In August, exit polling figured in a bitter fight in Venezuela over what amounted to competing landslides for and against a recall of the sitting president, Hugo Chávez, a socialist with ties to Fidel Castro.
The recall's proponents sponsored an exit poll, supervised by Penn, Schoen & Berland, an American firm whose clients have included Bill Clinton and Michael Bloomberg. Sometime before the polls closed on Aug. 15, Penn, Schoen reported that 59 percent of Venezuelan voters had said yes to throwing the president out of office.
A few hours later, the official count, by an election commission under Mr. Chávez's control, declared him the winner, with 58 percent of the total. Both the Organization of American States and the Carter Center, the Atlanta-based human rights organization founded by Jimmy Carter, said that their observers had seen no irregularities at the polls. In response to the exit poll, they called for a random audit at selected polling stations and again found nothing suspicious.
Mr. Schoen acknowledged in an interview that the poll's field workers were recruited by a group that helped organize the recall, but he said the volunteers had been trained to conduct the poll professionally, and that his firm would have no reason to put its reputation at risk by participating in a fraudulent poll. The recall's supporters continue to believe the election was stolen.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/weekinreview/17plis.html?_r=2&fta=y&oref=slogin&oref=sloginDIDN'T PSB GET CAUGHT DOING SOMETHING UNETHICAL FOR THEIR CLIENT?
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