exit polls....is the info here correct??? if so, how can they be derided??

[bobbieinok]

--in 2000, exit polls were correct for all states except for the messed up vote in FL

--this year, exit polls are being favorably used to support claims of amount of youth vote ('low'), amount of support of blacks and women for W ('high"), etc

--this year, exit polls are being favorably used to support claims of what were the voters' primary concerns ('moral values')

and VERY IMPORTANT, IF TRUE

--exit polls are used around the world as an extremely valid check of the fairness and accuracy of the actual vote

[bobbieinok]

1. and why does GOP want to do away with exit polls?????

[Starfury]

2. 'cause they're so darn inconvenient when....

...you're trying to fix an election! :eyes:

"The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy," Dr. Steven F. Freeman says:

"As much as we can say in social science that something is impossible, it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote counts in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error."

http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/The_unexplained_exit_poll_discrepancy_v00k.pdf

[newyawker99]

9. Hi Starfury!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Roger_Otip]

3. georgia election overturned by exit polls

steven freeman mentioned how in georgia (ex soviet republic) last year the government claimed victory but the exit polls showed the opposition had won:

"Last fall, international foundations sponsored an exit poll in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia during a parliamentary election. On Election Day, the pollsters projected a victory for the main opposition party. When the sitting government counted the votes, however, it announced that its own slate of candidates had won. Supporters of the opposition stormed the parliament, and the president, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, resigned under pressure from the United States and Russia."
http://www.legjoints.com/AmericanElectionFraud/the-unexplained-exit_1.pdf

here's a wikipedia page on that election:
http://www.internet-encyclopedia.org/wiki.php?title=Georgia_legislative_election%2C_2003

could be worth collecting other examples of where exit polls have been used to verify or undermine results.

[Roger_Otip]

4. venezuela recall election results inconsistent with exit polls

this from an article written September 8th 2004:

"In the days following the recall election, stories began to surface that the election results were inconsistent with polling results conducted before the election, and with exit polls conducted on election day. Interestingly, Krugman argued in his alarmist column that exit polls should be used as a check on the honesty of the results on election day, to see whether the fix was in. If for instance, an exit poll showed Kerry ahead on Election Day in Florida, but Bush won the state in the actual tally on November 2nd, then we would know, Krugman told us, that the results were suspect."
http://www.vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/200409081135

[m berst]

5. thanks

Thanks for alerting us to that possible debunking angle. I am going to dig up that story.

The Venezuelan supposed exit poll discrepancy would make an excellent talking point for the WH. I wonder if there isn't a lot more to this story. Anyone else here remember more about it? If I remember the company that did the exit polls in Venezuela had tight connections to the RNC and did shoddy work. At the time I remember thinking that the sstory was weird and made no sense. Perhaps the RNC was preparing for using it in this fray?

(All speculation based on incomplete memory and spurred by suspicion of the previous post)

[Roger_Otip]

8. venezuela poll was dodgy

there's a page here - http://www.zonalatina.com/Zldata373.htm - which goes into the methodology they used. seems the US company that did the venezuela poll had links to an anti-chavez group. since republicans might use this example to criticize the validity of exit polls (which would be hypocritical since many of them at the time they were using it as proof that chavex rigged the election) it's definitely worth looking into.

[m berst]

7. Venezuelan exit poll

<snip>
Critics of the exit poll have questioned how it was conducted because officials have said Penn, Schoen & Berland worked with a U.S.-funded Venezuela group that the Chavez government considers hostile.

Penn, Schoen & Berland had members of Sumate, a Venezuelan group that helped organize the recall initiative, do the fieldwork for the poll, election observers said.

Roberto Abdul, a Sumate official, acknowledged in a telephone interview that the firm "supervised" an exit poll carried out by Sumate. Abdul added that at least five exit polls were completed for the opposition, with all pointing to a Chavez victory.

Abdul said Sumate which has received a $53,400 grant from the National Endowment for Democracy, which in turn receives funds from the U.S. Congress did not use any of those funds to pay for the surveys.

The issue is potentially explosive because even before the referendum, Chavez himself cited Washington's funding of Sumate as evidence that the Bush administration was financing efforts to oust him an allegation U.S. officials deny.

Venezuelan Minister of Communications Jesse Chacon said it was a mistake for Sumate to be involved in the exit poll because it might have skewed the results.

"If you use an activist as a pollster, he will eventually begin to act like an activist," Chacon told The Associated Press.
<snip>

Link coming...

on edit -
U.S. Poll Firm in Hot Water in Venezuela
The Associated Press
Thursday 19 August 2004

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/082004W.shtml

[codeo]

6. a million times before

this has probably been said a million times before, but it's interesting that the media is all over the "moral values" result from exit polls, while it pays little or no attention to the exit poll/ "actual" poll irregularities.

[newyawker99]

10. Hi codeo!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast: