POLITICS: Early exit polls overstated Kerry results, media group says

Exit polls on election day dramatically overstated the percentage of voters that cast their support to Democratic candidate John Kerry. So is the finding of a media consortium formed to analyze why the exit polls were so wrong. The group also formulated strategies to prevent leaks of such early information in the future.




I wonder how the "vote" was a fraud groups are going to spin this one? This is a common argument heard both here on ATS and elsewhere that the election was rigged. Be it outright misinformation or inaccurate sampling, the vote exit polls were off. The media which conducted the polls as stated above have come to the same conclusion. Kerry lost period.

You and your "unbiased" news report are entirely clueless. Did you honestly think this group was going to come out and say, the election was a fraud?!

Maybe the 9/11 Commission would have come out and said, "The Government did it!"

C'mon man, just because some strangers hundreds of miles away from you write some words on a sheet of paper doesn't mean it's gospel. Look around and use some common sense.

But, I guess you do get points for the responses.

"some strangers hundreds of miles away from you ?"

Warrren Mitofsky is a well known and well respected name in the field of public opinion reseach and polling. His trademarks are accuracy and caution in projecting winners.

FredT is not clueless. Anybody that would totally disregard the work of someone like Mitofsky, simply because his results do not support their preconceived notions, is clueless.

as posted by Jamuhn
Did you honestly think this group was going to come out and say, the election was a fraud?!

Do you honestly think that they would do otherwise? If there was OBVIOUS, LEGIT, and CONFIRMED "fraud," the media would be singing it from the roof-tops. *Puts hand to ear* Do you hear them, yet, cause I certainly don't! Hell, there was more screaming from the rafters from the media concerning the 2000 Election then there was on the "fraud" of the 2004 Election.

Got milk....errrr evidences of "fraud"? Then take it to court, like those 37 cases that were brought before the Ohio Supreme Court. Opppsss. Thats right, they were found to be wanting and "wholly inadequate." What? "Inadequate"? But there was "fraud"......

If you and others, such as already mentioned, can't take all that big bad evidence into a court of law and show "adequate," unequivical proofs of actual "fraud," guess what? Those claims of "fraud" amount to nada, but continued orchestrated whines of 'spitting into the wind'.


You can bet one thing for sure, Jamuhn, Mitofsky has more validity and credibility than Bev Harris does. Bet.



seekerof

[edit on 20-1-2005 by Seekerof]

Originally posted by jsobecky
Warrren Mitofsky is a well known and well respected name in the field of public opinion reseach and polling. His trademarks are accuracy and caution in projecting winners.

Except this time.

I still don't see what's being said here that wasn't patently obvious on election night. The firms that did the exit polls showing Kerry ahead now say they oversampled Kerry supporters. Well, obviously.

It's not like you quota sample an exit poll based on support though. It's random. Whoever randomly intercepted respondents say they voted for is extrapilated in the aggregate to project a winner. They were wrong in 2000 when they showed a Bush blowout, and wrong in 2004 when they showed one for Kerry. And now these guys saying they were wrong compared to vote counts months after we all knew that proves.... what exactly?

That they're slow? Or it was just a slow news day? Maybe they just want to be hired in '08.

I never heard of Mitofsky by name myself though Edison I have. That they are scrambling now to save their reputation with this non-statement isn't suprising though. What is suprising to me is that conservatives that were once convinced the pollsters conspired with the media to award the election to Kerry now say of these same democratic operatives...

Warrren Mitofsky is a well known and well respected name in the field of public opinion reseach and polling. His trademarks are accuracy and caution in projecting winners.

Sooooooooo, does that mean since he called the election for Kerry on election night, we should believe him and question the official electronic vote count?

Anybody that would totally disregard the work of someone like Mitofsky, simply because his results do not support their preconceived notions, is clueless.

Color you clueless then I suppose.

Originally posted by RANT
It's not like you quota sample an exit poll based on support though. It's random. Whoever randomly intercepted respondents say they voted for is extrapilated in the aggregate to project a winner. They were wrong in 2000 when they showed a Bush blowout, and wrong in 2004 when they showed one for Kerry. And now these guys saying they were wrong compared to vote counts months after we all knew that proves.... what exactly?

Of course they oversampled Kerry voters, then compounded the error by leaking the biased info..

It's also time to make our peace with those self-important bloggers who took it upon themselves to release the first rounds of leaked exit poll results. Those numbers showed Democrat John F. Kerry with a narrow lead, which ignited premature celebrations in one camp and needless commiseration in the other -- until the actual votes showed President Bush had won.

Perhaps the Democratic skew this year was the result of picking the wrong precincts to sample? An easy explanation, but not true. A post-election review of these precincts showed that they matched the overall returns. Whatever produced the pro-Kerry tilt was a consequence of something happening within these precincts. This year, it seems that Bush voters were underrepresented in the samples. The question is, why were they missed?

Mitofsky, the veteran pollster who co-directed this year's exit surveys, fears that Republican voters refused to be interviewed in disproportionately higher numbers, thus skewing the results. Perhaps they were busier than Democrats and didn't have time to be interviewed. Perhaps they disliked the media's coverage of Bush, and showed it by snubbing poll interviewers

www.washingtonpost.com...

Sooooooooo, does that mean since he called the election for Kerry on election night, we should believe him and question the official electronic vote count?

I think you have him confused with Zogby, who went out on a limb and predicted, on election eve, that Kerry would win.

Whatever the reason, Mitofsky warned the networks about the apparent Democratic bias mid-afternoon on Election Day -- a caution "they chose to ignore," he told Terence Smith on PBS.

Originally posted by Seekerof
Hell, there was more screaming from the rafters from the media concerning the 2000 Election then there was on the "fraud" of the 2004 Election.

In case you didn't notice, that election went to the Supreme Court. I'd say that any presidential election decided in a court is well worth the news coverage.

Got milk....errrr evidences of "fraud"?

Never said I did, but I won't rule out the possibility on the words of some random guy.

You can bet one thing for sure, Jamuhn, Mitofsky has more validity and credibility than Bev Harris does. Bet.

Those names mean nothing to me. I've never met the people.

I guys I'm just a stubborn, young kid who refuses to let others shove supposed "truths" down my throat.

But, I guess being skeptic only works one way and that is, being skeptic of everything that mass media doesn't tell us is true. Amazing how such entrenched beliefs can pass off for skepticism. Well, the argument on "fake skeptics and unbiased sources" is longer than I wish to spend on this thread.

[edit on 20-1-2005 by Jamuhn]

Got milk....errrr evidences of "fraud"?

Never said I did, but I won't rule out the possibility on the words of some random guy.

If you don't have evidence of fraud then why do you keep thinking there was fraud. Innocent until proven guilty in the court of law.



[edit on 1/20/05 by Kosmo Yagkoto]

Originally posted by Kosmo Yagkoto
If you don't have evidence of fraud then why do you keep thinking there was fraud. Innocent until proven guilty in the court of law.

Like I said, I don't there was or wasn't fraud. The truth is, we will never know. Courts are set-up as they are so as not to condemn an innocent man to death or some other punishment. I am not condemning Bush, he is the president of the United States and I am a United States citizen.

But, as my last words probably imply, he is not my president, but rather the president of my country.

In a country of polar extremes, I prefer to walk in the middle of the road.

from Jamuhn
But, I guess being skeptic only works one way and that is, being skeptic of everything that mass media doesn't tell us is true.

So everything that the mass media doesn't tell you must be true?

Wow.

Originally posted by jsobecky
So everything that the mass media doesn't tell you must be true?

Do you just like to argue for the sake of argument? Do you know what deduction means? If so, apply it to my statements and you will find the answer.

Originally posted by Jamuhn
You and your "unbiased" news report are entirely clueless. But, I guess you do get points for the responses.

back at you:

1) Please point to bias in the opening paragraf? Hmmm none.
2) If you had ever submitted a story for ATSNN you will not that commentary is a quentisential part of the report.
3) As a moderator, point totals are meaningless anyway.

As i stated before, it looks as if we are going to get 4 more years of crying in our beer from Jamuhn and the like. Instead of looking at what went wrong with Kerry adn the dems, what we see here is typical of the fingerpointing and blaming that has charecterized the party platform for years. Simply because YOUR message is not being recieved by some does not make them clueless. Perhpas you can turn your snap from the hip analysis on yourslef. Oooooh, may not like what you see.