Reply #26: When will the MSM release the 2008 Exit Poll Report? (TIA)

[tiptoe]

When will the MSM release the 2008 Exit Poll Report?

TruthIsAll      source: http://www.geocities.com/electionmodel/2008EMReport.htm

June 8, 2008

Here we are in June and still there is no Election 2008 report from the exit pollsters. They released the Evaluation of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004 report on Jan.19, 2005.

We have the Final 2008 National Exit Poll ( Final NEP ).  As usual, it was 'forced' to match the recorded vote-count:  Obama had a 52.9% share and a 9.5 million winning vote margin. The Final NEP  forced  'Vote for President in 2004' category indicates a 46/37% split of returning Bush/Kerry voters of the total 131.37 million recorded in 2008. We are expected to believe that returning-Bush voters outnumbered returning-Kerry voters by 11.8 million ( 9% ).

Is that why the exit pollsters have not released the report? Are they gun shy, because it would just confirm what the National Exit Poll vote shares combined with a plausible returning voter mix tells us:  that Obama won by at least double the recorded margin?

The 2005 report showed that Kerry won the unadjusted State Exit Poll Aggregate by 52–47%. Since Bush won the recorded vote-count by 50.7-48.3%, the exit pollsters concluded that the 7% discrepancy (WPE) was due to the reluctance of Bush voters to be interviewed in exit polls — the so-called reluctant Bush responder hypothesis (rBr). This theory was refuted by the impossible  'forced'  Final 2004 National Exit Poll, which indicated that returning-Bush voters outnumbered returning-Gore voters by more than 7 million and that there were more returning-Bush voters than could possibly still be living. But the alternative possibility that the discrepancy was due to a vote miscount was never considered, even though 1) the Final NEP's forced match to that vote-count was impossible on its face and 2) the aggregate unadjusted state exit polls confirmed that Kerry won.

But let’s not be too hard on the exit pollsters; they work for the MSM. So releasing the report (and the unadjusted exit poll data) is not their decision to make. The MSM is holding up the works. The corporate consortium that comprises the National Election Pool — FOX,CNN,CBS,ABC,NBC and AP — not only hires "the national exit pollster" but also controls the latter's reportage (and, presumably in 2008, NON-reportage) of both the Preliminary and Final exit poll data. Exit Pollster Lenski himself commented in a Nov 4, 2006 interview ^1,2 at Pollster.com the extent of activity the five news organizations have, including "editorial control", besides input on polling-targets, sample sizes, questions, etc.:

...there is a group called the National Election Pool , and just so everyone understands who that group is, that is the pool of the five television networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox and the Associated Press — so it's the networks and the Associated Press who have formed this pool. We at Edison Research and Mitofsky International have a contract with those six members and we provide them with exit polling, sample precinct vote counts, and election projection information on Election Day and election night. The news organizations have the editorial control: they choose the races to cover, they choose the size of the samples, they choose the candidates to cover, they write the questions that are asked.

We at Edison Research and Mitofsky International implement that — we have a system in place where this year we'll have over a thousand exit poll interviews around the country at more than a thousand polling locations. We will have more than two thousand sample precinct vote count reporters at more than two thousand locations around the country. We'll be gathering that information during the day, distributing it to the six members and several dozen other news organizations that subscribe to our service and we will also be providing our analysis and projections of the winners of those races at poll closing and after poll closing as actual votes come in. The news networks and the Associated Press reserve the right to make their own projections based on our data and any other data they may collect, and they have their own decision teams in place to review any projections we send them. But basically the source of the data they will be using on elections are the exit polls and the sample precinct vote counts our interviews and reporters collect, and the county voter returns that are collected by the Associated Press and fed through our system into our computations and out to the members and subscribers.

I want to ask more generally about how things will be different this year. First, let's talk about the issue of when and how you will release data to members of the National Election Pool (NEP) consortium and other subscribers. In the past, and please correct me if I'm wrong, hundreds of producers, editors and reporters had access to either the mid-day estimates or early versions of the crosstabulations that you would do, and the top-line estimate numbers would inevitably leak. How is that process going to be different this year?

The news organizations are really taking this challenge seriously on how to control the information for a couple of reasons. First, each of these news organizations have made a commitment to Congress over the years that they would not release data that would characterize the winner or leader in a race before the polls have closed. So in essence, by this data leaking, it was undermining that promise that they had made to Congress.

The other thing is that we know these are partial survey results. No polling organization leaks their partial survey results. If it's a four-day survey they don't leak results after two days. Similarly if it's a twelve-hour exit poll survey in the field you're not going to release results after just three hours of interviews. So the data will not be distributed to the news organizations until 5:00 p.m. in 2006, and that's a change from all the previous elections. The goal is that this will be more complete data and also we will have more time to review the data and deal with any issues in the data that look questionable that we need to investigate. It will still give news organizations time for their people to look at the data before the polls start closing.

]In 2004 at least one network started posting the demographic cross-tabulations online for specific states. I believe these started appearing almost as soon as the polls closed, maybe shortly thereafter. Do you have any idea if they are planning to repeat that of if they will hold off on posting tabulations until most of the votes have been counted?

Again, that's an editorial decision by the news organizations, but they are well within their rights, as soon as the polls close within a state, to publish those results.
...

A Conversation about the 2008 Election

Dec. 25, 2008

What is the latest 2008 Recorded Vote Count?

There are 131.37 million counted and recorded.
Obama leads by exactly 9.52 million votes:

Vote Count

131.37m

Obama

69.46m
52.87%

McCain

59.94m

45.62%

Other

1.97m

1.50%

Who voted?

Returning Kerry, Bush and third-party voters, first-timers and others who sat out the 2004 election but voted in a prior election.

Can we estimate the number of returning Election-2004-voters in 2008?

The 2008 Final National Exit Poll ( Final NEP ) breaks down the Mix of returning & new-voter weights for the  exit–polled  vote  shares :

Category: Vote for President in 2004   (4,195 Respondents)

'08 Final NEP Mix Implications:

2004 Vote

 

Returning Voters

42.5%
52.9%
4.6%

Kerry
Bush
Other

48.61m
60.43m
5.25m

 

Did Not Vote
John Kerry
G.W. Bush
Someone else

Mix

13%
37%
46%
4%

 

Obama

71%
89%
17%
66%

(=
(=
(=
(=

12.13m)
43.26m)
10.27m)
3.47m)

 

McCain

27%
9%
82%
24%

(=
(=
(=
(=

4.61m)
4.37m)
49.55m)
1.26m)

 

Other

2%
2%
1%
10%

(=
(=
(=
(=

0.34m)
0.97m)
0.60m)
0.53m)

 

 

( 131.37m

 

69.13m
52.62%

 

59.80m

45.52%

 

2.44m

1.86%)

 

How could 60.4m (46% of 131.37m) have been returning Bush voters?

He had 62.0m votes in 2004. About 59m were alive in 2008. Assuming 95% turned out in 2008, only 56m voted. The NEP is off by 4.0m Bush voters.

And just 48.6m (37%) were Kerry voters?

How could returning Bush-voters outnumber returning Kerry-voters by 11.8 million? Bush’s 2004 vote margin was only 3.0m.

How could 5.2m (4%) have been third-party 2004 voters?

There were only 1.22m in 2004. The NEP is off by 4.0m third-party voters.

You're assuming that the 2004 Recorded Vote was equal to the True Vote.

Researchers have concluded that Kerry won by 8–10m. What about that?

Let’s not get bogged down by a discussion of election fraud. I thought this discussion was going to be based on the 2008 National Exit Poll and the recorded vote.

The 2008 Final NEP returning-voter-mix is implausible. How could that be?

Here’s how. There are three possibilities:
a)  Returning Kerry-voters misspoke to exit-pollers in 2008 and claimed they voted for Bush in 2004
b)  Returning Bush-voters misspoke and claimed they voted for third-parties in 2004
c)  The Final NEP was 'forced' to match the Recorded Vote-Count; the poll-category's Voter Mix and/or Vote Shares had to be 'adjusted'

Oh. Are you now going to claim that the 46/37 Bush/Kerry mix in the 2008 Final NEP was due to Kerry voters who indicated that they voted for Bush despite his current 22% approval rating? Is this the 2008 Kerry version of the 2004 Gore voter “false recall” theory? What would motivate returning Kerry voters to say that they voted for Bush?

Ok, they just forgot that they voted for Kerry. Not that they wanted to identify with Bush, mind you. They just forgot they voted for Kerry in 2004. And returning Bush voters did not want to admit they voted for him, so they lied and said they voted for a third-party candidate.

But the Final NEP is always ‘forced’ to match the Recorded Vote-Count, right? So why conjecture about the motivation of returning voters?

Yes, it’s always forced to match. You have a point there. In any case, the average national pre-election poll had Obama winning by 51–43%. Allocating undecided voters equally, that equates to 53–45%, exactly matching the vote.

The pre-election polls underestimated Obama’s vote for two basic reasons: 1) the challenger (Obama) typically wins 70-80% of undecided voters and 2) there are two types of pre-election polls: registered (RV) and likely-voter (LV). RV polls include new voters; LV polls do not. According to the Final NEP, Obama won 71% of new voters. The average RV poll had Obama leading by 10 points (51.7–41.7%); the average LV by just 7 (50.8–43.6%). After allocating the undecided vote, Obama led the average RV by 55.5-43.0% and the average LV by 53.8-44.7%. The average RV was close to the True Vote, which was calculated using the Final NEP vote shares and a plausible returning voter mix.

Well, that’s one way of getting the results you want. Question the pre-election polls to fit your argument.

Really? Then consider the following plausible scenarios based on the 2008 NEP vote shares that were used in matching the recorded vote (which you believe is correct). They only differ in the returning voter mix which is based on 1) the 2004 recorded vote (which you also believe to be correct) and 2) the 2004 unadjusted exit poll (which you don’t believe).

To determine the returning voter mix, the following assumptions were made for both scenarios based on documented statistics: 3.45m uncounted votes in 2004, 6 million died (1.2% annual mortality), and 113.7m (95% turnout) returned to vote in 2008.

Obama’s True Vote was 55.7% assuming the 2004 recorded vote was fraud-free; it was 57.5% based on the 2004 unadjusted exit poll (the election was stolen). Kerry won the poll by 52-47%.

 Scenario 1     2004 Recorded Vote Shares
a) Obama wins by 17.6m:   75.4 – 57.8 (55.7–42.7%) assuming 4.0m uncounted votes (3.0% of 135.4m cast).
b) Obama wins by 15.8m:   72.5 – 56.7 (55.2–43.1%) assuming no uncounted votes.

Recorded

 

 

Mix

 

 

 

Obama

 

McCain

 

'Other'

2004 Vote

DNV

 

16.0%

 

'New' voters

=

21.71m

 

71%

  =

15.4m 

 

27%

  =

5.9m 

 

2%

  =

0.4m 

48.27%

Kerry

 

41.1%

 

Returning Kerry voters

=

55.72m

 

89%

  =

49.6m 

 

9%

  =

5.0m 

 

2%

  =

1.1m 

50.73%

Bush

 

42.0%

 

Returning Bush voters

=

56.86m

 

17%

  =

9.7m 

 

82%

  =

46.6m 

 

1%

  =

0.6m 

1.00%

Other

 

0.8%

 

Returning 'Other' voters

=

1.14m

 

66%

  =

0.8m 

 

24%

  =

0.3m 

 

10%

  =

0.1m 

 

 

 

100%

 

 

 

 

135.43m

 

 

75.43m

 

 

 

57.77m

 

 

 

2.23m 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

55.69%

 

 

 

42.66%

 

 

 

1.65%

 Scenario 2     2004 Unadjusted State Exit Poll (WPE) Aggregate Shares
a) Obama wins by 22.5m:   77.7 – 55.2 (57.5–40.9%) assuming 4.0m uncounted votes.
b) Obama wins by 20.7m:   74.8 – 54.1 (57.1–41.3%) assuming no uncounted votes.

Unadjusted

 

 

Mix

 

 

 

Obama

 

McCain

 

'Other'

Exit Poll

DNV

 

16.0%

 

'New' voters

=

21.71m

 

71%

  =

15.4m 

 

27%

  =

5.9m 

 

2%

  =

0.43m 

52.0%

Kerry

 

43.7%

 

Returning Kerry voters

=

59.13m

 

89%

  =

52.6m 

 

9%

  =

5.3m 

 

2%

  =

1.18m 

47.0%

Bush

 

39.5%

 

Returning Bush voters

=

53.44m

 

17%

  =

9.1m 

 

82%

  =

43.8m 

 

1%

  =

0.53m 

1.0%

Other

 

0.8%

 

Returning 'Other' voters

=

1.14m

 

66%

  =

0.8m 

 

24%

  =

0.3m 

 

10%

  =

0.11m 

 

 

 

100%

 

 

 

 

135.43m

 

 

77.88m

 

 

 

55.28m

 

 

 

2.27m 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

57.51%

 

 

 

40.82%

 

 

 

1.67%

You make assumptions for uncounted votes, mortality and voter turnout to buttress your case.

Is that so? The assumptions are based on historical data. Check out the census for total votes cast in the last 5 elections (the MoE is 0.30%).The percentage of uncounted votes has declined from 10% to 2.74% in 2004. And the majority (70-80%) are Democratic. You can check the U.S. mortality rate tables yourself. As for the 95% turnout of 2004 voters, that is a reasonable assumption based on historical data. In any case, sensitivity analysis shows that changes in the assumptions have minimal impact on Obama’s True Vote share.

For example, assume that 91% of Kerry voters returned to vote in 2008 compared to 95% of Bush voters. In this scenario, Obama’s vote share is 57.2% (a 21.7m vote margin). In the base case, Kerry voter turnout is 95% and Obama’s base case vote share is 57.5% (a 22.6m vote margin).

Here’s another example: In the base case, annual voter mortality is 1.2%. What if it is 0.8%? Obama’s vote share is 57.3% (a 22.0m margin).

And what if Obama’s share of returning Kerry voters was 87% instead of the 89% given in the NEP? His vote share becomes 56.6% (a 20.2m vote margin). But the 2% deviation is very unlikely. The margin of error is 1.14% for a 4195 sample and 89% share (assuming a 20% cluster effect). The probability of the deviation is 1 in 3500.

Showing off again, eh?

And what about this factoid? Since Election Day, Obama has won the final 10.2 million votes (late absentee, provisional, etc.) by 59.2–37.5%.  Kerry and Gore also won late votes with 7% higher vote shares than they had on Election Day. What does that indicate to you?

Not a damn thing. Obama won on Election Day by 52.3–46.3%; 10 million is too small a sample to draw any conclusions.

Now, what about the unadjusted 2008 state exit polls?

We don’t have those numbers yet. Exit Pollsters Edison-Mitofsky should release a summary precinct-based report in a few months.

The 2004 Final NEP voting mix was also impossible. The 2004 Election Calculator also had to determine a feasible returning 2000 voter mix. It indicated that Kerry won the True Vote by 53.2–45.4% (67–57m) — a 13m difference in margin from the recorded vote. Obama’s True Vote margin of 23m is also a 13m difference from the recorded vote.

So what? The Election Calculator was wrong in 2004 and is wrong again in 2008.

Didn’t the Jan. 2005 Exit Poll report indicate that Kerry won the state exit polls by 52–47%, based on the within precinct discrepancy (WPE)?

Yes, but there was a catch.

Are you referring to the E-M claim that the ridiculously high WPE was due to Bush voter reluctance to be interviewed. Wasn’t the rBr theory refuted elsewhere in the report and by the Final 2004 NEP 43/37 Bush/Gore returning voter mix?

Yes, rBr was refuted. But the WPE was due to “false recall” on the part of returning Gore voters; they misspoke when they indicated they voted for Bush.

Oh, so now you’re going to resurrect the “false recall” argument. Why would Gore voters not tell the truth about their vote?

They wanted to identify with the Bush, the winner of the 2000 election. “False recall” is still a viable hypothesis. It may be implausible to believe that Gore voters misspoke, but you cannot prove otherwise. Subconsciously, Gore voters wanted to identify with Bush anyway.

Come on. Everyone knows that Bush stole that election. “False recall” is an implausible joke. It wasn’t a viable hypothesis in 2004 and it’s not one now. Look at the facts. Gore won by 540,000 votes and Bush had a 48% approval rating. Not only that, the 2000 Census reported 110.8m votes were cast — but only 105.4m were recorded. Assuming that Gore won 70-80% of the 5.4m uncounted votes, his true margin was close to 3 million.

The evidence strongly suggests that Obama won by 17–23m votes not by the recorded 9.5m.  Why are you in a state of denial?

There you go again. Back to your old conspiracy theories, just like in 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006.Obama won. Get over it.

Conspiracy theories? It’s a catch-22.  Without the raw 2004 exit polls, you can’t prove that returning Gore voters told the truth about their vote.  Without the raw 2008 exit polls, you can’t prove that the final adjusted exit polls, which were forced to match the vote, were bogus.  Without a paper ballot, you can’t prove that touch screen votes were rigged; the evidence is lost in cyberspace forever.  Without a full recount of paper ballots, you can’t prove that optical scan votes were miscounted.  Without the “liberal” mainstream media focusing on the statistical and exit poll anomalies, the majority of the public will remain ignorant about the full extent of election fraud.  Without interviewing whistleblowers like Stephen Spoonamore and Clint Curtis, who have already testified in Congress under oath, the public will never ask why there have been no indictments. The only thing that you can prove is that the voting machines can be hacked, and experts have already done it.  Let’s HAVA drink.