TruthIsAll
04-11-2009, 05:37 PM
There is a lot of propaganda here about "lousy exit polls".
But there's some good stuff, too.
1. Report Acknowledges Inaccuracies in 2004 Exit Polls ...
Interviewing for the 2004 exit polls was the most inaccurate of any in the past five presidential elections as procedural problems compounded by the refusal ...
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22188-2005Jan19.html - Similar pages
2. Surveying the Damage (washingtonpost.com)
It will be a few more weeks before we know exactly what went wrong with the 2004 exit polls. But this much we know right now: The resulting furor was the ...
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64906-2004Nov20.html - Similar pages
Interviewing for the 2004 exit polls was the most inaccurate of any in the past five presidential elections as procedural problems compounded by the refusal of large numbers of Republican voters to be surveyed led to inflated estimates of support for John F. Kerry, according to a report released yesterday by the research firms responsible for the flawed surveys.
The exit pollsters emphasized that the flaws did not produce a single incorrect projection of the winner in a state on election night. But "there were 26 states in which the estimates produced by the exit poll data overstated the vote for John Kerry . . . and there were four states in which the exit poll estimates overstated the vote for George W. Bush," said Joe Lenski of Edison Media Research and Warren Mitofsky of Mitofsky International.
3 Exit-Poll.net - Exit Polls by Edison Media Research
Exit Polls From Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International ... View 2004 Exit Poll Results on our member web sites at: CNN, CBS, NBC, FOX ...
www.exit-poll.net/ - 7k - Cached - Similar pages
Exit polling will be conducted for the major presidential primaries and caucuses currently scheduled for early 2008, and the presidential, senate and governor elections in all 50 states in November 2008.
The General Election Exit Poll is one of the largest one-day survey research undertakings in the world and the Edison/Mitofsky team will conduct more than 100,000 interviews with voters on election day at more than 1,000 polling locations. The data created from these surveys are crucial to our national understanding of how the electorate makes is decision in each election.
Any news organization in the United States and around the world can subscribe to the election exit polls for live Election Night data feeds. Academic institutions and other interested parties can purchase data for analysis after the election.
Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International have been the exclusive providers of exit poll data to the National Election Pool since 2003. Since 1994 Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International have been conducting exit polls in the United States in addition to exit polls conducted for elections in Mexico, Russia, Taiwan and Azerbaijan.
4 Exit Polls 2004
Nov 2, 2004 ... Published: November 04, 2004 11:00 AM EST NEW YORK (AP) News organizations promised Wednesday to look into why their Election Day exit polls ...
www.oilempire.us/exitpolls.html - 74k - Cached - Similar pages
REPUBLICAN CHALLENGES PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION BASED ON EXIT POLLS
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
from the New York Times
An international election observer mission - from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the European Parliament, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and the Council of Europe - released a preliminary report on Monday declaring that the election did not meet democratic standards.
The observers' findings were seconded by Republican Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Citing the disturbing fact that official results diverged sharply from a range of surveys of voters at polling places, Lugar said, "A concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse was enacted with either the leadership or cooperation of governmental authorities."
Other prominent Western observers were unsparing in their criticism of the state's conduct of the election.
"Fundamental flaws in Ukraine's presidential election process subverted its legitimacy," the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, sponsored by the Democratic Party in the United States, declared in its preliminary report. The institute, cited "systematic intimidation, overt manipulation and blatant fraud" that were "designed to achieve a specific outcome irrespective of the will of the people."
-- New York Times
From GregPalast.com: This reporter was unable to reach Senator Lugar regarding the inconsistency of official election results and exit polls in the USA; the intimidation of minority voters in Florida and Ohio; nor the failure to count two million ballots cast, half by African-American voters, in America's first post-democratic election held earlier this month.
Eastern bloc observers noted that balloting in Ohio, New Mexico and Florida did not meet Ukrainian standards, but applauded America's attempt to restore democratic institutions after the overthrow of elected government in 2000.
----------
Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, now available on a 5 CD audio set read by Ed Asner, Alec Baldwin, Jello Biafra, Al Franken, Janeane Garofalo, Amy Goodman, Jim Hightower, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Alexandra Paul and Shiva Rose. To hear a segment of the book or receive Greg's investigative reports click here:
www.gregpalast.com/contact.cfm
Thousands on brink of revolt as West challenges result
From Jeremy Page in Kiev November 23, 2004
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1370909,00.html
MORE than 100,000 opposition supporters took over the centre of Kiev last night to protest over the results of a presidential election that Western observers said was rigged in favour of Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian-backed Prime Minister.
Protesters set up hundreds of tents behind makeshift barricades along the main avenue to Independence Square. Lorries brought generators, sleeping bags, waterproof sheets and food, all provided by the headquarters of the Western-leaning opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko, in what was a highly organised operation.
Richard Lugar, President Bush’s personal representative at the election, called
for a review of the results. He accused the Government of engineering defeat for Mr Yushchenko, and a US State Department spokesman said that Washington was deeply concerned about the elections.
DAILY KOS - The assertion by pundits/Bushies that exit polling was 'way off', and thus, exit polls, which showed an easy Kerry victory in both Ohio and Florida, were incorrectly skewed and did not represent the electorate, is completely bogus. This is disproved in minutes by simply noting the entire rest of the suite of exit polls conducted by AP and distributed to the news media. . .
Notice, if you will, that states with a narrow or wide Bush margin of victory not called Ohio or Florida, project perfectly. Missouri leans to Bush in exit polls, and leaned to him in the vote. Tennessee likewise was favorable to Bush in exit polls, and it showed in the final results with a clear Bush margin of victory. Pick a state, any state, there is not one single exit poll off by more than a few percentage points in any semi-competitive race. Not one.
Except two: Ohio and Florida, the latter of which has already been "awarded" to Bush, and the former, which appears to nearly be a lock for him . . . George Bush's win in each of these 2 states is nowhere near what exit polls suggest. In Ohio, Kerry had a small but noticeable lead with both male and female voters, a rare thing for him as males have tended to favor Bush in this election by a small margin. Likewise, independent voters clearly broke for Kerry, by a 21 percent margin, 60-39. This is not anywhere near the result we are seeing now, and along with Florida, whom I will get to in a moment, it is a clear and blatant sign of voter fraud. I don't use that most dangerous of "F" words lightly, but I must call a wolf a wolf and a sheep a sheep, and this whole setup stinks like Karl Rove after he's ran 15 feet.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/3/53438/6175
All exit polls predict Kerry victory, though early polls not considered reliable
Kerry seen as presidential victor in early exit polls
By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor
http://www.bluelemur.com/
Sen. John Kerry looks to make a victory of the electoral college, according to all sets of exit polls conducted by a consortium of six media organizations(the National Election Pool) that RAW STORY acquired earlier today, from the six major networks who conducted the polls.The first, third and final round give Kerry a wide berth in all critical swing states. The second round put Kerry ahead in Ohio and Florida, but only by a one point margin.Exit polls, in which voters are interviewed after they
vote, typically favor Republicans in early voting, as Republicans by-and-large tend to vote earlier in the day. This may spell bad news for President Bush,
though itís also important to consider that early polls are routinely unreliable; they are not actual voting returns. Bush currently leads in actual voting
returns. All of the polls put Kerry ahead in Florida, Ohio,and New Mexico. The two for which polling was available for other states had Kerry ahead in Pennsylvania,
Minnesota and Wisconsin. In the polls received, Bush leads in Colorado, Louisiana and Arizona. Iowa is a tie.A source connected to the White House has dismissed
the early polls as ìskewedî and told a conservative magazine reporter that Bush would certainly win both Florida and Ohio.Here are the first exit polls, confirmed from sources in both parties, as leaked to RAW STORY. The first number is the percentage of voters supporting Kerry, the second are those supporting Bush.
6. Exit Polls Right, Tallies Wrong? | Election 2004 | AlterNet
The hot story in the blogosphere is that the "erroneous" exit polls that showed Kerry ... Get top stories in your inbox each week from Election 2004! ...
www.alternet.org/election04/20416/ - 31k - Cached - Similar pages
Exit Polls Right, Tallies Wrong?
By Thom Hartmann, AlterNet. Posted November 5, 2004.
The hot story in the blogosphere is that the "erroneous" exit polls that showed Kerry carrying Florida and Ohio (among other states) weren't erroneous at all – it was the numbers produced by voting machines that were wrong, and Kerry actually won. As more and more analysis is done of what may (or may not) be the most massive election fraud in the history of the world, however, it's critical that we keep the largest issue at the forefront at all time: Why are We The People allowing private, for-profit corporations, answerable only to their officers and boards of directors, and loyal only to agendas and politicians that will enhance their profitability, to handle our votes?
Maybe Florida went for Kerry, maybe for Bush. Over time – and through the efforts of some very motivated investigative reporters – we may well find out (Bev Harris of blackboxvoting.org just filed what may be the largest Freedom of Information Act [FOIA} filing in history), and bloggers and investigative reporters are discovering an odd discrepancy in exit polls being largely accurate in paper-ballot states and oddly inaccurate in touch-screen electronic voting states. Even raw voter analyses are showing extreme oddities in touch-screen-run Florida, and eagle-eyed bloggers are finding that news organizations are retroactively altering their exit polls to coincide with what the machines ultimately said.
But in all the discussion about voting machines, let's never forget the concept of the commons, because this usurpation is the ultimate felony committed by conservatives this year.
At the founding of this nation, we decided that there were important places to invest our tax (then tariff) dollars, and those were the things that had to do with the overall "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" of all of us. Over time, these commons – in which we all make tax investments and for which we all hold ultimate responsibility – have come to include our police and fire services; our military and defense; our roads and skyways; our air, waters and national parks; and the safety of our food and drugs.
But the most important of all the commons in which we've invested our hard-earned tax dollars is our government itself. It's owned by us, run by us (through our elected representatives), answerable to us, and most directly responsible for stewardship of our commons.
And the commons through which we regulate the commons of our government is our vote.
About two years ago, I wrote a story for Common Dreams, "If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines," that exposed how Sen. Chuck Hagel had, before stepping down and running for the U.S. Senate in Nebraska, been the head of the voting machine company (now ES&S) that had just computerized Nebraska's vote. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's "Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election." According to Bev Harris, Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely black communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska, nearly all on unauditable machines he had just sold the state. And in all probability, Hagel will run for president in 2008.
In another, later article I wrote at the request of MoveOn.org and which they mailed to their millions of members, I noted that in Georgia – another state that went all-electronic – "USA Today reported on Nov. 3, 2002, 'In Georgia, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll shows Democratic Sen. Max Cleland with a 49% to 44% lead over Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss.' Cox News Service, based in Atlanta, reported just after the election (Nov. 7) that, 'Pollsters may have goofed' because 'Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss defeated incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland by a margin of 53 to 46 percent. The Hotline, a political news service, recalled a series of polls Wednesday showing that Chambliss had been ahead in none of them.'" Nearly every vote in the state was on an electronic machine with no audit trail.
7. The Myth of the Exurban Voter
Ruy Teixeira
The 2004 Pre-Election and Exit Polls: A Total Survey Error Analysis
The accuracy of the 2004 pre-election and exit polls are examined from a total survey error perspective. There was considerable speculation before the ...
www.allacademic.com/meta/p85357_index.html - 37k - Cached - Similar pages
The accuracy of the 2004 pre-election and exit polls are examined from a total survey error perspective. There was considerable speculation before the election that Republicans were being oversampled, partly because of the exclusion of people who only have cell phones from sampling frames. Weighting by partisanship seems to have accidentally overcompensated for that problem. By contrast, Republican voters were less likely to be interviewed in exit polls, partly because of interviewer-related effects. All in all, the problems with the exit polls were more serious than those for the pre-election polls in 2004.
8. Media sweats over exit poll accuracy - David Paul Kuhn - Politico.com
While exit polling is a notoriously inexact science—early exit poll results suggested John Kerry would be elected president in 2004—the introduction of ...
www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14778.html - 171k - Cached - Similar pages
Media outlets are preparing for the possibility that their Election Day surveys could be skewed because of overstated support for Barack Obama, largely because of the enthusiasm of his supporters.
While exit polling is a notoriously inexact science—early exit poll results suggested John Kerry would be elected president in 2004—the introduction of several new variables, ranging from the zeal of Obama’s supporters to his racial background to widespread early voting, is causing concerns among those charged with conducting the surveys and the networks that will be reporting them.
“It’s in some ways the flip side of non-cooperation,” said one pollster involved in preparations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, “It’s over-cooperation by certain people.”
Unlike a traditional poll that asks voters who they intend to support, exit polls are taken outside the polling place immediately after voters have cast their ballots. The interviewing begins when the polls open in the morning and lasts throughout the day until shortly before the polls close.
9. 2004 Election Investigation
Working Paper #05-04: 2004 An Examination of Exit Poll Accuracy and Discrepancies with Official Counts in U.S. Elections (June 2005) Available by request. ...
www.appliedresearch.us/sf/epdiscrep.htm - 29k - Cached - Similar pages
10. Are Exit Polls Reliable? - Forbes.com
In 2004, Edison/Mitofsky provided exit poll data and election estimates for the presidential race and for 120 other races across the 50 states. ...
www.forbes.com/2008/11/01/exit-polls-election-oped-cx_kb_1103bowman.html - 31k -Cached - Similar pages
In 2004, Edison/Mitofsky provided exit poll data and election estimates for the presidential race and for 120 other races across the 50 states. They surveyed voters at 1,480 locations and conducted 500 phone interviews in 13 states with a high proportion of absentee/early voters.
But exit polls aren't always reliable, and the controversy surrounding the 2000 election is the most infamous example. The exit pollsters and news organizations awarded Florida to Al Gore before the polls closed and then retracted it. Later, the networks (but not the exit pollsters) awarded Florida to George W. Bush--and then retracted that call, too.
There was a lot of blame to go around. Absentee votes were undercounted, and the election model was flawed. A simple mistake in data entry inflated Gore's vote. Fierce network competition to be the first to call the contest triggered the premature calls. After the election, the networks vowed not to release results in any state until all the polls in that state had closed.
Comment On This Story
The machinery was overhauled for the 2002 elections, but that year, massive technical failures botched exit poll reporting. In 2004, and again in 2006, the exit poll overstated Democrats' performance. In the 1,460 exit poll precincts where Edison/Mitofsky collected both exit poll tallies and actual final vote returns in 2004, the exit poll results overstated the actual difference between John Kerry and Bush by 6.5 points in Kerry's favor.
Related Stories
· GOP's Christian Right Pact Costs Votes
· Labor Unions Lag In Power
· (Mr.) Wilsonian Politics Aren't Working
· Great Expectations For Obama
· Money For Nothing
· Stories
· Videos
This problem was due, according to a post-election analysis by Mitofsky, "to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters." This was the largest problem of its kind in the past five presidential elections. Although it was a serious problem for the pollsters, he said, this error did not "lead to a single incorrect NEP [National Election Pool] winner projection on election night."
Can these past problems be overcome on Tuesday night? To compensate for the potential oversampling of Democrats, Edison/Mitofsky have improved interviewer training and are using fewer young interviewers. They have compromised with states that had kept interviewers far from the polling locations, which made data collection difficult. And as in 2006, the networks won't get the data until 5 p.m., which will help to prevent the kind of leaks that suggested--too early--that Kerry would win in 2004. Additional safeguards will check the poll against actual votes. These changes should improve the reliability of the only tool we have to look at the views and values of actual voters and how they have changed over time.
Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow who studies public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute, writes a weekly column for Forbes.com.
11. FOXNews.com - Egg On Face of Exit Pollsters - You Decide 2004
Egg On Face of Exit Pollsters, Exit polls blow it again as afternoon numbers come out differently ... Campaign 2004. Highs and lows of the 2004 elections ...
www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,137451,00.html - 49k - Cached - Similar pages
By the time most of the polls closed in precincts across the country Tuesday night, real numbers began to suggest that the early estimations that had been so upbeat for Sen. John Kerry were over-inflated — so much so, that FOX News Channel decided to quit using the exit poll results Tuesday evening, calling them inaccurate and unreliable.
FOX News had been using exit poll numbers crunched by Edison Media Research (search) in New Jersey and Mitofsky International (search) of New York, which had been contracted by the six news organizations that had formed the National Election Pool — besides the FOX News Channel, they were ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and the Associated Press.
RELATED
· STORIES
· Ralph Nader Ends Presidential Bid
· 2004: Not the Year of the Youth Vote
· Voters Turn Out in Droves
· Ohio Absentee Voters Can Use Provisional Ballots
· Fraud File: Trouble at the Polls
· TV Networks Cautious About Election Results
· Bush Camp Declares Victory
PHOTO ESSAYS
· Election Day
INTERACTIVES
· Swing States
· Track Your Races -- Election Tracker
The new pollsters had replaced the Voter News Service(search), a consortium of media outlets that did its own exit polling and vote counting in 2000, and was largely blamed for misjudging the 2000 election.
Long before the polls closed, Tuesday's exit polling, which included presidential preferences as well as gauges about the importance of issues to voters, had been widely circulated via the Internet along with independent voting predictions. All suggested unusually strong numbers for Kerry.
Early numbers looked so positive for Kerry that FOX News analyst Jim Pinkerton, at 3:30 p.m. EST, said, "I think it looks good for angry Democrats."
Television anchors and pundits, who are expected not to reveal trends, began reporting the "buzz" or the "mood" of the campaigns, suggesting they too had seen the numbers and were reacting accordingly.
NBC News' David Gregory said Bush "appeared subdued," while ABC News' Terry Moran noted the president had expressed a "rare sense of doubt."
The political Web logs or "blogosphere," posted the numbers throughout the day, and depending on which side of the aisle bloggers aligned themselves, either embraced or were repulsed by what they saw during the day.
"Clearly exit polls are not meaningless: I think they have something to do with the Bushies' glumness," wrote "Alexander" on the Democratic-leaning Dailykos.com.
Later on FOX News, analysts talked openly about how some actual results contradicted exit polls numbers.
"Either the exit polls are completely wrong or George Bush loses," FOX News analyst Susan Estrich said.
By midnight, Bush was declared the winner in Florida, though throughout the day the state had been predicted a winner for Kerry. Similar predictions in Ohio were also found to be wrong as the state was put in Bush's column.
"We began noticing there was some very odd things," in the polls, Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes told FOX News. "We knew there were some problems from the get-go."
One Republican strategist told FOX News that "in the beginning of the night, we were asking how we could have been so far off.
"I bought a box of Kleenex. But I didn't open them," he said.
Exit polls did elicit some news about voters' moods, which suggested that neither candidate had a clear mandate on the issues. The close nature of the popular vote in the early morning hours Wednesday seemed to indicate that those attitudes may have been more accurately reflected in exit data than presidential preferences.
Exit polls suggested that slightly more voters trusted Bush to handle terrorism than Kerry. A majority said the country was safer from terrorism than four years ago. Those voters overwhelmingly backed Bush.
But among those who said they were very worried about a terrorist strike, Kerry held a slight lead. The majority of voters who said things were going poorly in Iraq heavily favored Kerry.
Kerry was also favored by eight of 10 voters who listed the economy as a top issue.
Half said the country was headed in the right direction, a good sign for the incumbent.
12. VDARE.com: 01/25/05 - Stomping On The 2004 Exit Poll’s Grave (And ...
Edison-Mitofsky, the firm that conducted the troubled 2004 National Exit Poll (NEP), has now issued a long report (PDF) reviewing its own performance. ...
www.vdare.com/Sailer/050125_stomping.htm - 19k - Cached - Similar pages
Stomping On The 2004 Exit Poll’s Grave (And Some Other Myths)
By Steve Sailer
[The Sailer Election 2004 Series: Sailer Strategy Wins Another For GOP—But How Much Longer?; Bush Didn't Win 44% of Hispanic Vote —The Smoking Exit Poll; Another Nail In The Coffin Of Bush’s “44% Hispanic Share”; I Told You So Department: Only Bush Boosters Now Believe 44% Hispanic Vote Myth]
It may not be as flashy as Powerlineblog.com’s rout of Dan Rather. But I really have to congratulate me (and VDARE.COM) for routing the exit poll-fuelled media myth that George Bush made a big breakthrough among Hispanics this year.
The internet rules!
Edison-Mitofsky, the firm that conducted the troubled 2004 National Exit Poll (NEP), has now issued a long report (PDF) reviewing its own performance. It offers some important nuggets about what really happened last November.
· E-M’s analysis of the exaggerated Bush share of the Hispanic vote(pp. 59-62) confirms my diagnosis of what went wrong, as I elaborated in VDARE.com, see above).
As I'd discerned, Bush did better among Hispanics on the long form questionnaire that Edison-Mitosfsky had given out at 250 polling stations (total sample size of 12,219) than on the short form questionnaire distributed at 1,469 locations (sample size of 75,537).
The long form exaggerated the national and regional Bush share of the Hispanic vote—especially the bizarrely high figure in the South region, where Bush supposedly won 64% of the Hispanic vote, even though he carried only 56 percent in Florida and 49 percent in Texas. (Which was reduced from the initial announcement of 59 percent).
Nationally, Bush supposedly lost among Hispanics only by 53-44 on the long questionnaire, but got whipped 58-40 on the larger sample size short form.
Back on November 7, I wrote: "The big difficulty with an exit poll is coming up with a representative sample of polling places. Apparently, the NEP failed to do this." That's exactly what went wrong with the National/Regional exit poll's Hispanic share, as Edison-Mitofsky now admit.
· The Edison-Mitofsky report also contains an interesting table (p. 59) showing six more demographic groups where the widely publicized National figure for Bush's share disagreed substantially with the sum of the State exit polls.
Here's Bush's share for each:
National States
(Small Sample) (Large Sample)
Hispanic 44% 40%
Asian 44% 39%
Age 75+ 45% 48%
Jewish 25% 22%
Mormon 80% 76%
Muslim 6% 13%
Income >$200,000 63% 60%
All of these are small and geographically-clustered groups. So the sum of the State exit polls is inherently more trustworthy and than the smaller sample size National poll.
My comments:
· The Asian mirage. The news, reduced Asian share is worth noting in the context of the President's plan to increase immigration. Here's a largely prosperous, law-abiding, and socially conservative “model minority.” Yet Asian-Americans apparently can't stand Mr. Bush. They gave him only 39 percent of their votes, compared to 58 percent among non-Hispanic whites.
· The Neoconservative Mirage. Bush's 22 percent share of the Jewish vote, although reduced from the small sample estimate, is of course slightly better than the 19 percent he achieved in 2000. But then, John Edwards had replaced Joe Lieberman as the Democrat's VP nominee. So you'd expect a Republican to win back some conservative and moderate Jews who liked Lieberman. Compared to how well Republicans did from 1976 through 1988, when their share of the Jewish vote ranged from 31 percent to 39 percent, 22 percent is very bad.
And, when you consider how much of the neoconservative invade-the-world-invite-the world foreign and immigration policies Bush adopted as his own—well, 22 percent is unbelievably awful.
What this shows is that neoconservatives can make a big noise, but they can't deliver the vote. With Jews casting only 3 percent of all votes, the neoconservative vote comes out to only 2/3rds of one percent of the electorate.
To put in Texan terms the President ought to understand, the neoconservatives are all hat and no cattle.
· The Muslim Mirage: It's not surprising that there's a big difference between the small sample and large sample figures for Bush's share of the Muslim vote (6 percent vs. 13 percent), because the total quite tiny—only 1 percent (compared to 3 percent for Jews). And of course, that's rounded. It would be useful to learn whether the unrounded Muslim proportion of the total vote was actually closer to 0.5 percent or 1.4 percent—in the 2002 election, it was only 0.3 percent.
Either way, it’s not worth Grover Norquist’s time.
[Steve Sailer [email him] is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute and movie critic for The American Conservative. His websitewww.iSteve.blogspot.com features his daily blog.]
13. Pew Research Center: Religion and the Presidential Vote
(The 2004 exit poll cannot be directly compared with the exit poll in 2000, ... According to a comparison of exit polls and Pew surveys in 2000 and 2004, ...
people-press.org/commentary/?analysisid=103 - 15k - Cached - Similar pages
December 6, 2004
Religion and the Presidential Vote
Bush's Gains Broad-Based
President Bush's successful reelection effort owed much to the support he received from highly religious voters, especially white evangelical Protestants. But what has been largely overlooked is Bush's success with less religious voters. In fact, compared with four years ago, Bush made relatively bigger gains among infrequent churchgoers than he did among religiously observant voters.
Voters who say they attend church at least once a week backed Bush at the same high rates as in 2000. But he made inroads among those who seldom if ever attend religious services, although John Kerry maintained a sizable advantage among these voters.
Trends in the religious vote in this election defied the conventional wisdom in other ways as well. Bush's support among white evangelical Protestants, already quite substantial, increased markedly from its 2000 level. However, there is no evidence that evangelicals comprised a larger share of the vote this year.
Moreover, while Bush drew more support from evangelicals, he increased his share of the vote among other religious denominations as well. Bush fared better among Jews and Catholics especially Catholics who do not attend church frequently than he did in 2000.
Bush Gained Among Evangelicals
According to the National Election Pool exit poll, Bush received 78% of the vote among white evangelicals, up 10% from 2000, according to Pew's final pre-election poll that year. (The 2004 exit poll cannot be directly compared with the exit poll in 2000, which did not include a measure of evangelical identification).
Although voter turnout was up generally in 2004, there is no indication that white evangelicals boosted their level of participation more than other groups in the population. According to a comparison of exit polls and Pew surveys in 2000 and 2004, white evangelicals constituted the same percentage of the electorate in both years: 23%. Overall, there was remarkable stability from 2000 to 2004 in the religious composition of the electorate. The size of other religious groups, and the balance of frequent churchgoers and those who attend infrequently was nearly identical in the two election years.
Still, the election underscored the importance of white evangelical voters to the GOP. In 2004, they constituted 36% of Bush voters. By comparison, African-Americans the most loyal of Democratic constituencies constituted only about one-fifth (21%) of Kerry's voters.
But Others As Well
President Bush increased his share of the Catholic vote by five percentage points (52% in 2004, vs. 47% in 2000). His gain among white, non-Hispanic Catholics was four points (52% to 56%).
But the similar size of Bush's gains among Catholics and his gains among other groups suggest that the impact of conservative bishops who spoke out against John Kerry was relatively limited. During the campaign, several Roman Catholic bishops vowed to deny Communion to lawmakers who support abortion rights. But voter support for Bush increased slightly less (three points) among Catholics who are regular churchgoers, and thus who might be more apt to hear about and be influenced by the bishops' appeal, than among those who attend less frequently (up seven points). Indeed, a Pew poll in August found widespread disapproval of the bishops' action among Catholics, with 72% of Catholics saying that it was inappropriate.
Bush also registered a larger-than-average gain among Jews, winning 25% of the vote up from 19% in 2000. In the key swing state of Florida, he received 20% of the Jewish vote, up from 12% four years ago.
Kerry registered significant gains relative to Al Gore's performance among two groups: seculars and those who do not identify with the major Christian or Jewish traditions. Kerry received 74% of the vote among those who identify themselves as something other than Christian or Jewish, up by 12 points from Gore's total in 2000. And 67% of seculars voted for Kerry, compared with 61% who voted for Gore. Bush's share among the seculars was about the same in 2000 and 2004, but in 2000 7% of seculars voted for Nader. This year only 1% did so.
Conservative Turnout Rises
The electorate of 2004 was more Republican and conservative than the electorate of 2000, with Republicans matching Democrats 37%-37% this year (compared with 39% Democrat, 35% Republican in 2000), and the percentage of self-identified conservatives rising four points (from 30% to 34%).
Conservative gains were about the same among less frequent churchgoers (up 2%) as among those who attend church at least once a week (up 1%). Similarly, turnout among Republicans who do not attend church weekly was up at least as much as among those who go less often.
Evangelicals Trend More Republican
The rising political clout of evangelical Christians is not the result of growth in their numbers but rather their increasing cohesiveness as a key element of the Republican Party. The percentage of the population who are white evangelicals has changed very little (19% in 1987; 23% now) and what growth there was occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
However, in 1987, white evangelical Protestants were divided in their partisan attachments, with 34% identifying as Republicans and 29% as Democrats. Today, Republicans outnumber Democrats within this group by more than two-to-one (48%-23%).
This shift toward Republican identification among white evangelicals came in two stages. In the late 1980s, white evangelicals in the South were still mostly wedded to the Democratic Party while evangelicals outside the South were more aligned with the GOP. But over the course of the next decade or so, the GOP made gains among white Southerners generally and evangelicals in particular virtually eliminating this regional disparity.
The second stage began in 2000, coinciding with Bush's election. Since then, there has been rapid growth in Republican identification among both Southern and non-Southern evangelicals. Nationwide, Republican identification among white evangelicals increased from 39% in 1999 to 48% today. In 2004, white evangelicals made up 23% of the population, and 37% of the Republican Party.
Bush Voters: Faith Matters, Leadership Matters More
Bush voters placed much more emphasis on a candidate's religious faith than did Kerry supporters. Among those who voted for Bush, 14% cited a candidate's "strong religious faith" as the single most important quality in their vote; just 1% of Kerry supporters cited that as a major factor in their vote.
Nonetheless, significantly more of Bush's supporters mentioned leadership (29%) and a clear stance on the issues (27%) as the candidate qualities that mattered most. In addition, a candidate's honesty was mentioned about as often as personal faith as a major factor for Bush's supporters.
For Kerry supporters, by contrast, the desire for change trumped all other candidate qualities. Nearly half (47%) cited that as the most important factor; far fewer cited a candidate's empathy (14%) and intelligence (13%) as the qualities that mattered most in their vote.
About the Analysis:
The data for this analysis are drawn from the 2000 VNS and 2004 NEP Exit Polls with one important exception. While the 2004 NEP Exit Poll included a measure of evangelical identification ("Would you describe yourself as a born-again or evangelical Christian?" [Yes, No]), the 2000 VNS Exit Poll did not include this question. As a result, trends are drawn from the Pew Research Center's November 2000 election weekend survey of 1,677 likely voters conducted November 1-5, 2000, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Results of the 2004 Pew Research Center election weekend survey of likely voters are consistent with the 2004 NEP exit poll figures shown here for both the number of the evangelical Christian voting and the proportion voting for George W. Bush.
14 Selected exit poll comparisons, 2000-2004-2008 | Observationalism
A side-by-side comparison of the exit poll data on the presidential vote by demographic group this year with the numbers in 2004 and 2000.
observationalism.com/2008/11/09/selected-exit-poll-comparisons-2000-2004-2008/ - 47k -Cached - Similar pages
15. More exit poll comparisons, 2000-2004-2008 | Observationalism
More side-by-side comparisons, in pie charts, of the exit poll data on the presidential vote by demographic group this year with the numbers from 2004 and ...
observationalism.com/2008/11/10/more-exit-poll-comparisons-2000-2004-2008/ - 46k -Cached - Similar pages
16. Mystery Pollster: Exit Polls: What You Should Know
Kudos for not falling into that mindset Mystery Pollster. Posted by: johnzep | Nov 2, 20041:11:19 PM. Here's another problem with exit polls. ...
www.mysterypollster.com/main/2004/11/exit_polls_what.html - 49k - Cached - Similar pages
So sometime very soon, the traffic on certain web sites will hit astronomically high levels as the blogosphere goes in search of the latest leaked exit polls. The conventional wisdom on this is unshakable: The networks "know" who will win, but won't tell us. Lets take our own peek at results shared by those working at the networks today and get in on the secret.
Well, I hate to disappoint, but this site will not be a source of leaked "exits." However, I would like to take a moment and give you a bit of a reality check. Let me tell you a bit about what exit polls are and why you may want to take what you hear over the web with a giant grain of salt.
I have always been a fan of exit polls. Despite the occasional controversies, exit polls remain among the most sophisticated and reliable political surveys available. They will offer an unparalleled look at today's voters in a way that would be impossible without quality survey data. Having said that, they are still just random sample surveys, possessing the usual limitations plus some that are unique to exit polling (I also remain dubious about weighting telephone surveys to match them, but that is another story for another day).
A quick summary of how exit polls work: The exit pollster begins by drawing a random sampling of precincts within a state, selected so that the odds of any precinct being selected are proportionate to the number that typically vote in that precinct. TheNational Election Pool Exit Poll, which is conducting the exit polling for the six major networks today, will send exit pollsters to 1,495 precincts across the country.
One or sometimes two interviewers will report to each sampled precinct. They will stand outside and attempt to randomly select roughly 100 voters during the day as they exit from voting. The interviewer will accomplish this task by counting voters as they leave the polling place and selecting every voter at a specific interval (every 10th or 20th voter, for example). The interval is chosen so that approximately 100 interviews will be spread evenly over the course of the day.
When a voter refuses to participate, the interviewer records their gender, race and approximate age. This data allow the exit pollsters to do statistical corrections for any bias in gender, race and age that might result from refusals.
The interviewer will give respondents a 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 card to fill out that will include approximately 25 questions (see an example from the New Hampshire primary here). Respondents fill out the survey privately then put the completed survey in a clearly marked "ballot box” so they know their identities cannot be tracked and their answers remain confidential.
The biggest challenge to exit polls is logistical: How to transmit all the results to a central location quickly and accurately. In past elections, interviewers would take a 10 minute break every hour to tabulate responses. Interviewers would then call in tabulations at three approximate times during the day: 9:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and shortly before the polls close (disclaimer: I have no first hand knowledge of this year's procedures, which may be different).
Once the polls close, the interviewer will attempt to obtain actual turnout counts, and if possible, actual vote returns for their precinct. One of the unique aspects of the exit poll design is the way it gradually incorporates real turnout and vote data as it becomes available once the polls close. The exit poll designers have developed weighting schemes and algorithms to allow all sorts of comparisons to historical data that supports the networks as they decide whether to "call” a state for a particular candidate. When all of the votes have been counted, the exit poll is weighted by the vote to match the actual result.
So if this poll is so sophisticated, why can't we rely on the leaked mid-day "numbers” that will soon spread like wildfire across the web?
1) It is still just a survey – Even when complete, an exit poll still has the same random variation as any other survey. NEPsays typical state exit polls will have a sampling error when complete of +/- 4% at a 95% confidence level, and +/- 3% for the national exit poll. Even if comparable to the final numbers – which they are decidedly not – the mid-day leaked numbers would have much greater error, perhaps +/- 7% or more.
2) The mid-day numbers do not reflect weighting by actual turnout – the end-of-day exit poll used to assist the networks in determining winners will be weighted by the actual turnout of voters at each selected precinct. The weighting will then be continuously updated to reflect turnout at comparable precincts. In the past, mid-day numbers have reflected a weighting based on past turnout, so the leaked mid-day numbers may tell us nothing about the impact of new registrants or the unique level of turnout this time.
One point needs emphasis here: even in past elections, networks never called an election based on raw exit poll numbers alone. They were first weighted by a tally of the full day's turnout at each sampled precinct. This end-of-day data is (obviously) not available at 12 noon.
3) Voting patterns may be different early in the day - People who work full time jobs typically vote more heavily before or after work. Even a perfect mid-day exit poll – and there is no such animal – may not be any better at picking a winner than the half-time scores in any given football game on Sunday. Also, despite what you may have heard on the West Wing, I know of no serious study showing a consistent Democratic or Republican tilt to the morning or evening hours (if anyone does, please email me).
4) Early or absentee voting - As of last night, the ABC Newssurvey estimated that 15% of all registered voters nationally had already cast absentee or early ballots. Obviously, these voters will not be available to interviewers standing outside polling places. To incorporate early voting, the National Election Pool is doing telephone interviewing in 13 states to sample the votes of those who voted early. Will these early votes be included in the mid-day leaked numbers? Who knows? I wouldn't count on it. (Good question, Andrew).
5) They could be fictional - Both sides have huge armies of field workers sweating it out in the streets right now. Field workers have been known to find creative ways to boost the morale of their own troops or demoralize the other side. Might someone start a rumor by sending made up numbers to a blog? Ya think? After all, the guy most web surfers turn to for leaked exits likes to say that the information he provides is only 80% accurate. What are the chances he could be, excuse the technical term, making shit up?
6) The people who do exit polls would rather you ignored them - OK, admittedly, that is a pretty wimpy reason, but they have a point. Exit polls provide a valuable resource for all of us. The will help us better understand who the voters are, why they vote the way they do and what the answers are to some of the debates that have raged for months that will not be resolved by vote returns alone. When someone leaks or broadcasts results of an exit poll (or telegraphs it by winking the way certain news networks tend to do about about 4 or 5 o'clock), calls are made to ban exit pollsters from polling places. That would be a very bad thing.
Listen, I understand human nature, and I'm not going to try to change it. We are all intensely curious about what is going to happen tonight, and most of us will find a way to peek at leaked exit polls at some point today. I just want you to know that those leaked exit polls really don't tell us much more about the outcome of the race than the telephone polls we were obsessing over just a few hours ago. Even if we wanted to call a race on unweighted, unfinished, mid-day exit polls alone (something the networks will not do), we would need to see differences of 10-15 points separating the candidates to be 95% certain of a winner.
So look at them if you must, but please, don't go plugging the numbers into spreadsheets and assume that your Electoral College "projections" have any special magic or scientific validity. Then don't. You might be better off flipping a coin to determine the outcomes of states like Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa, etc.
I'll be back with more later in the day. If you have questions about exit polls that don't involve today's numbers, please sent them my way. You might also want to check the Frequently Asked Questions at the National Election Pool web site. See the jump page for offline sources this post.
P.S. I am leaving the comments section open, but with some very firm rules today. Absolutely NO POSTING OF LEAKED EXIT POLL NUMBERS. Anyone who chooses to ignore this admonition will have his or her message deleted and may be blocked from posting further. If I have to delete more than one or two messages, I will turn off comments for today. It may be the new Dad in me, but it’s my blog: don’t make me stop this car! ;-)
17. Free exit polls 2004 Download - exit polls 2004 Software
Free download exit polls 2004 Software at WareSeeker.com - Whats on your visitors minds? We allow you to easily add a poll or survey to your site, ...
wareseeker.com/free-exit-polls-2004/ - 49k - Cached - Similar pages
18. Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?, Exit Polls, Election ...
An award-winning social scientist and a celebrated journalist investigate the 2004 election results.
www.sevenstories.com/Book/?GCOI=58322100420010 - 25k - Cached - Similar pages
19. CIRCLE - A nonpartisan research center studying youth civic ...
Young women voters also came out to the polls in larger numbers—55 percent ... 4 to 5 percentage points over CIRCLE’s estimate based on the 2004 exit polls. ...
www.civicyouth.org/ - 129k - Cached - Similar pages
20. Beyond Exit Poll Fundamentalism:
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
Scientific evidence of theft: the 2004 NEP presidential exit poll gave .... It is also possible that the 2004 exit polls were accurate even if the 1992 exit ...
inside.bard.edu/~lindeman/beyond-epf.pdf - Similar pages
by M Lindeman - 2006 - Cited by 1 - Related articles
21. BuzzFlash Review: Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen ...
We strongly recommend another addition to this growing library: "Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official ...
www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/240 - Similar pages
22. State Primary Exit Polls 1976-2004
This collection consists of numerous State Primary Exit Polls dating back to 1976 right up to the polls conducted in 2004.
www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/common/past_primaries.html - 24k -Cached - Similar pages
23. TruthIsAll
Exit Poll Analysis: 7/12/05 Update · 2004 Election Collection ... The analysis of exit pollsand documented fraud in this election began on the Internet. ...
www.truthisall.net/ - 32k - Cached - Similar pages
24. Everything about 2004 exit polls - Yahoo! Glue
A complete overview of the best information on 2004 exit polls provided by Yahoo! Glue, which aggregates top content from the richest sources.
glue.yahoo.com/page/2004+exit+polls - 45k - Cached - Similar pages
25. <<<< Newsclip Autopsy >>>>: TRUTH LEFT OUT: Data Indicates a ...
Back in January, 2005, I emailed Dr. Steven Freeman about the Mitofsky anaylsis of the 2004Presidential election exit poll. ...
newsclipautopsy.blogspot.com/2005/04/truth-left-out-data-indicates-massive.html - 28k -Cached - Similar pages
Friday, April 01, 2005
TRUTH LEFT OUT: Data Indicates a Massive 2004 Exit Poll Whitewash
Back in January, 2005, I emailed Dr. Steven Freeman about the Mitofsky anaylsis of the 2004 Presidential election exit poll. In that email, I made an observation about a particular detail in the Mitofsky analysis that had not been noticed by any researcher or critic of the report at that time. You may see the original observation I made here.
The Mitofsky hypothesis proposes that "within precinct error" (WPE) is the reason for the exit poll discrepancy that we've all heard about. In his report, he discusses many factors that he said contributed to this WPE. Factors such as: the distance the exit poll workers were from the actual election polling area; the weather conditions; interviewer characteristics (such as age) all contributed to the skew of the exit polls towards Kerry -- so the argument goes.
However, while I glanced over the data that Mitofsky used to justify this theory, something hit me over the head like a 2-by-4. In EVERY ONE of these factors that Mitofsky mentions in his report, THE WPE IS STILL SIGNIFICANTLY NEGATIVE IN THE MOST IDEAL CIRCUMSTANCE!!! That is, in Mitofsky's dream world, where the exit poll workers were:
1. working immediately adjacent to the ballot boxes.
2. interviewing electors where the weather was a nice sunny 70 degrees fahrenheit.
3. interviewing electors from only one precinct in multiple precinct areas.
4. between the ages of 55 and 64.
etc...
there still would be significant WPE, with the 2004 exit poll results.
As I stated in January, I was hoping that Freeman and others would do an analyses on this particular detail. Guess what? They did! In this latest report by Freeman et al., Analysis of the 2004 Presidential Election Exit Poll Discrepancies, US Vote Counts looked at all of the factors given by Mitofsky:
First, we notice that even the lowest mean WPE errors for most factors are very high, even in the best of circumstances. We can therefore eliminate most of the above factors from consideration, leaving only population size of town or city, and voting equipment to consider.
For an example of why we can easily eliminate these factors, let us take "distance from polling place". The number of precincts where the pollsters were placed far from the polling station was small. The discrepancies that E/M seek to explain are already fully present even in the precincts where pollsters were optimally placed. Most of this bias is apparent even in the 75% of precincts where the pollster was allowed to conduct his survey just outside or within the building.
Hand counted paper ballots were used primarily in rural districts in only 3% of sampled precincts altogether, so had very little effect on the overall discrepancies. All voting methods produced higher mean WPEs in urban areas with over 50,000 population.
Rural areas constituted 24% of precincts sampled. All other "population size" precinct groups had mean WPE of at least -5.0, with the highest mean WPE of -7.9 in suburbs which constituted 39% of precincts.
No other factors relating to WPE (within precinct error) were given in the Edison/Mitofsky report that would explain the systematic discrepancies between the election results and the exit poll results in the presidential race.
So there you have it. I'll go even further, though. Since Mitofsky completely ignored this important detail -- and I refuse to believe the "father of exit polling" is incompetent -- one has to assume that Mitofsky is trying to explicitly MISLEAD us. For God sakes!!! I'm a simple layman who has no degree in statistics and I was able to spot this glaring detail!!!
Indeed, there is much more evidence offered by US Vote Counts that points to a 2 or perhaps 3-coat whitewash by Mitofsky.
According to this new study, there is absolutely NO EVIDENCE showing that Kerry supporters were oversampled. In fact, the evidence given by Mitofsky shows that the number of Bush supporters in a precinct is co-related to the exit poll discrepancy:
The Mitofsky data also shows something which is highly improbable and counter-intuitive. Kerry supporters, according to the data, have a wide range of response rates, compared to the Bush supporters. What's even more improbable is that the Kerry supporters, according to Mitofsky's parameters, dramatically increase their response rate when they are in Republican territory. The same is not true for Republicans when in a Democratic precinct. As US Vote Counts muses:
This data contradicts previous experience and observations of this election that voters finding themselves in the minority in a local venue (and particularly a dwarfed minority) tend to be less willing to respond to exit poll interviewers, not more as this data requires. Certainly we would not expect the Kerry voter response rate to soar to over 84% in precincts where Bush voters outnumber them by at least four-to-one. Conversely, we would not expect the Kerry voter response rate to be at its lowest (53%) in precincts where Kerry voters were most numerous.
This is starting to look like an embarrassment to Mitofsky.
There are numerous different angles this new study analyzes with respect to participation vs. party affiliation. Time and time again, Mitofsky's data reveals that his hypothesis and assumptions are totally contradictory to normal polling behaviour. Here are the summaries of US Vote Counts observations on the data when related to Mitofsky's assumptions on respondent behaviour:
- Higher exit poll response rates and higher exit poll discrepancies occurred in Bush
strongholds. E/M’s own data contradict both the rBr and the rBrmpc hypotheses and support the Bsvcc hypothesis.
- The required pattern of exit poll participation by Kerry and Bush voters to satisfy the E/M exit poll data defies empirical experience and common sense under any assumed scenario.
- Once again, there is an implausible set of required response rates for Kerry and Bush supporters given the Edison/Mitofsky precinct partisanship data in Table 1.
- When Edison/Mitofsky’s explanation is checked against their own data using conservative assumptions, it requires highly suspect Kerry voter exit poll behaviors in "high-Bush" precincts.
- Very surprising patterns of partisan response rates to exit polls are required by both Kerry and Bush voters when we select values to minimize the differences between Bush and Kerry voters' exit poll response rates.
In sum, there are no values of proportions of Bush and Kerry voters which can be chosen that would result in plausible response rate patterns, and that satisfy the exit poll data given by E/M.
Get the picture?
Pretty dramatic stuff! Probably as dramatic as it gets for statistical analyses!!! But wait! There's more!!!
The exit polls for the 2004 election not only tabulated views from the Presidential election. It also received information about the voters intentions for the U.S. Senate races. Gues what?! Yup. Strangely enough, the exit polls were far more accurate at determining who would win for Senator. As history shows us, there is no precedent for widespread "ticket-splitting" in other elections. That is, if you vote democratic for President, there is an overwhelming probability that you would vote democratic for the Senator. US Vote Counts summarizes this peculularity this way:
There is no logic to account for non-responders or missed voters when discussing the
difference in the accuracy of results for the Senate versus the presidential races in the same exit poll.
No logic, indeed. Unless this is a nation where "multiple personality disorder" is present in epidemic proportions!!! To allay that particular fear, this report confirmed another startling finding which was observed in a previous report by the same group. Exit polling accuracy was dependent on whether the election ballots were hand-counted or not!! This is a highly significant finding, considering that, in Ohio, only a non-random 3% of the ballots were hand recounted. Many of these instances had recounts which were different from the machine counts. See this previous Newsclip Autopsy article that discusses this further.
In summary, the US Vote Counts report is damning in every conceivable way to the Mitofsky study. It has been shown that Mitofsky's conclusions completely contradict his own data. Furthermore, the only reasonable hypothesis that still has a leg to stand on is the one that supports the idea that widespread vote counting corruption occurred in the 2004 Presidential election. As US Vote Counts states:
Which brings us to our last point.
When is the U.S. public going to finally get to see the raw exit poll data???!!!
Something tells me that this latest damning report is going to delay things a bit further. Especially when the MSM continues to refuse to fairly report what could be the biggest scandal in U.S. history.
posted by STOP_George at 7:41 PM
26. Ruy Teixeira's Donkey Rising: A Tour of the 2004 Exit Poll: What ...
Nov 7, 2004 ... Here are some observations on the 2004 exit poll data, based on the latest version of the data available. There is much to be explained and ...
www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/donkeyrising/2004/11/a_tour_of_the_2004_exit_poll_w.html - 36k - Cached - Similar pages
Here are some observations on the 2004 exit poll data, based on the latest version of the data available. There is much to be explained and understood about these data and certainly legitimate questions can be raised about some of the findings. But the first task is simply to clarify what the poll actually says and does not say, because there is considerable confusion about this.
The figures used here are not the final figures, but, based on my experience in previous election cycles, they probably vary only slightly from the final numbers available when the exit poll authorities (in this case, the National Election Pool (NEP)) release a cleaned-up dataset in a couple of months with final weights.
All 2004 figures discussed here refer to the NEP exit poll not the Los Angeles Timesexit poll, since the NEP poll is both substantially larger and far and away the most widely-used and cited. All 2000 figures refer to the 2000 exit poll by VNS, the NEP's predecessor.
1. Gender. According to the NEP poll, Bush carried men by 11 points (55-44), exactly the same margin he had in 2000 when he carried men by 53-42. Among women, however, Kerry's margin was only 3 points (51-48), down from the 11 point margin Gore had in 2000 (54-43). No matter how you measure the gender gap (add the margins and divide by 2 or simply subtract Democratic male support from Democratic female support), this means a substantial compression of the gender gap (from 11 or 12 points, down to 7) and it is entirely due to the Democrats' reduced margin among women.
2. Race. According to the NEP poll, 23 percent of voters this year were minorites, up from 19 percent in 2000, indicating the continued rapid expansion of the minority electorate.
The NEP poll says, however, that Bush widened his margin among white voters--still 77 percent of voters--to 17 points (58-41), up from a 12 point margin (54-42) in 2000. And among hispanics, now 8 percent of voters, the poll indicates a Kerry margin of only 53-44, a dramatic compression from Gore's 62-35 margin among the same group in 2000.
However, there is some dispute about whether the compression of the Democratic margin was as severe as indicated by this poll. An exit poll of Hispanics only by the William C. Vel�squez Institute of San Antonio, which sampled 54 counties in the 14 states with the largest number of Latino registered voters, had 68 percent voting for Kerry and only 31 percent voting for Bush.
To further sow confusion, the NEP data on hispanics are now being reported in two different ways--as above, at 8 percent of voters and 53-44 Democratic support and at 6 percent of voters and 56-43 Democratic support in Sunday's New York Times. How did hispanics suddenly get demoted to 6 percent of voters? The answer is complicated, but here it is: the NYT for purposes of their historical chart uses a single race question to capture hispanics, as opposed to a race question plusanother question on whether the respondent is of hispanic descent or not, which was included on both the 2000 and 2004 exit polls and is now used by CNN and practically everyone else. The NYT's reasoning for not using this new (and better) two question measure of hispanic respondents is that the historical hispanic data in their chart will at least all be measured in the same way.
I certainly see the point in apples-to-apples comparisons. On the other hand, since the new measure is undoubtedly a better one and we don't really believe the hispanic proportion of voters in 2000 was only 4 percent (as the single question hispanic series also indicates) and just 6 percent this year, it would be better, I think--as well as less confusing--for the NYT to go with the data that is the best and simply acknowledge a discontinuity in the exit poll times time series on hispanics between 1996 and 2000.
People will, after all, play the closest attention to the figures--both support rates and proportion of voters--from this year and, secondarily from 2000. Given that the figures from the two question hispanic measure for those two years are (a) better and (b) comparable with one another, it strikes me as a good idea to feature those data rather than the misleading single question hispanic data. Again, the discontinuity can then be footnoted for those that get into the data that far, but the average NYT reader will be provided with the most accurate measure of hispanic turnout and presidential support.
The data on blacks are much more straightforward. Among blacks, Kerry had an 88-11 margin, down only slightly from 2000's 90-9 margin for Gore. In fact, except for 2000 and Mondale's 1984 campaign, Kerry's margin among blacks is the highest obtained by a Democratic candidate since the exit polls started in 1976.
More exit poll fun tomorrow!
27. Exit Polls 2008: See The Full Results
Nov 4, 2008 ... In 2004 and 2000, the exit polls were way off, such as polls showing Kerry winning Ohio by 4 points, causing many to cite voter fraud. ...
www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/04/exit-polls-2008-see-the-f_n_140986.html - 155k -Cached - Similar pages
But there's some good stuff, too.
1. Report Acknowledges Inaccuracies in 2004 Exit Polls ...
Interviewing for the 2004 exit polls was the most inaccurate of any in the past five presidential elections as procedural problems compounded by the refusal ...
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22188-2005Jan19.html - Similar pages
2. Surveying the Damage (washingtonpost.com)
It will be a few more weeks before we know exactly what went wrong with the 2004 exit polls. But this much we know right now: The resulting furor was the ...
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64906-2004Nov20.html - Similar pages
Interviewing for the 2004 exit polls was the most inaccurate of any in the past five presidential elections as procedural problems compounded by the refusal of large numbers of Republican voters to be surveyed led to inflated estimates of support for John F. Kerry, according to a report released yesterday by the research firms responsible for the flawed surveys.
The exit pollsters emphasized that the flaws did not produce a single incorrect projection of the winner in a state on election night. But "there were 26 states in which the estimates produced by the exit poll data overstated the vote for John Kerry . . . and there were four states in which the exit poll estimates overstated the vote for George W. Bush," said Joe Lenski of Edison Media Research and Warren Mitofsky of Mitofsky International.
3 Exit-Poll.net - Exit Polls by Edison Media Research
Exit Polls From Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International ... View 2004 Exit Poll Results on our member web sites at: CNN, CBS, NBC, FOX ...
www.exit-poll.net/ - 7k - Cached - Similar pages
Exit polling will be conducted for the major presidential primaries and caucuses currently scheduled for early 2008, and the presidential, senate and governor elections in all 50 states in November 2008.
The General Election Exit Poll is one of the largest one-day survey research undertakings in the world and the Edison/Mitofsky team will conduct more than 100,000 interviews with voters on election day at more than 1,000 polling locations. The data created from these surveys are crucial to our national understanding of how the electorate makes is decision in each election.
Any news organization in the United States and around the world can subscribe to the election exit polls for live Election Night data feeds. Academic institutions and other interested parties can purchase data for analysis after the election.
Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International have been the exclusive providers of exit poll data to the National Election Pool since 2003. Since 1994 Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International have been conducting exit polls in the United States in addition to exit polls conducted for elections in Mexico, Russia, Taiwan and Azerbaijan.
4 Exit Polls 2004
Nov 2, 2004 ... Published: November 04, 2004 11:00 AM EST NEW YORK (AP) News organizations promised Wednesday to look into why their Election Day exit polls ...
www.oilempire.us/exitpolls.html - 74k - Cached - Similar pages
REPUBLICAN CHALLENGES PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION BASED ON EXIT POLLS
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
from the New York Times
An international election observer mission - from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the European Parliament, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and the Council of Europe - released a preliminary report on Monday declaring that the election did not meet democratic standards.
The observers' findings were seconded by Republican Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Citing the disturbing fact that official results diverged sharply from a range of surveys of voters at polling places, Lugar said, "A concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse was enacted with either the leadership or cooperation of governmental authorities."
Other prominent Western observers were unsparing in their criticism of the state's conduct of the election.
"Fundamental flaws in Ukraine's presidential election process subverted its legitimacy," the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, sponsored by the Democratic Party in the United States, declared in its preliminary report. The institute, cited "systematic intimidation, overt manipulation and blatant fraud" that were "designed to achieve a specific outcome irrespective of the will of the people."
-- New York Times
From GregPalast.com: This reporter was unable to reach Senator Lugar regarding the inconsistency of official election results and exit polls in the USA; the intimidation of minority voters in Florida and Ohio; nor the failure to count two million ballots cast, half by African-American voters, in America's first post-democratic election held earlier this month.
Eastern bloc observers noted that balloting in Ohio, New Mexico and Florida did not meet Ukrainian standards, but applauded America's attempt to restore democratic institutions after the overthrow of elected government in 2000.
----------
Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, now available on a 5 CD audio set read by Ed Asner, Alec Baldwin, Jello Biafra, Al Franken, Janeane Garofalo, Amy Goodman, Jim Hightower, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Alexandra Paul and Shiva Rose. To hear a segment of the book or receive Greg's investigative reports click here:
www.gregpalast.com/contact.cfm
Thousands on brink of revolt as West challenges result
From Jeremy Page in Kiev November 23, 2004
www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1370909,00.html
MORE than 100,000 opposition supporters took over the centre of Kiev last night to protest over the results of a presidential election that Western observers said was rigged in favour of Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian-backed Prime Minister.
Protesters set up hundreds of tents behind makeshift barricades along the main avenue to Independence Square. Lorries brought generators, sleeping bags, waterproof sheets and food, all provided by the headquarters of the Western-leaning opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko, in what was a highly organised operation.
Richard Lugar, President Bush’s personal representative at the election, called
for a review of the results. He accused the Government of engineering defeat for Mr Yushchenko, and a US State Department spokesman said that Washington was deeply concerned about the elections.
DAILY KOS - The assertion by pundits/Bushies that exit polling was 'way off', and thus, exit polls, which showed an easy Kerry victory in both Ohio and Florida, were incorrectly skewed and did not represent the electorate, is completely bogus. This is disproved in minutes by simply noting the entire rest of the suite of exit polls conducted by AP and distributed to the news media. . .
Notice, if you will, that states with a narrow or wide Bush margin of victory not called Ohio or Florida, project perfectly. Missouri leans to Bush in exit polls, and leaned to him in the vote. Tennessee likewise was favorable to Bush in exit polls, and it showed in the final results with a clear Bush margin of victory. Pick a state, any state, there is not one single exit poll off by more than a few percentage points in any semi-competitive race. Not one.
Except two: Ohio and Florida, the latter of which has already been "awarded" to Bush, and the former, which appears to nearly be a lock for him . . . George Bush's win in each of these 2 states is nowhere near what exit polls suggest. In Ohio, Kerry had a small but noticeable lead with both male and female voters, a rare thing for him as males have tended to favor Bush in this election by a small margin. Likewise, independent voters clearly broke for Kerry, by a 21 percent margin, 60-39. This is not anywhere near the result we are seeing now, and along with Florida, whom I will get to in a moment, it is a clear and blatant sign of voter fraud. I don't use that most dangerous of "F" words lightly, but I must call a wolf a wolf and a sheep a sheep, and this whole setup stinks like Karl Rove after he's ran 15 feet.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/3/53438/6175
All exit polls predict Kerry victory, though early polls not considered reliable
Kerry seen as presidential victor in early exit polls
By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor
http://www.bluelemur.com/
Sen. John Kerry looks to make a victory of the electoral college, according to all sets of exit polls conducted by a consortium of six media organizations(the National Election Pool) that RAW STORY acquired earlier today, from the six major networks who conducted the polls.The first, third and final round give Kerry a wide berth in all critical swing states. The second round put Kerry ahead in Ohio and Florida, but only by a one point margin.Exit polls, in which voters are interviewed after they
vote, typically favor Republicans in early voting, as Republicans by-and-large tend to vote earlier in the day. This may spell bad news for President Bush,
though itís also important to consider that early polls are routinely unreliable; they are not actual voting returns. Bush currently leads in actual voting
returns. All of the polls put Kerry ahead in Florida, Ohio,and New Mexico. The two for which polling was available for other states had Kerry ahead in Pennsylvania,
Minnesota and Wisconsin. In the polls received, Bush leads in Colorado, Louisiana and Arizona. Iowa is a tie.A source connected to the White House has dismissed
the early polls as ìskewedî and told a conservative magazine reporter that Bush would certainly win both Florida and Ohio.Here are the first exit polls, confirmed from sources in both parties, as leaked to RAW STORY. The first number is the percentage of voters supporting Kerry, the second are those supporting Bush.
6. Exit Polls Right, Tallies Wrong? | Election 2004 | AlterNet
The hot story in the blogosphere is that the "erroneous" exit polls that showed Kerry ... Get top stories in your inbox each week from Election 2004! ...
www.alternet.org/election04/20416/ - 31k - Cached - Similar pages
Exit Polls Right, Tallies Wrong?
By Thom Hartmann, AlterNet. Posted November 5, 2004.
The hot story in the blogosphere is that the "erroneous" exit polls that showed Kerry carrying Florida and Ohio (among other states) weren't erroneous at all – it was the numbers produced by voting machines that were wrong, and Kerry actually won. As more and more analysis is done of what may (or may not) be the most massive election fraud in the history of the world, however, it's critical that we keep the largest issue at the forefront at all time: Why are We The People allowing private, for-profit corporations, answerable only to their officers and boards of directors, and loyal only to agendas and politicians that will enhance their profitability, to handle our votes?
Maybe Florida went for Kerry, maybe for Bush. Over time – and through the efforts of some very motivated investigative reporters – we may well find out (Bev Harris of blackboxvoting.org just filed what may be the largest Freedom of Information Act [FOIA} filing in history), and bloggers and investigative reporters are discovering an odd discrepancy in exit polls being largely accurate in paper-ballot states and oddly inaccurate in touch-screen electronic voting states. Even raw voter analyses are showing extreme oddities in touch-screen-run Florida, and eagle-eyed bloggers are finding that news organizations are retroactively altering their exit polls to coincide with what the machines ultimately said.
But in all the discussion about voting machines, let's never forget the concept of the commons, because this usurpation is the ultimate felony committed by conservatives this year.
At the founding of this nation, we decided that there were important places to invest our tax (then tariff) dollars, and those were the things that had to do with the overall "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" of all of us. Over time, these commons – in which we all make tax investments and for which we all hold ultimate responsibility – have come to include our police and fire services; our military and defense; our roads and skyways; our air, waters and national parks; and the safety of our food and drugs.
But the most important of all the commons in which we've invested our hard-earned tax dollars is our government itself. It's owned by us, run by us (through our elected representatives), answerable to us, and most directly responsible for stewardship of our commons.
And the commons through which we regulate the commons of our government is our vote.
About two years ago, I wrote a story for Common Dreams, "If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines," that exposed how Sen. Chuck Hagel had, before stepping down and running for the U.S. Senate in Nebraska, been the head of the voting machine company (now ES&S) that had just computerized Nebraska's vote. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's "Senate victory against an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November election." According to Bev Harris, Hagel won virtually every demographic group, including many largely black communities that had never before voted Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in Nebraska, nearly all on unauditable machines he had just sold the state. And in all probability, Hagel will run for president in 2008.
In another, later article I wrote at the request of MoveOn.org and which they mailed to their millions of members, I noted that in Georgia – another state that went all-electronic – "USA Today reported on Nov. 3, 2002, 'In Georgia, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll shows Democratic Sen. Max Cleland with a 49% to 44% lead over Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss.' Cox News Service, based in Atlanta, reported just after the election (Nov. 7) that, 'Pollsters may have goofed' because 'Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss defeated incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland by a margin of 53 to 46 percent. The Hotline, a political news service, recalled a series of polls Wednesday showing that Chambliss had been ahead in none of them.'" Nearly every vote in the state was on an electronic machine with no audit trail.
7. The Myth of the Exurban Voter
Ruy Teixeira
The 2004 Pre-Election and Exit Polls: A Total Survey Error Analysis
The accuracy of the 2004 pre-election and exit polls are examined from a total survey error perspective. There was considerable speculation before the ...
www.allacademic.com/meta/p85357_index.html - 37k - Cached - Similar pages
The accuracy of the 2004 pre-election and exit polls are examined from a total survey error perspective. There was considerable speculation before the election that Republicans were being oversampled, partly because of the exclusion of people who only have cell phones from sampling frames. Weighting by partisanship seems to have accidentally overcompensated for that problem. By contrast, Republican voters were less likely to be interviewed in exit polls, partly because of interviewer-related effects. All in all, the problems with the exit polls were more serious than those for the pre-election polls in 2004.
8. Media sweats over exit poll accuracy - David Paul Kuhn - Politico.com
While exit polling is a notoriously inexact science—early exit poll results suggested John Kerry would be elected president in 2004—the introduction of ...
www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14778.html - 171k - Cached - Similar pages
Media outlets are preparing for the possibility that their Election Day surveys could be skewed because of overstated support for Barack Obama, largely because of the enthusiasm of his supporters.
While exit polling is a notoriously inexact science—early exit poll results suggested John Kerry would be elected president in 2004—the introduction of several new variables, ranging from the zeal of Obama’s supporters to his racial background to widespread early voting, is causing concerns among those charged with conducting the surveys and the networks that will be reporting them.
“It’s in some ways the flip side of non-cooperation,” said one pollster involved in preparations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, “It’s over-cooperation by certain people.”
Unlike a traditional poll that asks voters who they intend to support, exit polls are taken outside the polling place immediately after voters have cast their ballots. The interviewing begins when the polls open in the morning and lasts throughout the day until shortly before the polls close.
9. 2004 Election Investigation
Working Paper #05-04: 2004 An Examination of Exit Poll Accuracy and Discrepancies with Official Counts in U.S. Elections (June 2005) Available by request. ...
www.appliedresearch.us/sf/epdiscrep.htm - 29k - Cached - Similar pages
10. Are Exit Polls Reliable? - Forbes.com
In 2004, Edison/Mitofsky provided exit poll data and election estimates for the presidential race and for 120 other races across the 50 states. ...
www.forbes.com/2008/11/01/exit-polls-election-oped-cx_kb_1103bowman.html - 31k -Cached - Similar pages
In 2004, Edison/Mitofsky provided exit poll data and election estimates for the presidential race and for 120 other races across the 50 states. They surveyed voters at 1,480 locations and conducted 500 phone interviews in 13 states with a high proportion of absentee/early voters.
But exit polls aren't always reliable, and the controversy surrounding the 2000 election is the most infamous example. The exit pollsters and news organizations awarded Florida to Al Gore before the polls closed and then retracted it. Later, the networks (but not the exit pollsters) awarded Florida to George W. Bush--and then retracted that call, too.
There was a lot of blame to go around. Absentee votes were undercounted, and the election model was flawed. A simple mistake in data entry inflated Gore's vote. Fierce network competition to be the first to call the contest triggered the premature calls. After the election, the networks vowed not to release results in any state until all the polls in that state had closed.
Comment On This Story
The machinery was overhauled for the 2002 elections, but that year, massive technical failures botched exit poll reporting. In 2004, and again in 2006, the exit poll overstated Democrats' performance. In the 1,460 exit poll precincts where Edison/Mitofsky collected both exit poll tallies and actual final vote returns in 2004, the exit poll results overstated the actual difference between John Kerry and Bush by 6.5 points in Kerry's favor.
Related Stories
· GOP's Christian Right Pact Costs Votes
· Labor Unions Lag In Power
· (Mr.) Wilsonian Politics Aren't Working
· Great Expectations For Obama
· Money For Nothing
· Stories
· Videos
This problem was due, according to a post-election analysis by Mitofsky, "to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters." This was the largest problem of its kind in the past five presidential elections. Although it was a serious problem for the pollsters, he said, this error did not "lead to a single incorrect NEP [National Election Pool] winner projection on election night."
Can these past problems be overcome on Tuesday night? To compensate for the potential oversampling of Democrats, Edison/Mitofsky have improved interviewer training and are using fewer young interviewers. They have compromised with states that had kept interviewers far from the polling locations, which made data collection difficult. And as in 2006, the networks won't get the data until 5 p.m., which will help to prevent the kind of leaks that suggested--too early--that Kerry would win in 2004. Additional safeguards will check the poll against actual votes. These changes should improve the reliability of the only tool we have to look at the views and values of actual voters and how they have changed over time.
Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow who studies public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute, writes a weekly column for Forbes.com.
11. FOXNews.com - Egg On Face of Exit Pollsters - You Decide 2004
Egg On Face of Exit Pollsters, Exit polls blow it again as afternoon numbers come out differently ... Campaign 2004. Highs and lows of the 2004 elections ...
www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,137451,00.html - 49k - Cached - Similar pages
By the time most of the polls closed in precincts across the country Tuesday night, real numbers began to suggest that the early estimations that had been so upbeat for Sen. John Kerry were over-inflated — so much so, that FOX News Channel decided to quit using the exit poll results Tuesday evening, calling them inaccurate and unreliable.
FOX News had been using exit poll numbers crunched by Edison Media Research (search) in New Jersey and Mitofsky International (search) of New York, which had been contracted by the six news organizations that had formed the National Election Pool — besides the FOX News Channel, they were ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and the Associated Press.
RELATED
· STORIES
· Ralph Nader Ends Presidential Bid
· 2004: Not the Year of the Youth Vote
· Voters Turn Out in Droves
· Ohio Absentee Voters Can Use Provisional Ballots
· Fraud File: Trouble at the Polls
· TV Networks Cautious About Election Results
· Bush Camp Declares Victory
PHOTO ESSAYS
· Election Day
INTERACTIVES
· Swing States
· Track Your Races -- Election Tracker
The new pollsters had replaced the Voter News Service(search), a consortium of media outlets that did its own exit polling and vote counting in 2000, and was largely blamed for misjudging the 2000 election.
Long before the polls closed, Tuesday's exit polling, which included presidential preferences as well as gauges about the importance of issues to voters, had been widely circulated via the Internet along with independent voting predictions. All suggested unusually strong numbers for Kerry.
Early numbers looked so positive for Kerry that FOX News analyst Jim Pinkerton, at 3:30 p.m. EST, said, "I think it looks good for angry Democrats."
Television anchors and pundits, who are expected not to reveal trends, began reporting the "buzz" or the "mood" of the campaigns, suggesting they too had seen the numbers and were reacting accordingly.
NBC News' David Gregory said Bush "appeared subdued," while ABC News' Terry Moran noted the president had expressed a "rare sense of doubt."
The political Web logs or "blogosphere," posted the numbers throughout the day, and depending on which side of the aisle bloggers aligned themselves, either embraced or were repulsed by what they saw during the day.
"Clearly exit polls are not meaningless: I think they have something to do with the Bushies' glumness," wrote "Alexander" on the Democratic-leaning Dailykos.com.
Later on FOX News, analysts talked openly about how some actual results contradicted exit polls numbers.
"Either the exit polls are completely wrong or George Bush loses," FOX News analyst Susan Estrich said.
By midnight, Bush was declared the winner in Florida, though throughout the day the state had been predicted a winner for Kerry. Similar predictions in Ohio were also found to be wrong as the state was put in Bush's column.
"We began noticing there was some very odd things," in the polls, Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes told FOX News. "We knew there were some problems from the get-go."
One Republican strategist told FOX News that "in the beginning of the night, we were asking how we could have been so far off.
"I bought a box of Kleenex. But I didn't open them," he said.
Exit polls did elicit some news about voters' moods, which suggested that neither candidate had a clear mandate on the issues. The close nature of the popular vote in the early morning hours Wednesday seemed to indicate that those attitudes may have been more accurately reflected in exit data than presidential preferences.
Exit polls suggested that slightly more voters trusted Bush to handle terrorism than Kerry. A majority said the country was safer from terrorism than four years ago. Those voters overwhelmingly backed Bush.
But among those who said they were very worried about a terrorist strike, Kerry held a slight lead. The majority of voters who said things were going poorly in Iraq heavily favored Kerry.
Kerry was also favored by eight of 10 voters who listed the economy as a top issue.
Half said the country was headed in the right direction, a good sign for the incumbent.
12. VDARE.com: 01/25/05 - Stomping On The 2004 Exit Poll’s Grave (And ...
Edison-Mitofsky, the firm that conducted the troubled 2004 National Exit Poll (NEP), has now issued a long report (PDF) reviewing its own performance. ...
www.vdare.com/Sailer/050125_stomping.htm - 19k - Cached - Similar pages
Stomping On The 2004 Exit Poll’s Grave (And Some Other Myths)
By Steve Sailer
[The Sailer Election 2004 Series: Sailer Strategy Wins Another For GOP—But How Much Longer?; Bush Didn't Win 44% of Hispanic Vote —The Smoking Exit Poll; Another Nail In The Coffin Of Bush’s “44% Hispanic Share”; I Told You So Department: Only Bush Boosters Now Believe 44% Hispanic Vote Myth]
It may not be as flashy as Powerlineblog.com’s rout of Dan Rather. But I really have to congratulate me (and VDARE.COM) for routing the exit poll-fuelled media myth that George Bush made a big breakthrough among Hispanics this year.
The internet rules!
Edison-Mitofsky, the firm that conducted the troubled 2004 National Exit Poll (NEP), has now issued a long report (PDF) reviewing its own performance. It offers some important nuggets about what really happened last November.
· E-M’s analysis of the exaggerated Bush share of the Hispanic vote(pp. 59-62) confirms my diagnosis of what went wrong, as I elaborated in VDARE.com, see above).
As I'd discerned, Bush did better among Hispanics on the long form questionnaire that Edison-Mitosfsky had given out at 250 polling stations (total sample size of 12,219) than on the short form questionnaire distributed at 1,469 locations (sample size of 75,537).
The long form exaggerated the national and regional Bush share of the Hispanic vote—especially the bizarrely high figure in the South region, where Bush supposedly won 64% of the Hispanic vote, even though he carried only 56 percent in Florida and 49 percent in Texas. (Which was reduced from the initial announcement of 59 percent).
Nationally, Bush supposedly lost among Hispanics only by 53-44 on the long questionnaire, but got whipped 58-40 on the larger sample size short form.
Back on November 7, I wrote: "The big difficulty with an exit poll is coming up with a representative sample of polling places. Apparently, the NEP failed to do this." That's exactly what went wrong with the National/Regional exit poll's Hispanic share, as Edison-Mitofsky now admit.
· The Edison-Mitofsky report also contains an interesting table (p. 59) showing six more demographic groups where the widely publicized National figure for Bush's share disagreed substantially with the sum of the State exit polls.
Here's Bush's share for each:
National States
(Small Sample) (Large Sample)
Hispanic 44% 40%
Asian 44% 39%
Age 75+ 45% 48%
Jewish 25% 22%
Mormon 80% 76%
Muslim 6% 13%
Income >$200,000 63% 60%
All of these are small and geographically-clustered groups. So the sum of the State exit polls is inherently more trustworthy and than the smaller sample size National poll.
My comments:
· The Asian mirage. The news, reduced Asian share is worth noting in the context of the President's plan to increase immigration. Here's a largely prosperous, law-abiding, and socially conservative “model minority.” Yet Asian-Americans apparently can't stand Mr. Bush. They gave him only 39 percent of their votes, compared to 58 percent among non-Hispanic whites.
· The Neoconservative Mirage. Bush's 22 percent share of the Jewish vote, although reduced from the small sample estimate, is of course slightly better than the 19 percent he achieved in 2000. But then, John Edwards had replaced Joe Lieberman as the Democrat's VP nominee. So you'd expect a Republican to win back some conservative and moderate Jews who liked Lieberman. Compared to how well Republicans did from 1976 through 1988, when their share of the Jewish vote ranged from 31 percent to 39 percent, 22 percent is very bad.
And, when you consider how much of the neoconservative invade-the-world-invite-the world foreign and immigration policies Bush adopted as his own—well, 22 percent is unbelievably awful.
What this shows is that neoconservatives can make a big noise, but they can't deliver the vote. With Jews casting only 3 percent of all votes, the neoconservative vote comes out to only 2/3rds of one percent of the electorate.
To put in Texan terms the President ought to understand, the neoconservatives are all hat and no cattle.
· The Muslim Mirage: It's not surprising that there's a big difference between the small sample and large sample figures for Bush's share of the Muslim vote (6 percent vs. 13 percent), because the total quite tiny—only 1 percent (compared to 3 percent for Jews). And of course, that's rounded. It would be useful to learn whether the unrounded Muslim proportion of the total vote was actually closer to 0.5 percent or 1.4 percent—in the 2002 election, it was only 0.3 percent.
Either way, it’s not worth Grover Norquist’s time.
[Steve Sailer [email him] is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute and movie critic for The American Conservative. His websitewww.iSteve.blogspot.com features his daily blog.]
13. Pew Research Center: Religion and the Presidential Vote
(The 2004 exit poll cannot be directly compared with the exit poll in 2000, ... According to a comparison of exit polls and Pew surveys in 2000 and 2004, ...
people-press.org/commentary/?analysisid=103 - 15k - Cached - Similar pages
December 6, 2004
Religion and the Presidential Vote
Bush's Gains Broad-Based
President Bush's successful reelection effort owed much to the support he received from highly religious voters, especially white evangelical Protestants. But what has been largely overlooked is Bush's success with less religious voters. In fact, compared with four years ago, Bush made relatively bigger gains among infrequent churchgoers than he did among religiously observant voters.
Voters who say they attend church at least once a week backed Bush at the same high rates as in 2000. But he made inroads among those who seldom if ever attend religious services, although John Kerry maintained a sizable advantage among these voters.
Trends in the religious vote in this election defied the conventional wisdom in other ways as well. Bush's support among white evangelical Protestants, already quite substantial, increased markedly from its 2000 level. However, there is no evidence that evangelicals comprised a larger share of the vote this year.
Moreover, while Bush drew more support from evangelicals, he increased his share of the vote among other religious denominations as well. Bush fared better among Jews and Catholics especially Catholics who do not attend church frequently than he did in 2000.
Bush Gained Among Evangelicals
According to the National Election Pool exit poll, Bush received 78% of the vote among white evangelicals, up 10% from 2000, according to Pew's final pre-election poll that year. (The 2004 exit poll cannot be directly compared with the exit poll in 2000, which did not include a measure of evangelical identification).
Although voter turnout was up generally in 2004, there is no indication that white evangelicals boosted their level of participation more than other groups in the population. According to a comparison of exit polls and Pew surveys in 2000 and 2004, white evangelicals constituted the same percentage of the electorate in both years: 23%. Overall, there was remarkable stability from 2000 to 2004 in the religious composition of the electorate. The size of other religious groups, and the balance of frequent churchgoers and those who attend infrequently was nearly identical in the two election years.
Still, the election underscored the importance of white evangelical voters to the GOP. In 2004, they constituted 36% of Bush voters. By comparison, African-Americans the most loyal of Democratic constituencies constituted only about one-fifth (21%) of Kerry's voters.
But Others As Well
President Bush increased his share of the Catholic vote by five percentage points (52% in 2004, vs. 47% in 2000). His gain among white, non-Hispanic Catholics was four points (52% to 56%).
But the similar size of Bush's gains among Catholics and his gains among other groups suggest that the impact of conservative bishops who spoke out against John Kerry was relatively limited. During the campaign, several Roman Catholic bishops vowed to deny Communion to lawmakers who support abortion rights. But voter support for Bush increased slightly less (three points) among Catholics who are regular churchgoers, and thus who might be more apt to hear about and be influenced by the bishops' appeal, than among those who attend less frequently (up seven points). Indeed, a Pew poll in August found widespread disapproval of the bishops' action among Catholics, with 72% of Catholics saying that it was inappropriate.
Bush also registered a larger-than-average gain among Jews, winning 25% of the vote up from 19% in 2000. In the key swing state of Florida, he received 20% of the Jewish vote, up from 12% four years ago.
Kerry registered significant gains relative to Al Gore's performance among two groups: seculars and those who do not identify with the major Christian or Jewish traditions. Kerry received 74% of the vote among those who identify themselves as something other than Christian or Jewish, up by 12 points from Gore's total in 2000. And 67% of seculars voted for Kerry, compared with 61% who voted for Gore. Bush's share among the seculars was about the same in 2000 and 2004, but in 2000 7% of seculars voted for Nader. This year only 1% did so.
Conservative Turnout Rises
The electorate of 2004 was more Republican and conservative than the electorate of 2000, with Republicans matching Democrats 37%-37% this year (compared with 39% Democrat, 35% Republican in 2000), and the percentage of self-identified conservatives rising four points (from 30% to 34%).
Conservative gains were about the same among less frequent churchgoers (up 2%) as among those who attend church at least once a week (up 1%). Similarly, turnout among Republicans who do not attend church weekly was up at least as much as among those who go less often.
Evangelicals Trend More Republican
The rising political clout of evangelical Christians is not the result of growth in their numbers but rather their increasing cohesiveness as a key element of the Republican Party. The percentage of the population who are white evangelicals has changed very little (19% in 1987; 23% now) and what growth there was occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
However, in 1987, white evangelical Protestants were divided in their partisan attachments, with 34% identifying as Republicans and 29% as Democrats. Today, Republicans outnumber Democrats within this group by more than two-to-one (48%-23%).
This shift toward Republican identification among white evangelicals came in two stages. In the late 1980s, white evangelicals in the South were still mostly wedded to the Democratic Party while evangelicals outside the South were more aligned with the GOP. But over the course of the next decade or so, the GOP made gains among white Southerners generally and evangelicals in particular virtually eliminating this regional disparity.
The second stage began in 2000, coinciding with Bush's election. Since then, there has been rapid growth in Republican identification among both Southern and non-Southern evangelicals. Nationwide, Republican identification among white evangelicals increased from 39% in 1999 to 48% today. In 2004, white evangelicals made up 23% of the population, and 37% of the Republican Party.
Bush Voters: Faith Matters, Leadership Matters More
Bush voters placed much more emphasis on a candidate's religious faith than did Kerry supporters. Among those who voted for Bush, 14% cited a candidate's "strong religious faith" as the single most important quality in their vote; just 1% of Kerry supporters cited that as a major factor in their vote.
Nonetheless, significantly more of Bush's supporters mentioned leadership (29%) and a clear stance on the issues (27%) as the candidate qualities that mattered most. In addition, a candidate's honesty was mentioned about as often as personal faith as a major factor for Bush's supporters.
For Kerry supporters, by contrast, the desire for change trumped all other candidate qualities. Nearly half (47%) cited that as the most important factor; far fewer cited a candidate's empathy (14%) and intelligence (13%) as the qualities that mattered most in their vote.
About the Analysis:
The data for this analysis are drawn from the 2000 VNS and 2004 NEP Exit Polls with one important exception. While the 2004 NEP Exit Poll included a measure of evangelical identification ("Would you describe yourself as a born-again or evangelical Christian?" [Yes, No]), the 2000 VNS Exit Poll did not include this question. As a result, trends are drawn from the Pew Research Center's November 2000 election weekend survey of 1,677 likely voters conducted November 1-5, 2000, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Results of the 2004 Pew Research Center election weekend survey of likely voters are consistent with the 2004 NEP exit poll figures shown here for both the number of the evangelical Christian voting and the proportion voting for George W. Bush.
14 Selected exit poll comparisons, 2000-2004-2008 | Observationalism
A side-by-side comparison of the exit poll data on the presidential vote by demographic group this year with the numbers in 2004 and 2000.
observationalism.com/2008/11/09/selected-exit-poll-comparisons-2000-2004-2008/ - 47k -Cached - Similar pages
15. More exit poll comparisons, 2000-2004-2008 | Observationalism
More side-by-side comparisons, in pie charts, of the exit poll data on the presidential vote by demographic group this year with the numbers from 2004 and ...
observationalism.com/2008/11/10/more-exit-poll-comparisons-2000-2004-2008/ - 46k -Cached - Similar pages
16. Mystery Pollster: Exit Polls: What You Should Know
Kudos for not falling into that mindset Mystery Pollster. Posted by: johnzep | Nov 2, 20041:11:19 PM. Here's another problem with exit polls. ...
www.mysterypollster.com/main/2004/11/exit_polls_what.html - 49k - Cached - Similar pages
So sometime very soon, the traffic on certain web sites will hit astronomically high levels as the blogosphere goes in search of the latest leaked exit polls. The conventional wisdom on this is unshakable: The networks "know" who will win, but won't tell us. Lets take our own peek at results shared by those working at the networks today and get in on the secret.
Well, I hate to disappoint, but this site will not be a source of leaked "exits." However, I would like to take a moment and give you a bit of a reality check. Let me tell you a bit about what exit polls are and why you may want to take what you hear over the web with a giant grain of salt.
I have always been a fan of exit polls. Despite the occasional controversies, exit polls remain among the most sophisticated and reliable political surveys available. They will offer an unparalleled look at today's voters in a way that would be impossible without quality survey data. Having said that, they are still just random sample surveys, possessing the usual limitations plus some that are unique to exit polling (I also remain dubious about weighting telephone surveys to match them, but that is another story for another day).
A quick summary of how exit polls work: The exit pollster begins by drawing a random sampling of precincts within a state, selected so that the odds of any precinct being selected are proportionate to the number that typically vote in that precinct. TheNational Election Pool Exit Poll, which is conducting the exit polling for the six major networks today, will send exit pollsters to 1,495 precincts across the country.
One or sometimes two interviewers will report to each sampled precinct. They will stand outside and attempt to randomly select roughly 100 voters during the day as they exit from voting. The interviewer will accomplish this task by counting voters as they leave the polling place and selecting every voter at a specific interval (every 10th or 20th voter, for example). The interval is chosen so that approximately 100 interviews will be spread evenly over the course of the day.
When a voter refuses to participate, the interviewer records their gender, race and approximate age. This data allow the exit pollsters to do statistical corrections for any bias in gender, race and age that might result from refusals.
The interviewer will give respondents a 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 card to fill out that will include approximately 25 questions (see an example from the New Hampshire primary here). Respondents fill out the survey privately then put the completed survey in a clearly marked "ballot box” so they know their identities cannot be tracked and their answers remain confidential.
The biggest challenge to exit polls is logistical: How to transmit all the results to a central location quickly and accurately. In past elections, interviewers would take a 10 minute break every hour to tabulate responses. Interviewers would then call in tabulations at three approximate times during the day: 9:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and shortly before the polls close (disclaimer: I have no first hand knowledge of this year's procedures, which may be different).
Once the polls close, the interviewer will attempt to obtain actual turnout counts, and if possible, actual vote returns for their precinct. One of the unique aspects of the exit poll design is the way it gradually incorporates real turnout and vote data as it becomes available once the polls close. The exit poll designers have developed weighting schemes and algorithms to allow all sorts of comparisons to historical data that supports the networks as they decide whether to "call” a state for a particular candidate. When all of the votes have been counted, the exit poll is weighted by the vote to match the actual result.
So if this poll is so sophisticated, why can't we rely on the leaked mid-day "numbers” that will soon spread like wildfire across the web?
1) It is still just a survey – Even when complete, an exit poll still has the same random variation as any other survey. NEPsays typical state exit polls will have a sampling error when complete of +/- 4% at a 95% confidence level, and +/- 3% for the national exit poll. Even if comparable to the final numbers – which they are decidedly not – the mid-day leaked numbers would have much greater error, perhaps +/- 7% or more.
2) The mid-day numbers do not reflect weighting by actual turnout – the end-of-day exit poll used to assist the networks in determining winners will be weighted by the actual turnout of voters at each selected precinct. The weighting will then be continuously updated to reflect turnout at comparable precincts. In the past, mid-day numbers have reflected a weighting based on past turnout, so the leaked mid-day numbers may tell us nothing about the impact of new registrants or the unique level of turnout this time.
One point needs emphasis here: even in past elections, networks never called an election based on raw exit poll numbers alone. They were first weighted by a tally of the full day's turnout at each sampled precinct. This end-of-day data is (obviously) not available at 12 noon.
3) Voting patterns may be different early in the day - People who work full time jobs typically vote more heavily before or after work. Even a perfect mid-day exit poll – and there is no such animal – may not be any better at picking a winner than the half-time scores in any given football game on Sunday. Also, despite what you may have heard on the West Wing, I know of no serious study showing a consistent Democratic or Republican tilt to the morning or evening hours (if anyone does, please email me).
4) Early or absentee voting - As of last night, the ABC Newssurvey estimated that 15% of all registered voters nationally had already cast absentee or early ballots. Obviously, these voters will not be available to interviewers standing outside polling places. To incorporate early voting, the National Election Pool is doing telephone interviewing in 13 states to sample the votes of those who voted early. Will these early votes be included in the mid-day leaked numbers? Who knows? I wouldn't count on it. (Good question, Andrew).
5) They could be fictional - Both sides have huge armies of field workers sweating it out in the streets right now. Field workers have been known to find creative ways to boost the morale of their own troops or demoralize the other side. Might someone start a rumor by sending made up numbers to a blog? Ya think? After all, the guy most web surfers turn to for leaked exits likes to say that the information he provides is only 80% accurate. What are the chances he could be, excuse the technical term, making shit up?
6) The people who do exit polls would rather you ignored them - OK, admittedly, that is a pretty wimpy reason, but they have a point. Exit polls provide a valuable resource for all of us. The will help us better understand who the voters are, why they vote the way they do and what the answers are to some of the debates that have raged for months that will not be resolved by vote returns alone. When someone leaks or broadcasts results of an exit poll (or telegraphs it by winking the way certain news networks tend to do about about 4 or 5 o'clock), calls are made to ban exit pollsters from polling places. That would be a very bad thing.
Listen, I understand human nature, and I'm not going to try to change it. We are all intensely curious about what is going to happen tonight, and most of us will find a way to peek at leaked exit polls at some point today. I just want you to know that those leaked exit polls really don't tell us much more about the outcome of the race than the telephone polls we were obsessing over just a few hours ago. Even if we wanted to call a race on unweighted, unfinished, mid-day exit polls alone (something the networks will not do), we would need to see differences of 10-15 points separating the candidates to be 95% certain of a winner.
So look at them if you must, but please, don't go plugging the numbers into spreadsheets and assume that your Electoral College "projections" have any special magic or scientific validity. Then don't. You might be better off flipping a coin to determine the outcomes of states like Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa, etc.
I'll be back with more later in the day. If you have questions about exit polls that don't involve today's numbers, please sent them my way. You might also want to check the Frequently Asked Questions at the National Election Pool web site. See the jump page for offline sources this post.
P.S. I am leaving the comments section open, but with some very firm rules today. Absolutely NO POSTING OF LEAKED EXIT POLL NUMBERS. Anyone who chooses to ignore this admonition will have his or her message deleted and may be blocked from posting further. If I have to delete more than one or two messages, I will turn off comments for today. It may be the new Dad in me, but it’s my blog: don’t make me stop this car! ;-)
17. Free exit polls 2004 Download - exit polls 2004 Software
Free download exit polls 2004 Software at WareSeeker.com - Whats on your visitors minds? We allow you to easily add a poll or survey to your site, ...
wareseeker.com/free-exit-polls-2004/ - 49k - Cached - Similar pages
18. Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?, Exit Polls, Election ...
An award-winning social scientist and a celebrated journalist investigate the 2004 election results.
www.sevenstories.com/Book/?GCOI=58322100420010 - 25k - Cached - Similar pages
19. CIRCLE - A nonpartisan research center studying youth civic ...
Young women voters also came out to the polls in larger numbers—55 percent ... 4 to 5 percentage points over CIRCLE’s estimate based on the 2004 exit polls. ...
www.civicyouth.org/ - 129k - Cached - Similar pages
20. Beyond Exit Poll Fundamentalism:
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
Scientific evidence of theft: the 2004 NEP presidential exit poll gave .... It is also possible that the 2004 exit polls were accurate even if the 1992 exit ...
inside.bard.edu/~lindeman/beyond-epf.pdf - Similar pages
by M Lindeman - 2006 - Cited by 1 - Related articles
21. BuzzFlash Review: Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen ...
We strongly recommend another addition to this growing library: "Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official ...
www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/240 - Similar pages
22. State Primary Exit Polls 1976-2004
This collection consists of numerous State Primary Exit Polls dating back to 1976 right up to the polls conducted in 2004.
www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/common/past_primaries.html - 24k -Cached - Similar pages
23. TruthIsAll
Exit Poll Analysis: 7/12/05 Update · 2004 Election Collection ... The analysis of exit pollsand documented fraud in this election began on the Internet. ...
www.truthisall.net/ - 32k - Cached - Similar pages
24. Everything about 2004 exit polls - Yahoo! Glue
A complete overview of the best information on 2004 exit polls provided by Yahoo! Glue, which aggregates top content from the richest sources.
glue.yahoo.com/page/2004+exit+polls - 45k - Cached - Similar pages
25. <<<< Newsclip Autopsy >>>>: TRUTH LEFT OUT: Data Indicates a ...
Back in January, 2005, I emailed Dr. Steven Freeman about the Mitofsky anaylsis of the 2004Presidential election exit poll. ...
newsclipautopsy.blogspot.com/2005/04/truth-left-out-data-indicates-massive.html - 28k -Cached - Similar pages
Friday, April 01, 2005
TRUTH LEFT OUT: Data Indicates a Massive 2004 Exit Poll Whitewash
Back in January, 2005, I emailed Dr. Steven Freeman about the Mitofsky anaylsis of the 2004 Presidential election exit poll. In that email, I made an observation about a particular detail in the Mitofsky analysis that had not been noticed by any researcher or critic of the report at that time. You may see the original observation I made here.
The Mitofsky hypothesis proposes that "within precinct error" (WPE) is the reason for the exit poll discrepancy that we've all heard about. In his report, he discusses many factors that he said contributed to this WPE. Factors such as: the distance the exit poll workers were from the actual election polling area; the weather conditions; interviewer characteristics (such as age) all contributed to the skew of the exit polls towards Kerry -- so the argument goes.
However, while I glanced over the data that Mitofsky used to justify this theory, something hit me over the head like a 2-by-4. In EVERY ONE of these factors that Mitofsky mentions in his report, THE WPE IS STILL SIGNIFICANTLY NEGATIVE IN THE MOST IDEAL CIRCUMSTANCE!!! That is, in Mitofsky's dream world, where the exit poll workers were:
1. working immediately adjacent to the ballot boxes.
2. interviewing electors where the weather was a nice sunny 70 degrees fahrenheit.
3. interviewing electors from only one precinct in multiple precinct areas.
4. between the ages of 55 and 64.
etc...
there still would be significant WPE, with the 2004 exit poll results.
As I stated in January, I was hoping that Freeman and others would do an analyses on this particular detail. Guess what? They did! In this latest report by Freeman et al., Analysis of the 2004 Presidential Election Exit Poll Discrepancies, US Vote Counts looked at all of the factors given by Mitofsky:
First, we notice that even the lowest mean WPE errors for most factors are very high, even in the best of circumstances. We can therefore eliminate most of the above factors from consideration, leaving only population size of town or city, and voting equipment to consider.
For an example of why we can easily eliminate these factors, let us take "distance from polling place". The number of precincts where the pollsters were placed far from the polling station was small. The discrepancies that E/M seek to explain are already fully present even in the precincts where pollsters were optimally placed. Most of this bias is apparent even in the 75% of precincts where the pollster was allowed to conduct his survey just outside or within the building.
Hand counted paper ballots were used primarily in rural districts in only 3% of sampled precincts altogether, so had very little effect on the overall discrepancies. All voting methods produced higher mean WPEs in urban areas with over 50,000 population.
Rural areas constituted 24% of precincts sampled. All other "population size" precinct groups had mean WPE of at least -5.0, with the highest mean WPE of -7.9 in suburbs which constituted 39% of precincts.
No other factors relating to WPE (within precinct error) were given in the Edison/Mitofsky report that would explain the systematic discrepancies between the election results and the exit poll results in the presidential race.
So there you have it. I'll go even further, though. Since Mitofsky completely ignored this important detail -- and I refuse to believe the "father of exit polling" is incompetent -- one has to assume that Mitofsky is trying to explicitly MISLEAD us. For God sakes!!! I'm a simple layman who has no degree in statistics and I was able to spot this glaring detail!!!
Indeed, there is much more evidence offered by US Vote Counts that points to a 2 or perhaps 3-coat whitewash by Mitofsky.
According to this new study, there is absolutely NO EVIDENCE showing that Kerry supporters were oversampled. In fact, the evidence given by Mitofsky shows that the number of Bush supporters in a precinct is co-related to the exit poll discrepancy:
The Mitofsky data also shows something which is highly improbable and counter-intuitive. Kerry supporters, according to the data, have a wide range of response rates, compared to the Bush supporters. What's even more improbable is that the Kerry supporters, according to Mitofsky's parameters, dramatically increase their response rate when they are in Republican territory. The same is not true for Republicans when in a Democratic precinct. As US Vote Counts muses:
This data contradicts previous experience and observations of this election that voters finding themselves in the minority in a local venue (and particularly a dwarfed minority) tend to be less willing to respond to exit poll interviewers, not more as this data requires. Certainly we would not expect the Kerry voter response rate to soar to over 84% in precincts where Bush voters outnumber them by at least four-to-one. Conversely, we would not expect the Kerry voter response rate to be at its lowest (53%) in precincts where Kerry voters were most numerous.
This is starting to look like an embarrassment to Mitofsky.
There are numerous different angles this new study analyzes with respect to participation vs. party affiliation. Time and time again, Mitofsky's data reveals that his hypothesis and assumptions are totally contradictory to normal polling behaviour. Here are the summaries of US Vote Counts observations on the data when related to Mitofsky's assumptions on respondent behaviour:
- Higher exit poll response rates and higher exit poll discrepancies occurred in Bush
strongholds. E/M’s own data contradict both the rBr and the rBrmpc hypotheses and support the Bsvcc hypothesis.
- The required pattern of exit poll participation by Kerry and Bush voters to satisfy the E/M exit poll data defies empirical experience and common sense under any assumed scenario.
- Once again, there is an implausible set of required response rates for Kerry and Bush supporters given the Edison/Mitofsky precinct partisanship data in Table 1.
- When Edison/Mitofsky’s explanation is checked against their own data using conservative assumptions, it requires highly suspect Kerry voter exit poll behaviors in "high-Bush" precincts.
- Very surprising patterns of partisan response rates to exit polls are required by both Kerry and Bush voters when we select values to minimize the differences between Bush and Kerry voters' exit poll response rates.
In sum, there are no values of proportions of Bush and Kerry voters which can be chosen that would result in plausible response rate patterns, and that satisfy the exit poll data given by E/M.
Get the picture?
Pretty dramatic stuff! Probably as dramatic as it gets for statistical analyses!!! But wait! There's more!!!
The exit polls for the 2004 election not only tabulated views from the Presidential election. It also received information about the voters intentions for the U.S. Senate races. Gues what?! Yup. Strangely enough, the exit polls were far more accurate at determining who would win for Senator. As history shows us, there is no precedent for widespread "ticket-splitting" in other elections. That is, if you vote democratic for President, there is an overwhelming probability that you would vote democratic for the Senator. US Vote Counts summarizes this peculularity this way:
There is no logic to account for non-responders or missed voters when discussing the
difference in the accuracy of results for the Senate versus the presidential races in the same exit poll.
No logic, indeed. Unless this is a nation where "multiple personality disorder" is present in epidemic proportions!!! To allay that particular fear, this report confirmed another startling finding which was observed in a previous report by the same group. Exit polling accuracy was dependent on whether the election ballots were hand-counted or not!! This is a highly significant finding, considering that, in Ohio, only a non-random 3% of the ballots were hand recounted. Many of these instances had recounts which were different from the machine counts. See this previous Newsclip Autopsy article that discusses this further.
In summary, the US Vote Counts report is damning in every conceivable way to the Mitofsky study. It has been shown that Mitofsky's conclusions completely contradict his own data. Furthermore, the only reasonable hypothesis that still has a leg to stand on is the one that supports the idea that widespread vote counting corruption occurred in the 2004 Presidential election. As US Vote Counts states:
Which brings us to our last point.
When is the U.S. public going to finally get to see the raw exit poll data???!!!
Something tells me that this latest damning report is going to delay things a bit further. Especially when the MSM continues to refuse to fairly report what could be the biggest scandal in U.S. history.
posted by STOP_George at 7:41 PM
26. Ruy Teixeira's Donkey Rising: A Tour of the 2004 Exit Poll: What ...
Nov 7, 2004 ... Here are some observations on the 2004 exit poll data, based on the latest version of the data available. There is much to be explained and ...
www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/donkeyrising/2004/11/a_tour_of_the_2004_exit_poll_w.html - 36k - Cached - Similar pages
Here are some observations on the 2004 exit poll data, based on the latest version of the data available. There is much to be explained and understood about these data and certainly legitimate questions can be raised about some of the findings. But the first task is simply to clarify what the poll actually says and does not say, because there is considerable confusion about this.
The figures used here are not the final figures, but, based on my experience in previous election cycles, they probably vary only slightly from the final numbers available when the exit poll authorities (in this case, the National Election Pool (NEP)) release a cleaned-up dataset in a couple of months with final weights.
All 2004 figures discussed here refer to the NEP exit poll not the Los Angeles Timesexit poll, since the NEP poll is both substantially larger and far and away the most widely-used and cited. All 2000 figures refer to the 2000 exit poll by VNS, the NEP's predecessor.
1. Gender. According to the NEP poll, Bush carried men by 11 points (55-44), exactly the same margin he had in 2000 when he carried men by 53-42. Among women, however, Kerry's margin was only 3 points (51-48), down from the 11 point margin Gore had in 2000 (54-43). No matter how you measure the gender gap (add the margins and divide by 2 or simply subtract Democratic male support from Democratic female support), this means a substantial compression of the gender gap (from 11 or 12 points, down to 7) and it is entirely due to the Democrats' reduced margin among women.
2. Race. According to the NEP poll, 23 percent of voters this year were minorites, up from 19 percent in 2000, indicating the continued rapid expansion of the minority electorate.
The NEP poll says, however, that Bush widened his margin among white voters--still 77 percent of voters--to 17 points (58-41), up from a 12 point margin (54-42) in 2000. And among hispanics, now 8 percent of voters, the poll indicates a Kerry margin of only 53-44, a dramatic compression from Gore's 62-35 margin among the same group in 2000.
However, there is some dispute about whether the compression of the Democratic margin was as severe as indicated by this poll. An exit poll of Hispanics only by the William C. Vel�squez Institute of San Antonio, which sampled 54 counties in the 14 states with the largest number of Latino registered voters, had 68 percent voting for Kerry and only 31 percent voting for Bush.
To further sow confusion, the NEP data on hispanics are now being reported in two different ways--as above, at 8 percent of voters and 53-44 Democratic support and at 6 percent of voters and 56-43 Democratic support in Sunday's New York Times. How did hispanics suddenly get demoted to 6 percent of voters? The answer is complicated, but here it is: the NYT for purposes of their historical chart uses a single race question to capture hispanics, as opposed to a race question plusanother question on whether the respondent is of hispanic descent or not, which was included on both the 2000 and 2004 exit polls and is now used by CNN and practically everyone else. The NYT's reasoning for not using this new (and better) two question measure of hispanic respondents is that the historical hispanic data in their chart will at least all be measured in the same way.
I certainly see the point in apples-to-apples comparisons. On the other hand, since the new measure is undoubtedly a better one and we don't really believe the hispanic proportion of voters in 2000 was only 4 percent (as the single question hispanic series also indicates) and just 6 percent this year, it would be better, I think--as well as less confusing--for the NYT to go with the data that is the best and simply acknowledge a discontinuity in the exit poll times time series on hispanics between 1996 and 2000.
People will, after all, play the closest attention to the figures--both support rates and proportion of voters--from this year and, secondarily from 2000. Given that the figures from the two question hispanic measure for those two years are (a) better and (b) comparable with one another, it strikes me as a good idea to feature those data rather than the misleading single question hispanic data. Again, the discontinuity can then be footnoted for those that get into the data that far, but the average NYT reader will be provided with the most accurate measure of hispanic turnout and presidential support.
The data on blacks are much more straightforward. Among blacks, Kerry had an 88-11 margin, down only slightly from 2000's 90-9 margin for Gore. In fact, except for 2000 and Mondale's 1984 campaign, Kerry's margin among blacks is the highest obtained by a Democratic candidate since the exit polls started in 1976.
More exit poll fun tomorrow!
27. Exit Polls 2008: See The Full Results
Nov 4, 2008 ... In 2004 and 2000, the exit polls were way off, such as polls showing Kerry winning Ohio by 4 points, causing many to cite voter fraud. ...
www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/04/exit-polls-2008-see-the-f_n_140986.html - 155k -Cached - Similar pages