A must read - Brad Blog on Fishy NH vote - He's hot on the case !

[Laura PourMeADrink]

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5530
PLEASE GO DIRECTLY TO LINK SINCE THERE ARE GRAPHS AND CHARTS !!

NH Primary: Pre-Election Polls Wildly Different Than Results Announced for Clinton/Obama
Other Pre-Election Numbers, For Republicans and Rest of Dems, Nearly Dead on the Money...


I'm not sure why Obama would have conceded so soon, given the virtually inexplicable turn of events in New Hampshire tonight.

What's going on here? Before proceeding, I recommend you read the third section of the post I just ran an hour or so ago, concerning the way the ballots are counted in New Hampshire, largely on Diebold optical-scan voting systems, wholly controlled and programmed by a very very bad company named LHS Associates.

Those Diebold op-scan machines are the exact same ones that were hacked in the HBO documentary, Hacking Democracy. See the previous report, as I recommend, which also includes a video of that hack, and footage of the guy who runs LHS Associates.

That said, the the pre-election pollster's numbers (NOTE: that's not Exit Polls, but Pre-Election Polls!) were dead-on, for the most part, on the Republican side, as well as on the Democratic side. Except in the do-or-die (for Hillary) Clinton v. Obama race. I'm watching MSNBC right now, and they all seem to agree that the results, for the moment, defy explanation.

snip
As you'll note, the numbers in Zogby's latest polls, for all but Clinton and Obama, seem to have been dead-on the money for both the Republicans and Democrats. Edwards, for example, was polled at 17% in Zogby's poll, and he received exactly 17% in the MSNB numbers, with 63% of precincts reporting. So are we to believe that only those voters who preferred Obama previously, decided to change to Hillary at the last minute? I suppose so.

This election was regarded as do-or-die for Clinton, after most in the media had already written her off at her "thumpin'" in Iowa. But Tim Russert just agreed with Brokaw and Matthews, that "this was the most stunning upset in the history of politics."

They are already grasping for reasons that this happened: The crying; she found her voice; the woman turned out; oldline Dems showed up, etc. All reminiscent, if you ask me, of "the evangelicals who turned out at the very last minute to vote for Bush in 2004" as the Exit Poll apologists wrote what would become conventional wisdom at the time. (Where did they get that info? The Exit Polls, they'll tell you. The same ones that they will also tell you were wildly wrong on every other count, apparently.)

Olbermann just called it, "a Titanic upset victory" for Clinton.

So, with another nod to the third section of the article I posted earlier here tonight, what's going on here?

While I have no evidence at this time --- let me repeat, no evidence at this time --- of chicanery, what we do know is that chicanery, with this particular voting system, is not particularly difficult. Particularly when one private --- and a less than respectable one at that, as I detailed in the previous post --- runs the entire process.

I should also note that some 40% of New Hampshire's precincts are hand-counted, which equals about 25% of the votes. I've just spoken to Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org who seems to share my concern, as have other folks who follow this sort of thing. Harris noted that it will be interesting to compare numbers of the hand-counted precincts with those counted on the hackable Diebold op-scan systems.

If I was Barack Obama, I'd certainly not have conceded this election this quickly. I'm not quite sure what he was thinking. And as far as offering an indication of whether he understands how these systems work, and the necessity of making sure that votes are counted, and counted accurately, it does not offer a great deal of confidence at this hour.

I'm trying to get in touch with his campaign, to let them know of these concerns. I hope you'll feel free to let them know as well, if any of you happen to be in touch with them, or a part of the campaign. I will, of course, be happy to discuss these concerns with them if they wish to call.

As mentioned, the numbers referred to above are not Exit Polls. They are Pre-Election Polls which are far less reliable than Exit Polls. So, if anybody knows where any decent Exit Polling data is, we'd appreciate it if you linked it in comments below...

UPDATE 9:18pm PT: This AP report includes information, said to be based on data from the Exit Polls. It indicates that the independents in NH, who may vote in either the R or D primary, voted mostly D, and were breaking for Obama. AP claims, however, that the same data show that Clinton's strength with woman "offset that"...

Early exit poll data indicated six in 10 independents opted for the Democratic contest and Obama led among them, but Clinton's advantage among women offset that.
...
The results are from exit polls Tuesday in 50 precincts around New Hampshire for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. The Democratic primary survey interviewed 1,800 voters, the Republican primary poll 1,301. The sampling error margin was plus or minus 4 percentage points for each exit poll.
Note: the Exit Pollsters used here were Mitofsky/Edison, the same ones who ran the infamous Exits in 2004 showing that, in state after state, Kerry should have one. They also later said their own polling was completely wrong (which is disputed strongly by statistics experts such as U. of Pennsylvania Prof. Steven F. Freeman Ph.D.) So, it's lovely that AP and the TV nets hired them again...

UPDATE 9:40pm PT: While the talking heads are trying to figure out what happened here on MSNBC, Eugene (?????, sorry, don't know his last name), while paging through a stack of papers, said to be Exit Poll data, just said: "Of those who made up their mind in the last three days, there was a slight favoring for Obama. If there was a huge difference in a move to Hillary, in the last three days, it doesn't seem to be reflected in the Exit Polling."

UPDATE 9:48pm PT: Olbermann repeated what Russert had said earlier, that Obama's internal polls showed him winning by 14%, Clinton's internal polls had Obama winning by 11%.

The effect of Obama being an African-American, the so-called "Bradley Effect", is now being discussed as the newest "reason" to explain the numbers. Though it's noted that it didn't effect Harold Ford in TN in '06, or even Obama in Iowa just five days ago.