Proof that Kerry was ahead in the polls?

[Zhade]

Hey gang!

Some bozo's making noises that b*s* was WAY ahead on election day 2004.

Now, you and I know that's rubbish, but I need some quick help with evidence. Can anyone point me toward conclusive evidence that Kerry was polling ahead, which I remember very vividly?

[nashville_brook]

1. try the Demopedia

[Botany]

2. @ midnight on election day the final exit polls in Ohio read:

Female Voters
49% Kerry
45% bush

Male Voters
47.5% Kerry
46 % bush

(that is roughly how i remember them .... CNN had them posted)

it was the post midnight vote that put bush over the top

[Zhade]

3. I checked Demopedia as suggested, found stuff to knock THAT lie down.

Check out http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2918368 to aid in further destroying the ignorance!

[Stevepol]

5. There was no post-midnight VOTE. What happened was that

Edison-Mitofsky "re-calibrated" the exit polls to fit the machine results. This is evidently what is typically done. They assume that the "alleged result" (in this case the electronic, cyberspace results) are accurate.

All those writing about this, esp Steven Freeman ("Was the 04 Election Stolen?") and Mark Crispin Miller ("Fooled Again"), explain this I think.

Mitofsky before he died admitted that there was a wide discrepancy between the exit polls and the final result, but he explained it using the "Reluctant Republican Responder" theory, i.e., he blamed his own exit polls.

Of course, before the election he touted his polling as being quite the cat's meow.

I don't know what the pre-election polling was saying, but I would imagine anybody could find out by googling.

[Botany]

6. I know that there was no post midnight vote

There was vote flipping, padding, and dumping.

Kerry was anywhere from 2.5 to 4 points up going into the election.

To this day my blood boils when the "talking heads" speak on why Kerry lost ..
I worked that day in Ohio & saw and heard the crimes going down. He lost due to cheating.

http://www.thousandreasons.org/get_article.php?article_id=13

a little of what I saw and heard.

[Febble]

10. Well, I was graphing

the pre-election polls pretty closely, and my hope was that Kerry seemed to be trending upwards and Bush seemed stuck. But my final graph had them 50:50.

But, Stevepol...puhleeze.... What's with "Mitofsky before he died admitted...."? Well, of course he didn't admit anything after he died! However, he "admitted" within three days of the election that there was a discrepancy, and I don't recall him denying it any earlier - he scarcely could seeing as all sentient CNN viewers, including myself, could observe the magnitude of the adjustment. And what is more, within three months of the election, he produced a 72 page document that gave, in quite extraordinarily precise detail, the magnitude of the discrepancy, at both state estimate and precinct level, and released to a public archive, as always, the actual interview data, together with the weights used.

Sure, he touted his exit poll as "being quite the cat's meow" - it would be accurate, he said, as never before, because they would use even more stringent criteria before calling a state. But Mitofsky has never, to my knowledge, claimed that his raw poll is accurate. Quite the reverse. What he claimed accuracy for were his projections - because he incorporated vote returns into the projections. What he is actually famous for is caution.

Now, you and I may differ on whether the exit poll discrepancy was due to bias in the poll or "bias" in the counting. But let's not insinuate that Mitofsky "admitted there was a wide discrepancy between the exit polls and the final result" on his death bed. He was clearly never in any doubt that there was a discrepancy. Indeed, there was clearly never any doubt that there was.

[tiptoe]

4. From TIA, Zogby and Harris had late poll results re Kerry...Plus, data from exit polls is available:

Items 2 & 3 from TruthIsAll's 11/04/04 post refer to Zogby "election day" and Harris "last minute" polling results:
To believe that Bush won the election, you must also believe...

Links to Three Unadjusted Exit Polls data "we were not supposed to see" can be found here (click on 8349, 11027 and 13047)
THE EXIT POLLS WE WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO SEE

THE IMPOSSIBLE FINAL EXIT POLL

According to the Final National Exit poll, 43% of the 122.3 million who voted in 2004 were Bush 2000 voters and 37% were Gore voters. These weightings in and of themselves debunk rBr. Now 43% of 122.3 is 52.57 million. And since Bush only got 50.5mm votes in 2000, of whom about 1.75mm died, only 48.7mm (39.8%) could have returned to vote in 2004, so the 43% Final NEP weighting was mathematically impossible. The Bush vote was inflated by 4 million. I have just shown that the Final Poll at 1:25pm on Nov 3 is bogus and that the earlier 12:22am numbers are close to the truth.

Here's proof that the Final NEP weights are impossible.

See also other articles in Election Fraud '04 Guide.

A Corrupted Election —Despite what you may have heard, the exit polls were right —Steve Freeman & Josh Mitteldorf

Corollary evidence
The exit polls themselves are a strong indicator of a corrupted election. Moreover, the exit poll discrepancy must be interpreted in the context of more than 100,000 officially logged reports of irregularities during Election Day 2004. For many Americans, if not most, mass-scale fraud in a U.S. presidential election is an unthinkable possibility. But taken together, the allegations, the subsequently documented irregularities, systematic vulnerabilities, and implausible numbers suggest a coherent story of fraud and deceit.

What’s more, the exit poll disparity doesn’t tell the whole story. It doesn’t count those voters who were disenfranchised before they even got to the polls. The voting machine shortages in Democratic districts, the fraudulent felony purges of voter rolls, the barriers to registration, and the unmailed, lost, or cavalierly rejected absentee ballots all represent distortions to the vote count above and beyond what is measured by the exit poll disparity. The exit polls, by design, sample only those voters who have already overcome these hurdles.

The thesis of the Mitofsky/Edison exit poll report and the headlines that it generated are curiously detached from the numbers in the report itself. Statisticians who have studied the exit polls find substantial evidence to support the thesis that the vote counts—not the exit polls—were inaccurate.

Apparently, the pollsters at Mitofsky and Edison have found it more expedient to provide an explanation unsupported by theory, data or precedent than to impugn the machinery of American democracy. Unfortunately, their patrons in the media find it correspondingly preferable to latch onto a non-confrontational thesis, however implausible, than to even suggest the possibility of foul play.

[Zhade]

7. Please post this to the thread I linked...

...I'm getting personally attacked for pointing out that b*s* wasn't far ahead on election day, as the OP of that thread claims.

[Eric J in MN]

8. Some states were polling within the margin of error before Election Day,

...just as some states (for Senate) are now within the margin of error.

Neither side was way ahead in the polls before the 2004 election.

[Awsi Dooger]

9. Bush won by very close to the pre-election poll margin

Nationwide and in Ohio. The only way to propose Kerry ahead in the pre-election polling is to assign a high percentage of the undecideds to Kerry.

It was a 50/50 polarized nation. The polls were close to 50/50. Party ID was 50/50, instead of the typical +3 or +4 Democratic edge. Bush's approval rating was basically 50/50. Kerry's favorable/unfavorable number was also in that range, slightly below .500. The percentage of undecideds was extremely low by presidential race standards.

Nothing in 2004 pointed to Kerry receiving a massive chunk of the undecideds, other than history, the evaluation of previous cycles and a reliance on the so-called incumbent rule. I remember posting many times that in 50/50-type races I had studied the undecideds did not break heavily toward the challenger, much lower than the 70-75% range. I expected something in the 60-62% area for Kerry but it looks like it was lower than that, in the 54-55% range. Now there are questions if the undecided rule is still valid.

Here's the Ohio chart. Bush led in 9 of the last 10 polls and his average lead was 2.1 points, which is very close to his official margin:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Presidential_04/oh_polls.html

Nationally, Bush led the pre-election polling by about 1.5 points on average. He exceeded that number by slightly more than 1%, officially.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry.html

In 2002, DU obsessed with pre-election polls to shout fix. In 2004, they were abandoned in favor of early exit polls.

Safest wordly prediction: a week from now this forum will mock and begin to scrutinize any close loss, especially where we ever had an apparent lead. Let's hope it's merely the difference between control and greater control.

[garybeck]

12. I call BULLSHIT

Real Clear Politics is right propadanda.

The other day he went off about how arrogant Keith Olbermann is, when the fact is KO is only speaking truth to power. This is by far the worst administration we've ever had, even worse than anyone could have imagined, and he's one of the few people with guts to say it like it is. Does that make him arrogant? Give me a break. Just check out their blog page and you'll see their agenda.

The numbers speak for themselves:
http://organikrecords.com/corporatenewslies/tobelievetrifold.pdf

[OnTheOtherHand]

13. RCP is propaganda, but the poll tables aren't

At least from what I can tell. I hand-matched a few of their state tables to the electoral-vote.com database and didn't find a skew. If you have evidence otherwise, I'd be happy to know.

As for the national numbers, pollingreport.com again has similar results.

EDIT TO ADD: Of course, if the OP was focused on exit poll numbers, then all this is irrelevant.

[garybeck]

14. i've seen so many different poll numbers, my head just starts to spin.

i think it's a matter of "baffle them with bullshit"

I think if you just watch the videos of the long lines in ohio, you know who won that state.

[OnTheOtherHand]

15. polls are hard

It's sort of amazing that the poll results make as much sense as they do. But the folks who consume them should use lots of salt.

As for Ohio, let me put it this way: I don't know who won, but I sure know who lost.

Good work in Vermont. :toast:

[rumpel]

11. Here is one more from Ron Baiman posted 10/26/06:

Direct material proof of massive election fraud in Ohio in the 2004 U.S. presidential election

The following is a pdf of Ron Baiman's presentation at the We Count Conference in Cleveland, Ohio from September 30, 2006.

View the presentation (which is in pdf click at the site)

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/2196