U.S. Firm Defends Venezuela Exit Poll

[Nambe]

By ANDREW SELSKY, Associated Press Writer

A U.S. pollster whose firm wrongly predicted President Hugo Chavez would lose a recall referendum on Thursday defended the exit poll, which has landed in the center of a national controversy. ..

Pollster Doug Schoen said his firm has been involved in polling for years and recently correctly called elections in the Dominican Republic and Mexico.

"We've done this all over the world," Schoen said in a telephone interview. "To be off by 34 points as we are alleged to be, strains credulity — there was no real independent verification of the electronic count. There was almost certainly fraud in the central counting process," he said. ..

Carter and Gaviria, both experienced election monitors, have said their independent sampling of results conformed with the official results.

[ck4829]

1. What the article doesn't tell you is

that the pollster is from ChoicePoint, the same organization that was involved in the purging of 'felons' in the 2000 election.

[Zhade]

3. And guess who's a lobbyist for ChoicePoint?

Vin Weber.

Google him with "National Endowment for Democracy", and see the snake eat its own tail...

[genius]

2. Using that as a precedent, Kerry's campaign's exit polls should rule

After all the firm was on one side in the election and was only polling in areas whrere where there was a lot of opposition. They were shooting people in the Chavez area. Those bullets weren't much of an exit poll.