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 ...
I was hoping that we had exit polls in NC. I hate those things I was was going to lie on every question...
Michael Barone wasn't quite as direct, but he said today he suspected that the locations of the pollsters was leaked to the Democrats who could then call known Democrat households and get their voters to the polls so they could be interviewed. Thus, skewing the results intentionally.
It was the AP. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000670974
Here is the money quote from that article:
The AP will have stringers calling in results from each of the nation's 4,600 counties. Hundreds of people will be assigned to input the information into computers, and others will monitor the systems to guard against problems. In all, a total of about 5,500 people will be working on AP's vote count on election night.
"We have real confidence in the reliability of the AP's vote count," said Kathleen Carroll, AP senior vice president and executive editor. "We also have enormous confidence in the journalists in the field and the bureau chiefs who will be using the data and their experience when they call winners in the race."
Burnt.
Yes, I saw it. And by the end of the night, when according to the networks, all time had stopped and no more calling of states and races would be done even though votes were still coming in and obvious winners were right there in front of our faces, I was channel-surfing and network after network were crucifying the exit polls and to a T, they claimed in unison 'WE didn't leak em, not our fault, yadda'.
Anyone listening to the last half-hour of Rush also heard the gist of this.
It seems to me a few months ago I read that the actual questioning at the precincts for these exit polls would be handled by the AP. I remember thinking at the time I would not trust them. But I have found no reference to them in any of these stories. Am I nuts? Were they not involved?
Yea, Rush said that they were the ones tasked to do the "exit polls", said we should watch them to make sure they don't cheat. They are not reliable, ruiters is worse.
If you read the whole article, I believe Moris adequately explains why this could not be the problem if the poll takers were not new to the task. I believe this team had the experience to know how to do it correctly.
I subscribe to the idea that somehow the poll locations got out to the Kerry friendly and they dumped phony (non-voters) into the places with the intention of volunteering to be interviewed. To prove this, some of them need to come forward, and if they are highly motivated to cheat, they will likely be highly motivated to be quiet. but this is likely what happened. Fortunately the electorate did not bite.
I heard that too.
Dude, where you from? I'm here in Farragut, big time W country. It wasn't really a contest locally, major W push!
No, but they should all be shot, for the crimes of yelling Fire in a crowded theatre during the most important election in our lifetimes.
No question, the exit polls were flawed; but this could go both ways. Persons could decide to heck with it and stay home, or they could say, well I'm going to try to make a difference. All in all, virtually no one pays any attention to exit polls in the first place, regardless of their accuracy, because most of the time, they're going to the polls first thing in the morning or after work and don't even know about them--the just go to the polls.
From what I could tell looking at the net at work, most exit polling was done between 10AM and 3PM EDT on the east coast. This means the vast majority of voters were at work and not paying attention to the polling.
Thus, I doubt this was deliberate, but more a function of one or more of the following:
1) daytime exit polls over-sample layabouts, unemployed, slackers, and college students (often all rolled into one).
2) shills were placed at or near exit pollsters to deliberately skew the outcome.
3) most exit polling was issue-based rather than outright candidate preference, therefore the question was typically whether the war in iraq, terrorism, or economics was most important (not asking about morals at all). Plugging the responses into preconceived notions of how the answers would correlate to candidate preference, a wholly magical voter preference was recorded, then reported.
Testing ground.
You don't think this issue will get buried along with Kerry's upcoming obscurity?
1. Fraud
2. 2 years of a MSM smear campaign
3. And phony exit polls that sent Bushies across the country into a tail spin on election day.
We and the President should be proud. Let's continue to work so that these things don't happen next time around. Let's make some heads roll over this exit poll nonsense.
" The theory was, get as many Pubbies voting early as possible--just in case."
But that strategy is just BEGGING for another 2000 type election.
ABsentees are not counted till days after the election (if at all) and it leaves states haning in the balance for days, and can be challanged by wolf pack lawyers. Lawyers can't challenge competantly cast ballots (the volume is just too great).
It far better to just outlaw exit polling. And untill it is outlawed, this year's results serve as a perfect example for future voters - that the exit polls must be ignored. PERIOD.
backfire?
Totally. In two ways. First, we are wise to this stunt. In fact I think this was the major driver behind the record turn out- that is, after four years of pResident select, and Gore won the popular vote crap, wild horses could not keep up from the polls.
Second, it allowed the libby media to get all giddy thinking they won it. then we got the treat of watching them fall.
thanks fer the laff
This explains why the FOX panel was digging Bush's grave so early after the returns started coming in. They had exit poll figures showing Bush had lost Fla and Ohio but they were not telling us. I'll bet it his Juan really hard when it dawned on him the exit polls were so much blather.
Does anyone know how that CBS investigation went concerning the fake memos? Thought they said it would be quick?? We need to follow up.
Never too early to get ready for 2008.
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