems need to come out of the Cleveland-Youngstown area with close to a 150,000 to 200,000 vote lead if they hope to withstand the heavy Republican vote in Southern Ohio. The heavy morning voting in Democratic areas in key states is also spooking the pollsters; traditionally the morning vote trends Republican because that is when white color workers vote; the late afternoon and evening voting has traditionally been more Democratic because that is when blue collar voters come out to vote.
Frisby served as Gen. Wesley Clark's spokesman during his primary run.
In fact, Bush made only one stop in Columbus, Ohio, the single stop that had been on his schedule for at least a day. That stop was intended to balance the rally the Kerry campaign held in Wisconsin on Tuesday morning. There were no two additional stops. Nonetheless, Frisby's memo, which was furiously being emailed about Washington during the lunch hour, fed into the coordinated Kerry and Democratic leaking that was about to take place.
A little after one o'clock, early polling numbers, purportedly from the pool exit polling consortium, began to pop up on the Internet and in e-mails in Washington and around the country.
The early polling numbers are some of the most eagerly anticipated, if highly inaccurate, data on election day, and are widely distributed. Perhaps that was what the Kerry campaign was banking on.
According to at least three sources, one inside the Kerry campaign, and two outside of it, but with ties to senior Kerry advisers, some of the "early polling numbers" were in fact direct reports from Kerry campaign or Democratic Party operatives on the ground in such critical states as Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin. According to a Washington lobbyist with knowledge of the numbers, the numbers were packaged together so as to appear to be exit poll results. They were then scrubbed through several sources to land in the lap of sympathetic bloggers who these operatives believed would put the numbers up with little question.
Some of the numbers claimed to be exit polling data that showed Kerry with a 8-1 voter ratio. As soon as the numbers hit the Internet, panic set in.
"It was awful," says a Republican House staffer. "You just felt sick when you saw the numbers."
Within an hour, the real exit poll numbers began to leak out, and while they were considerably better for Bush, they continued to show him lagging three to four percentage points behind the Democrats across the major electoral map, with a two-point disadvantage in the national, popular vote.
"Actually when the real numbers came out, they made us feel a bit better," says the House staffer, who was on the road in Nevada working for the Bush campaign. "Compared to what we had seen earlier, it made us think we had a clear shot, since we knew the early numbers tended to be bad for Republicans in the past."
Still, the disinformation campaign spread a pall over Republicans in Washington for several hours. By 3 p.m., senior Bush campaign operatives were putting out word that things were looking considerably better for Bush in Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Florida. By 6 p.m., some Washington insiders were already hearing that Florida and Ohio were winners for Bush, based on campaign internals. From there, the road to victory was much smoother
dirtboy this is the article Rush was talking about ....and the one I highlighted on the other thread.
According to at least three sources, one inside the Kerry campaign, and two outside of it, but with ties to senior Kerry advisers, some of the "early polling numbers" were in fact direct reports from Kerry campaign or Democratic Party operatives on the ground in such critical states as Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin. According to a Washington lobbyist with knowledge of the numbers, the numbers were packaged together so as to appear to be exit poll results. They were then scrubbed through several sources to land in the lap of sympathetic bloggers who these operatives believed would put the numbers up with little question.
Someone needs to rot in jail over this..
Pollstergeist! A very clever neologism.
They used the internet against us...
And the leftist's say voters that vote for Bush are idiots?
Only against the ones who believed them.
Drudge is claiming 36 million people viewed those exit polls he posted ....how many of those didn't vote because of this dirty trick.
Thanks for the ping. This could dwarf Rathergate.
I have been utterly dismayed by the post election coverage. President Bush and the republicans have broken all sorts of historical records, but it seems that people keep downplaying it or worse. I noticed that when I switched from Fox News to other networks, such as CNN, that they only showed Kerry’s concession (highly praised) while not showing Bush’s speech added to the fact that the correspondents were visibly upset and appeared to be mourning Kerry’s defeat.
Kerry made an odd comment that morning that Bush shouldn't contest the results...... he knew about it.
The left / msm has done it's best to sway and control America, yet it's the rest of the world falls for it.
This was a well planned operation......they knew the exact locations of the polling stations to have their fake voters be at. They had friendly bloggers filter these results so they couldn't be traced back to the vermin who planted them. Then got a willing press to run with them.
I'm happy to see this written. Dick Morris was talking about it, and I happened to agree that someone played with these numbers.
It is reminiscent of 2000, when we heard because they announced FL early, many voters didn't bother to vote. It is merely a reminder that we can't trust the majority of "polls" - whether they are exit polls, Zogby, a compilation on Drudge, etc.
Thank God the majority of America paid no attention and voted, or we'd be living with the results of their latest dirty game.
I'd be interested in knowing where KJL on National Review got her "exit polls" tallies.. she caused a great deal of furor on FR.
So the leaker was from the Kerry Camp huh??
Not that many, I would presume. I'm a 10 hour a day talk show listener (Ingraham, Rush, Medved, Hewitt) and I haven't heard one call from a GOP voter, the opposite of the Clymers' Florida call in 2000. I think this is due to the fact that the exit poll fraud was caught and countered fairly quickly and the GOP GOTV effort which did not blink.
As to the source of the early fraudulent numbers, it appears that it was the Kerry Campaign and/or DNC. NRO writer Lopez told Hewitt she got hers from a "campaign". Also, Wonkette started it and she is on their side. I do hope that there is a criminal investigation if there were crimes, as suggested by Dick Morris. It was the left's last hurrah (the al Qaaqa surprise being forced to be sprung early) and methinks the Rats are going to be out of power for a long time. Hehehehe....
She let slip a "campaign" in speaking with Hugh Hewitt the afternoon of the election...
In short, it seems like an incredible political risk for absolutely no return.
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