Don't forget, polls were never so innaccurate BEFORE BushCo 2000.

[Atman]

All you people saying it's just crummy polling or bad data, WAKE THE FUCK UP.

Exit polls, voter surveys...they all used to be accurate. Before BushCo, there were INDEPENDENT polling organizations who tracked this data. But, in 2000, BushCo determined they were ALL seriously flawed, the media companies disbanded their polling apparatus and then a couple of BushCo-friendly media conglomerates created an entirely new polling organization which has CONSISTENTLY been wrong. BushCo's plan was genius...no one believes polls anymore. Although they SHOULD. They were always accurate before. Only since the criminal cabal was installed have the polls become "unreliable."

Things that make you go hmmmmmmmm.

.

[yourout]

1. Funny how no one questioned Iowa because you could not hack/fraud a caucus.

But NH on the other hand will be questioned no matter what.

Until partison voting machines with secret software are removed all elections with them will be questioned.

[Atman]

2. Don't forget.

This is all a fucking sham.

.

[foo_bar]

3. there's a small problem with this urban legend

Exit polls, voter surveys...they all used to be accurate.

Nonetheless, it is obvious that these mid-day reports in 1992 were off by nearly as much as the leaked numbers everyone saw on the Internet in the middle of the Election Day, 2004. Eleven of twelve states had an error in Clinton's favor; seven had errors on the margin of six points or greater. These first call estimates showed Clinton ahead in three four states (Alabama, Florida, Indiana and Kansas) that he ultimately lost. The average state level error for these twelve states (-5%) was the same as the overall nationwide WPE on the complete exit poll.

http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2005/01/the_war_room.html

In the 1992 general election, the final opinion polls gave the Conservatives between 38% and 39% of the vote, about 1% behind the Labour Party. In the final results, the Conservatives had a lead of 7.6% over Labour. As a result of this failure to 'predict' the result, the Market Research Society held an inquiry into the reasons why the polls had been so much at variance with actual public opinion. The report found that 2% of the 8.5% error could be explained by Conservative supporters refusing to disclose their voting intentions; it cited as evidence the fact that exit polls on election day also underestimated the Conservative lead.

After the 1992 election, most opinion pollsters altered their methodology to try to correct for this observed behaviour of the electorate. The methods varied for different companies. Some adopted the tactic of asking their interviewees how they had voted at the previous election, and then assumed that those who had voted Conservative before but were now "unsure" (or simply not answering) would indeed again vote Tory. Others weighted their panel so that their past vote was exactly in line with the actual result of the election. For a time, opinion poll results were published both for unadjusted and adjusted methods.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shy_Tory_Factor

One of the odd bits of received wisdom I keep hearing about the exit poll controversy is that up until this year, the exit polls were "always right." If so then this year's errors seem "implausible," and wild conspiracy theories of a widespread fraud in the count somehow seem more credible. The problem with this reasoning is that exit polls similarly "wrong" before, though perhaps not to the same degree or consistency.

http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2004/12/have_the_exit_p.html

On election night in 1988, we relied on the ABC News exit poll to characterize how demographic subgroups and political constituencies had voted. One problem: The exit poll found the race to be a dead heat, even though Democrat Michael Dukakis lost the popular vote by seven percentage points to Dubya's father. (The dirty little secret, known to pollsters, is that discrepancies in the overall horse race don't affect the subgroup analyses. Whether Dukakis got 46 percent or 50 percent didn't change the fact that nine of 10 blacks voted for him, while a majority of all men didn't. The exit poll may have under- or over-sampled either group, producing an incorrect national total, but the within-group voting patterns remain accurate.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64906-2004Nov20.html

[Nederland]

18. Thank you

I thought I had heard the end of the "exit polls used to be accurate" bullshit with the 2004 election.

I guess some people just can't handle losing, and I say that as an Obama supporter.

[alfredo]

4. It's hard to poll cell phone users. That's what is making polling

inaccurate.

[lonestarnot]

9. Ugh that far off?

[alfredo]

16. there's other factors like a large number of undecided and contrary

answers.

[lonestarnot]

17. Yes.

[alfredo]

19. nearing the governor's race last year, we started lying to the pollsters.

[lonestarnot]

24. Who is fucking we?

[alfredo]

25. My family.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

5. Don't confuse EXIT polling with polling in general

The pre-polling in general is becoming questionable and I think that is what people are talking about for the most part.

Exit polling has always been used as a verification of an election. That's what was awry in the Bush elections and that's what people have to be very alert about (forever) If the exit polling in ANY election (primary, general, local ,national, -whatever) doesn't match the results, I think every person running (and every voter) should ask for additional examination of the results and the system.

[IDemo]

28. The confusion seems to be running rampant here

I don't recall anyone here questioning the exit polls. It was the pre-election polls that were wildly inaccurate.

[Igel]

37. Also not true.

Mitofsky made some bad errors. Whenever the model turns out to be inaccurate, there's respondent bias, or the sample isn't random, you get problems.

A number of the really severe errors were state and county races.

[Harper_is_Bush]

6. WHAT EXIT POLLS? AND PRIMARY POLLS ARE ALL ABOUT "LIKELY" VOTERS, WHICH IS BS

Seriously, think about what you're suggesting.

[progressivebydesign]

7. Wow.. yet ANOTHER sour grapes conspiracy theory thread...

did you guys all call each other and decide what to wear tonight, too? Cuz it's the lamest coordinated attack on Hillary Clinton so far. If you did your homework (but maybe you're not being paid to do your homework) you'd know that 17% were UNDECIDED before tonight.. which means... they decided, and lots of them chose Hillary. If you flip out every time your candidate loses a primary, you're in bad shape. they have drugs for that you know.

[jgraz]

11. This is a real issue. Quit your whining and wake the fuck up

Even if Hillary really did win tonight (and I think she did), we will never have true democracy until the people control the elections.

[lonestarnot]

12. Come on now, this may not have been an attack on Hillary, and

I'm not voting for her. John is my choice in the primary.

[fooj]

14. Mine, too.

[lonestarnot]

15. Only once!

:evilgrin: :toast:

[Justice Is Comin]

8. Not 20 points Atman.

Not 20 points. Maybe 3 or 4 could be done cleverly on the pc board, but not 20.

That was New Hampshire saying fu Iowa.

[fooj]

10. You know what REALLY pisses me off?

The same bastards are behaving as if "suddenly" exit polls are the holy grail when in 2004 they crammed the "inaccuracy" bullshit down our throats. It's sickening.


I haven't forgotten.

[lonestarnot]

13. And neither have I!

[bobthedrummer]

21. Spot on again, fooj-some of us just don't forget. k&r.

[Freddie Stubbs]

20. Tell that to Dewey and Truman

[Zywiec]

35. Yes, Bush was involved in this too!

Good grief.

:eyes:

[nashville_brook]

22. kick. rec. sigh heavily.

[havocmom]

23. Yep. How soon we forget

x(

[bobthedrummer]

26. k

[tritsofme]

27. Except none of this is true.

Polls have never been a holy grail.

Remember Dewey Defeats Truman?

This sounds like nothing more than sour grapes.

[bobthedrummer]

29. Possible explanatory variables="sour grapes"??? Nope. n/t

[tritsofme]

30. Polls were pretty good in 2004.

Going into election day most showed Bush with a small edge.

In 2000 the final polls showed it would be a nail biter, and it was.

Polls in 2006 were generally pretty good.

When you have turnout explode like it did in NH, its much harder to have a reliable likely voter model. That probably explains the NH polling disaster more than anything.

[bobthedrummer]

31. Diebold/Premier tabulating machines, outsourced management of results (who/where),

and many other factors need just as much consideration.

It isn't just "sour grapes"-can we agree on that?

[tritsofme]

32. No.

I think the Diebold stuff is just a bunch of paranoid crap.

[bobthedrummer]

33. I respectfully disagree. Btw, as a Dennis Kucinich partisan I could survive on grapes.

[Zywiec]

34. Nothing ever happened before Bush and 2000?

You might want to check this out:

The term Bradley effect or Wilder effect refers to a phenomenon which has led to inaccurate voter opinion polls in some American political campaigns between a white candidate and a non-white candidate.<1><2><3> Specifically, there have been instances in which statistically significant numbers of white voters tell pollsters in advance of an election that they are either genuinely undecided, or likely to vote for the non-white candidate, but those voters exhibit a different behavior when actually casting their ballots. White voters who said that they were undecided break in statistically large numbers toward the white candidate, and many of the white voters who said that they were likely to vote for the non-white candidate ultimately cast their ballot for the white candidate. This reluctance to give accurate polling answers has sometimes extended to post-election exit polls as well.

Researchers who have studied the issue theorize that some white voters give inaccurate responses to polling questions because of a fear that they might appear to others to be racially prejudiced. Some research has suggested that the race of the pollster conducting the interview may factor into that concern. At least one prominent researcher has suggested that with regard to pre-election polls, the discrepancy can be traced in part by the polls' failure to account for general conservative political leanings among late-deciding voters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect

[bobthedrummer]

36. k

[bobthedrummer]

38. this isn't the dungeon, it isn't gd either-kick

[philly_bob]

39. Here's a discussion of how voter survey MONOPOLY came about...

from the American Antitrust Institute:

http://www.antitrustinstitute.org/archives/files/353.pdf

Search their site with keyword "polling" for other articles.