Exit polls are much maligned, especially in the wake of the debacle of this year’s exit polling. But what if it wasn’t completely wrong. The late exit poll returns were not as off as the early returns. And the exit polls have typically been accurate in the past. Why were they so off this time?
Brother of Ugarte has some thoughts about this year’s voting in Ohio:
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Yeah, but here is the practical problem. The exit polls were not just wrong in Ohio and Florida, they were wrong about the popular vote throughout the country. While rigging something in Ohio and Florida might have been possible, some sort of 2% massaging across the country I don’t see.
Also, the initial exit polls had Kerry up 50-49 in Ohio and the actual results were well within that margin of error. Same deal in Florida, though the margin of error is stretched a little more there. And I saw an exit poll that was 58-40 for Kerry in Minn. which was obviously nutty, yet still out there.
Further, Bush fairly steadily held a lead in the pre-election polls ... it looked like Kerry closed the gap some the last two days, and even took a couple leads, but the last two weeks of the election Bush led by 1 to 6 % in almost every poll.
Also, we were seeing raw exit poll data. My understanding is that that raw data is plugged into formulas that try to account for known flaws in the exit polling—so that is another possible factor.
Finally, combine that with the fact that voter turnout was not nearly as large as hoped for, especially amongst young and Kerry voters (and we didn’t want, but got big wacko right wing turnout) and the results, unfortunately, make a lot of sense. America is populated by a majority of idiots.
All hail King Bush (cause he ain’t gonna act like no President)—he thinks he just got coronated.
Keep pushing the crazy, I love it. That’s right, there was fraud on the level of banana republics and Kerry really won in a landslide. Or, the exit polls could’ve been faked and leaked by Kerry operatives.
Or the country really is populated by a bunch of stupid or shortsighted or narrow minded or greedy or religious zealot fucks, which IS why Bush won.
Ok, keep pushing the insults on the electorate. THAT’S going to work great too. People LOVE being called names. It’s the best way to get them to vote the way you want.
Yes, Signor. Please, do not insult the tens of millions of Republican voters who visit this site religiously (heh!). You are not helping our cause!!!
I’m not pushing the crazy. I don’t really think the results will change, but I do think it is worthwhile to check. The Republic will survive closer scrutiny of the vote counting.
At the very least the counting will expose flaws in the technology even if they aren’t election shifting flaws.
when it happens to democrats, its called ballot stuffing. when it happens to republicans, its called computer error (or the hand of god. maybe he really does want a theocracy):
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=694&e=1&u=/ap/voting_problems
