medicineman
New Member
Justin, I could care less what you "think" and I use the term loosely. Your mind is so small that your opinion doesn't warrant any response, go kiss Bush's ass, that may be your proudest accomplishment,~LOL~.
i'm glad this guy leads my country
- Thread starter Microdizzey
- Start date
GrowRebel
Well-Known Member
Yes I read the sources dumbass ... that's why I posted it.
Instead of taking a quote from the actual article your dumbed down mind made shit up and then says it's not crediable ... Bhawww ha ha ha ... it is sooo much FUN making you look like an idiot.
Na ah Jr. You lose ... you STILL didn't bother to read the article ... it's obvious ... What ... your brain can't funtion unless fat boy tell you what real and what isn't? ...
You know what ... I feel like making you look like a real fool ... so this is what I'm going to do ...
FROM THE KENNEDY ARTICLE ...
I. The Exit Polls
The first indication that something was gravely amiss on November 2nd, 2004, was the inexplicable discrepancies between exit polls and actual vote counts. Polls in thirty states weren't just off the mark -- they deviated to an extent that cannot be accounted for by their margin of error. In all but four states, the discrepancy favored President Bush.(16)
Over the past decades, exit polling has evolved into an exact science. Indeed, among pollsters and statisticians, such surveys are thought to be the most reliable. Unlike pre-election polls, in which voters are asked to predict their own behavior at some point in the future, exit polls ask voters leaving the voting booth to report an action they just executed. The results are exquisitely accurate: Exit polls in Germany, for example, have never missed the mark by more than three-tenths of one percent.(17) ''Exit polls are almost never wrong,'' Dick Morris, a political consultant who has worked for both Republicans and Democrats, noted after the 2004 vote. Such surveys are ''so reliable,'' he added, ''that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries.''(1
In 2003, vote tampering revealed by exit polling in the Republic of Georgia forced Eduard Shevardnadze to step down.(19) And in November 2004, exit polling in the Ukraine -- paid for by the Bush administration -- exposed election fraud that denied Viktor Yushchenko the presidency.(20) But that same month, when exit polls revealed disturbing disparities in the U.S. election, the six media organizations that had commissioned the survey treated its very existence as an embarrassment. Instead of treating the discrepancies as a story meriting investigation, the networks scrubbed the offending results from their Web sites and substituted them with ''corrected'' numbers that had been weighted, retroactively, to match the official vote count. Rather than finding fault with the election results, the mainstream media preferred to dismiss the polls as flawed.(21)
''The people who ran the exit polling, and all those of us who were their clients, recognized that it was deeply flawed,'' says Tom Brokaw, who served as anchor for NBC News during the 2004 election. ''They were really screwed up -- the old models just don't work anymore. I would not go on the air with them again.''
In fact, the exit poll created for the 2004 election was designed to be the most reliable voter survey in history. The six news organizations -- running the ideological gamut from CBS to Fox News -- retained Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International,(22) whose principal, Warren Mitofsky, pioneered the exit poll for CBS in 1967(23) and is widely credited with assuring the credibility of Mexico's elections in 1994.(24) For its nationwide poll, Edison/Mitofsky selected a random subsample of 12,219 voters(25) -- approximately six times larger than those normally used in national polls(26) -- driving the margin of error down to approximately plus or minus one percent.(27)
On the evening of the vote, reporters at each of the major networks were briefed by pollsters at 7:54 p.m. Kerry, they were informed, had an insurmountable lead and would win by a rout: at least 309 electoral votes to Bush's 174, with fifty-five too close to call.(2
In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair went to bed contemplating his relationship with President-elect Kerry.(29) As the last polling stations closed on the West Coast, exit polls showed Kerry ahead in ten of eleven battleground states -- including commanding leads in Ohio and Florida -- and winning by a million and a half votes nationally. The exit polls even showed Kerry breathing down Bush's neck in supposed GOP strongholds Virginia and North Carolina.(30) Against these numbers, the statistical likelihood of Bush winning was less than one in 450,000.(31) ''Either the exit polls, by and large, are completely wrong,'' a Fox News analyst declared, ''or George Bush loses.''(32)
But as the evening progressed, official tallies began to show implausible disparities -- as much as 9.5 percent -- with the exit polls. In ten of the eleven battleground states, the tallied margins departed from what the polls had predicted. In every case, the shift favored Bush. Based on exit polls, CNN had predicted Kerry defeating Bush in Ohio by a margin of 4.2 percentage points. Instead, election results showed Bush winning the state by 2.5 percent. Bush also tallied 6.5 percent more than the polls had predicted in Pennsylvania, and 4.9 percent more in Florida.(33) According to Steven F. Freeman, a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in research methodology, the odds against all three of those shifts occurring in concert are one in 660,000. ''As much as we can say in sound science that something is impossible,'' he says, ''it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote count in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error.'' (See [URL="http://rollingstone.com/news/story/10463875"]The Tale of the Exit Polls[/URL])
... and you see all those numbers in the article ... those are the number of his SOURCES ... and this is a small fraction of the evidence they have ...
... so dumbass start telling us how this is all bullshit ...
GrowRebel
Well-Known Member
Vi you're a complete pussy ... you know you can't dispute the facts ... and yeah ... I don't have to listen to fat boy .. I've posted the articles with the proof he's a liar .. and as usual since you CAN'T DISPUTE IT you ignore it ... like the typical bushie brownshirt you are ... and if the names fits
... So you and your dummy friend can hold hands and pretend you have the facts ... it's so funny to see. 
ViRedd
New Member
Oh Gawd, Grow Rebel ... you are such an expert at personal attacks. That last one was just devestating! I guess you win.
Oh by the way ... you forgot to tell us what Rush lied about THE LAST TIME YOU LISTENED TO HIS SHOW.
In addition, here's some data on the "accuracy" of exit polls:
December 24, 2004
Have the Exit Polls Been Wrong Before?
I have a short backlog of posts on the exit polls I've been working on this week, intended mostly to summarize information I've covered previously and make it more accessible via the FAQ. However, there is new information here, as well as in the posts that will follow.
One of the odd bits of received wisdom I keep hearing about the exit poll controversy is that up until this year, the exit polls were "always right." If so then this year's errors seem "implausible," and wild conspiracy theories of a widespread fraud in the count somehow seem more credible. The problem with this reasoning is that exit polls similarly "wrong" before, though perhaps not to the same degree or consistency.
Here is the documentation on previous errors. First, from the Washington Post's Richard Morin:
Of course, those errors were apparently bigger and more consistent this year. According to an internal NEP report leaked to the New York Times, this year's "surveys had the biggest partisan skew since at least 1988, the earliest election the report tracked." However, in some states, the errors in 2000 were still quite large. Consider this comment from Joe Lenski to CNN on December 12, 2000 (p. 48 of pdf), describing the table also copied below:
The exit poll errors four years ago led Mitofsky to tell the CNN investigators, "The exit poll is a blunt instrument," and Lenski to add, "the polls are getting less accurate" (p. 26 of pdf). They recommended "raising the bar" on projections made from exit polls: "The proposed changes result from a belief that exit polling is "less accurate than it was before" and that "we should take exit poll data with caution in making calls," said Lenski" (p. 27).
All of this led the authors of the internal CNN report -- Joan Konner, James Risser, and Ben Wattenberg - to conclude (p. 3, 7):
Related Entries - Exit Polls
Vi
Oh by the way ... you forgot to tell us what Rush lied about THE LAST TIME YOU LISTENED TO HIS SHOW.
In addition, here's some data on the "accuracy" of exit polls:
December 24, 2004
Have the Exit Polls Been Wrong Before?
I have a short backlog of posts on the exit polls I've been working on this week, intended mostly to summarize information I've covered previously and make it more accessible via the FAQ. However, there is new information here, as well as in the posts that will follow.
One of the odd bits of received wisdom I keep hearing about the exit poll controversy is that up until this year, the exit polls were "always right." If so then this year's errors seem "implausible," and wild conspiracy theories of a widespread fraud in the count somehow seem more credible. The problem with this reasoning is that exit polls similarly "wrong" before, though perhaps not to the same degree or consistency.
Here is the documentation on previous errors. First, from the Washington Post's Richard Morin:
The networks' 1992 national exit poll overstated Democrat Bill Clinton's advantage by 2.5 percentage points, about the same as the Kerry skew
Warren Mitofsky, who ran the 2004 exit poll operation along with partner Joe Lenski, wrote the following in the Spring 2003 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly (p. 51):
An inspection of within-precinct error in the exit poll for senate and governor races in 1990, 1994 and 1998 shows an understatement of the Democratic candidate for 20 percent of the 180 polls in that time period and an overstatement 38 percent of the time...the most likely source of this error is differential non-response rates for Democrats and Republicans:
From the internal CNN report on the network's performance on Election Night 2000 (p. 48 of pdf):
Warren Mitofsky and Joe Lenski, heads of the CNN/CBS Decision Team, told us in our January 26 interview with them that in VNS's use of exit polls on Election Day 2000, the exit polls overstated the Gore vote in 22 states and overstated the Bush vote in 9 states. In the other 19 states, the polls matched actual results. There was a similar Democratic candidate overstatement in 1996 and a larger one in 1992.
In short, Mitofsky and Lenski have reported Democratic overstatements to some degree in every election since 1990. Moreover, all of Lenski and Mitofsky's statements were on the record long before Election Day 2004.
Of course, those errors were apparently bigger and more consistent this year. According to an internal NEP report leaked to the New York Times, this year's "surveys had the biggest partisan skew since at least 1988, the earliest election the report tracked." However, in some states, the errors in 2000 were still quite large. Consider this comment from Joe Lenski to CNN on December 12, 2000 (p. 48 of pdf), describing the table also copied below:
The second group contains five states that had stupendously bad exit poll estimates. Here is a comparison of the final best survey estimate at poll closing with the final actual results for these five states... As you can see the exit polls in these five states were off by between 7 and 16(!!!) [Emphasis in original]
The exit poll errors four years ago led Mitofsky to tell the CNN investigators, "The exit poll is a blunt instrument," and Lenski to add, "the polls are getting less accurate" (p. 26 of pdf). They recommended "raising the bar" on projections made from exit polls: "The proposed changes result from a belief that exit polling is "less accurate than it was before" and that "we should take exit poll data with caution in making calls," said Lenski" (p. 27).
All of this led the authors of the internal CNN report -- Joan Konner, James Risser, and Ben Wattenberg - to conclude (p. 3, 7):
Exit polling is extremely valuable as a source of post-election information about the electorate. But it has lost much of the value it had for projecting election results in close elections...[Their recommendation to CNN:] Cease the use of exit polling to project or call winners of states. The 2000 election demonstrates the faults and dangers in exit polling. Even if exit polling is made more accurate, it will never be as accurate as a properly conducted actual vote count.
[FAQ on Exit Polls]
Related Entries - Exit Polls
Vi
ViRedd
New Member
Here's more ... but why confuse yourself with the facts?
Surveying the Damage
[SIZE=-1]By Richard Morin[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Sunday, November 21, 2004 [/SIZE]
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 best thing that could have happened to journalism, to polling and to the bloggers who made this year's Election Day such a cheap thrill.
That's because the 2004 election may have finally stripped exit polling of its reputation as the crown jewel of political surveys, somehow immune from the myriad problems that affect telephone polls and other types of public opinion surveys. Instead, this face-to-face, catch-the-voters-on-the-way-out poll has been revealed for what it is: just another poll, with all the problems and imperfections endemic to the craft.
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.
If a few hours on the roller coaster of ecstasy and agony were all that anyone had to endure, only the political junkies would be interested in the whys and wherefores of the exit poll confusion. But the false picture had real impact: The stock market plummeted nearly 100 points in the last two hours of trading, and the evening news was replete with veiled hints of good news to come for the Kerry campaign. Since then, some disappointed and angry Bush-bashers have seized upon the early numbers as evidence of something amiss in the outcome. You can read it on the Internet -- the election was stolen, the early exit poll numbers were right.
But rather than flog the bloggers for rushing to publish the raw exit poll data on their Web sites, we may owe them a debt of gratitude. A few more presidential elections like this one and the public will learn to do the right thing and simply ignore news of early exit poll data. Then perhaps people will start ignoring the bloggers, who proved once more that their spectacular lack of judgment is matched only by their abundant arrogance.
It seems clear now that the 2004 exit polls were rife with problems, most of them small but none trivial. Skewed samples, technical glitches and a woefully inept question that included the undefined term "moral values" in a list of concrete issues all combined to give exit polling its third black eye in as many elections.
The sampling errors gave a boost to Kerry, who led in all six releases of national exit poll results issued on Election Day by the National Election Pool (NEP), the consortium of the major TV networks and the Associated Press that sponsored the massive survey project. (The Post received exit poll data as an NEP subscriber.)
In the first release, at 12:59 p.m. on Election Day, Kerry led Bush 50 percent to 49 percent, which startled partisans on both sides. That statistically insignificant advantage grew to three percentage points in a late-afternoon release, where it remained for hours, even as the actual count began to suggest the opposite outcome. It was only at 1:33 a.m. Wednesday that updated exit poll results showed Bush ahead by a point.
Even more curious numbers were emerging from individual states. The final Virginia figures showed Bush with a narrow lead. Exit poll data from Pennsylvania, which was held back for more than an hour, showed Kerry ahead by nine percentage points. The actual results: Bush crushed Kerry in Virginia by nine points, while Kerry took Pennsylvania by just a two-point margin.
In a review of 1,400 sample precincts, researchers found Kerry's share of the vote overstated by 1.9 percentage points -- which, unhappily for exit pollsters, was just enough to create an entirely wrong impression about the direction of the race in a number of key states and nationally.
It's hardly unexpected news that the exit polls were modestly off; exit polls are never exactly right. The networks' 1992 national exit poll overstated Democrat Bill Clinton's advantage by 2.5 percentage points, about the same as the Kerry skew. But Clinton won, so it didn't create a stir. In 1996 and 2000, the errors were considerably smaller, perhaps just a whiff more Democratic than the actual results. That suggests to some that exit polls are more likely to misbehave when their insights are valued most -- in high-turnout, high-interest elections such as 1992 and this year.
I learned early in my Washington Post career that exit polls were useful but imperfect mirrors of the electorate. On election night in 1988, we relied on the ABC News exit poll to characterize how demographic subgroups and political constituencies had voted. One problem: The exit poll found the race to be a dead heat, even though Democrat Michael Dukakis lost the popular vote by seven percentage points to Dubya's father. (The dirty little secret, known to pollsters, is that discrepancies in the overall horse race don't affect the subgroup analyses. Whether Dukakis got 46 percent or 50 percent didn't change the fact that nine of 10 blacks voted for him, while a majority of all men didn't. The exit poll may have under- or over-sampled either group, producing an incorrect national total, but the within-group voting patterns remain accurate.)
In practice, there are many separate exit polls, not just one. This year, there was a national one based on interviews at 250 randomly selected polling places around the country by Joseph Lenski and Warren Mitofsky under contract with NEP. Then there were separate exit polls in each state. The number of precincts sampled in these states ranged from 14 in Alabama to 52 in Florida.
In theory, the voting pattern in these precincts should reflect the national and statewide votes. If the exit poll results differ from the actual vote -- say, the sample precincts nationally showed Kerry ahead by three points while he ended up losing by three -- then something was wrong with the sample.
Surveying the Damage
[SIZE=-1]By Richard Morin[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]Sunday, November 21, 2004 [/SIZE]
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 best thing that could have happened to journalism, to polling and to the bloggers who made this year's Election Day such a cheap thrill.
That's because the 2004 election may have finally stripped exit polling of its reputation as the crown jewel of political surveys, somehow immune from the myriad problems that affect telephone polls and other types of public opinion surveys. Instead, this face-to-face, catch-the-voters-on-the-way-out poll has been revealed for what it is: just another poll, with all the problems and imperfections endemic to the craft.
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.
If a few hours on the roller coaster of ecstasy and agony were all that anyone had to endure, only the political junkies would be interested in the whys and wherefores of the exit poll confusion. But the false picture had real impact: The stock market plummeted nearly 100 points in the last two hours of trading, and the evening news was replete with veiled hints of good news to come for the Kerry campaign. Since then, some disappointed and angry Bush-bashers have seized upon the early numbers as evidence of something amiss in the outcome. You can read it on the Internet -- the election was stolen, the early exit poll numbers were right.
But rather than flog the bloggers for rushing to publish the raw exit poll data on their Web sites, we may owe them a debt of gratitude. A few more presidential elections like this one and the public will learn to do the right thing and simply ignore news of early exit poll data. Then perhaps people will start ignoring the bloggers, who proved once more that their spectacular lack of judgment is matched only by their abundant arrogance.
It seems clear now that the 2004 exit polls were rife with problems, most of them small but none trivial. Skewed samples, technical glitches and a woefully inept question that included the undefined term "moral values" in a list of concrete issues all combined to give exit polling its third black eye in as many elections.
The sampling errors gave a boost to Kerry, who led in all six releases of national exit poll results issued on Election Day by the National Election Pool (NEP), the consortium of the major TV networks and the Associated Press that sponsored the massive survey project. (The Post received exit poll data as an NEP subscriber.)
In the first release, at 12:59 p.m. on Election Day, Kerry led Bush 50 percent to 49 percent, which startled partisans on both sides. That statistically insignificant advantage grew to three percentage points in a late-afternoon release, where it remained for hours, even as the actual count began to suggest the opposite outcome. It was only at 1:33 a.m. Wednesday that updated exit poll results showed Bush ahead by a point.
Even more curious numbers were emerging from individual states. The final Virginia figures showed Bush with a narrow lead. Exit poll data from Pennsylvania, which was held back for more than an hour, showed Kerry ahead by nine percentage points. The actual results: Bush crushed Kerry in Virginia by nine points, while Kerry took Pennsylvania by just a two-point margin.
In a review of 1,400 sample precincts, researchers found Kerry's share of the vote overstated by 1.9 percentage points -- which, unhappily for exit pollsters, was just enough to create an entirely wrong impression about the direction of the race in a number of key states and nationally.
It's hardly unexpected news that the exit polls were modestly off; exit polls are never exactly right. The networks' 1992 national exit poll overstated Democrat Bill Clinton's advantage by 2.5 percentage points, about the same as the Kerry skew. But Clinton won, so it didn't create a stir. In 1996 and 2000, the errors were considerably smaller, perhaps just a whiff more Democratic than the actual results. That suggests to some that exit polls are more likely to misbehave when their insights are valued most -- in high-turnout, high-interest elections such as 1992 and this year.
I learned early in my Washington Post career that exit polls were useful but imperfect mirrors of the electorate. On election night in 1988, we relied on the ABC News exit poll to characterize how demographic subgroups and political constituencies had voted. One problem: The exit poll found the race to be a dead heat, even though Democrat Michael Dukakis lost the popular vote by seven percentage points to Dubya's father. (The dirty little secret, known to pollsters, is that discrepancies in the overall horse race don't affect the subgroup analyses. Whether Dukakis got 46 percent or 50 percent didn't change the fact that nine of 10 blacks voted for him, while a majority of all men didn't. The exit poll may have under- or over-sampled either group, producing an incorrect national total, but the within-group voting patterns remain accurate.)
In practice, there are many separate exit polls, not just one. This year, there was a national one based on interviews at 250 randomly selected polling places around the country by Joseph Lenski and Warren Mitofsky under contract with NEP. Then there were separate exit polls in each state. The number of precincts sampled in these states ranged from 14 in Alabama to 52 in Florida.
In theory, the voting pattern in these precincts should reflect the national and statewide votes. If the exit poll results differ from the actual vote -- say, the sample precincts nationally showed Kerry ahead by three points while he ended up losing by three -- then something was wrong with the sample.
ViRedd
New Member
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. 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.
If the snubbing theory is confirmed, it would not be the first time that Republicans are believed to have just said no to exit pollsters. Historically, exit polls have been more likely to err on the side of Democratic candidates, though this bias is usually small. In 2000, for example, the exit polls overstated Democrat Al Gore's share of the vote by more than one percentage point in about 20 states, while inflating Bush's share in just 10 states.
The relatively small number of precincts sampled nationally and in each state create other, subtler problems. While 50 precincts may be sufficient to accurately characterize the overall vote in a large state, it increases the odds of missing or under-representing the views of smaller subgroups. For example, the Florida exit poll in 2000 found that Bush and Gore equally divided the Latino vote statewide -- a finding doubted by many academics. They noted that the sample of precincts in that state did not account for heavily Cuban American neighborhoods in Dade County -- and thus missed precincts that went heavily for Bush. This year, the national exit poll finding that Bush captured 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, up nine points from 2000, also has been challenged over sampling issues.
There are questions that are more difficult to answer. How do we know the demographic splits are right? We assume they are because one key feature of exit polls is that the results of the completed survey are weighted to reflect the final actual vote. This adjustment has the effect of fixing a number of other, smaller problems created by under- or over-sampling support for one candidate or the other.
But weighting may not fix all the problems. For example, one question in the 2004 exit poll asked people to rate their feelings toward the candidates. What if enthusiastic and angry voters disproportionately agreed to participate in the poll while those less emotionally engaged said no? The result would incorrectly suggest an emotionally charged electorate; weighting the data does nothing to fix this problem.
That final weighting also is central to the controversy over real or imagined electoral irregularities. It's true that exit poll results available on CNN and other networkWeb sites late into election night showed Kerry with that now-infamous three percentage point lead, an advantage based exclusively on exit polling and a pre-election survey of absentee voters. When those survey results were statistically adjusted in the wee hours of Wednesday to reflect the actual vote, Bush suddenly -- and seemingly mysteriously -- jumped into the lead nationally and in several key, closely contested states.
But this sort of final adjustment is done on every exit poll. Most of the time, it doesn't matter because there's a clear winner, and the numbers move up or down slightly while the order of finish remains the same. But because this election was so close, the weighting had the effect of flipping the winner and igniting the fevered imaginations of the Michael Moore crowd.
Compounding and amplifying the exit poll woes this year was that the first wave of results, available moments after 1 p.m. on Internet Web sites everywhere, shaped the way journalists were thinking, at least through much of the afternoon and early evening. The first rounds exert a particularly strong influence on broadcast journalists because they use them to develop story lines ("Kerry won a majority of female voters, but Bush did better among women than he did four years ago . . .") before the evening news.
Last Thursday, the National Election Pool board took steps to minimize this problem next time. It voted to delay release of the first wave of exit poll results until after 4 p.m. That may or may not minimize the damage done by bloggers because those numbers will still leak out and cause mischief. Ironically, the first release of data shortly before 1 p.m. that showed Kerry leading by one point was closer to the final result than the 3:50 p.m. release, which showed the Democrats leading 51 percent to 48 percent. That doesn't mean the early release was more "accurate." Early data are not necessarily a reliable predictor of the final outcome because different types of voters tend to cast ballots at different times of the day.
In a perfect world, early exit poll results would be treated just like early vote returns or the score at the end of the first quarter of a Redskins game. In a gubernatorial contest, the news media have learned not to get too excited about early returns from, say, Northern Virginia; we know from experience and common sense that partial returns from a fraction of the electorate are an unreliable guide to the outcome.
Sometime soon, I suspect that the electorate will come to see these early exit poll results the same way. The view of exit polls also will change, from blind awe and acceptance to respect tempered by a healthy skepticism. Thanks to the 2004 election and my new best friends the bloggers, we're closer to that day.
Author's e-mail:
[email protected]
Richard Morin is The Post's director of polling and writes Outlook's Unconventional Wisdom column. His experience with national exit polling goes back to the 1988 presidential campaign.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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. 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.
If the snubbing theory is confirmed, it would not be the first time that Republicans are believed to have just said no to exit pollsters. Historically, exit polls have been more likely to err on the side of Democratic candidates, though this bias is usually small. In 2000, for example, the exit polls overstated Democrat Al Gore's share of the vote by more than one percentage point in about 20 states, while inflating Bush's share in just 10 states.
The relatively small number of precincts sampled nationally and in each state create other, subtler problems. While 50 precincts may be sufficient to accurately characterize the overall vote in a large state, it increases the odds of missing or under-representing the views of smaller subgroups. For example, the Florida exit poll in 2000 found that Bush and Gore equally divided the Latino vote statewide -- a finding doubted by many academics. They noted that the sample of precincts in that state did not account for heavily Cuban American neighborhoods in Dade County -- and thus missed precincts that went heavily for Bush. This year, the national exit poll finding that Bush captured 44 percent of the Hispanic vote, up nine points from 2000, also has been challenged over sampling issues.
There are questions that are more difficult to answer. How do we know the demographic splits are right? We assume they are because one key feature of exit polls is that the results of the completed survey are weighted to reflect the final actual vote. This adjustment has the effect of fixing a number of other, smaller problems created by under- or over-sampling support for one candidate or the other.
But weighting may not fix all the problems. For example, one question in the 2004 exit poll asked people to rate their feelings toward the candidates. What if enthusiastic and angry voters disproportionately agreed to participate in the poll while those less emotionally engaged said no? The result would incorrectly suggest an emotionally charged electorate; weighting the data does nothing to fix this problem.
That final weighting also is central to the controversy over real or imagined electoral irregularities. It's true that exit poll results available on CNN and other networkWeb sites late into election night showed Kerry with that now-infamous three percentage point lead, an advantage based exclusively on exit polling and a pre-election survey of absentee voters. When those survey results were statistically adjusted in the wee hours of Wednesday to reflect the actual vote, Bush suddenly -- and seemingly mysteriously -- jumped into the lead nationally and in several key, closely contested states.
But this sort of final adjustment is done on every exit poll. Most of the time, it doesn't matter because there's a clear winner, and the numbers move up or down slightly while the order of finish remains the same. But because this election was so close, the weighting had the effect of flipping the winner and igniting the fevered imaginations of the Michael Moore crowd.
Compounding and amplifying the exit poll woes this year was that the first wave of results, available moments after 1 p.m. on Internet Web sites everywhere, shaped the way journalists were thinking, at least through much of the afternoon and early evening. The first rounds exert a particularly strong influence on broadcast journalists because they use them to develop story lines ("Kerry won a majority of female voters, but Bush did better among women than he did four years ago . . .") before the evening news.
Last Thursday, the National Election Pool board took steps to minimize this problem next time. It voted to delay release of the first wave of exit poll results until after 4 p.m. That may or may not minimize the damage done by bloggers because those numbers will still leak out and cause mischief. Ironically, the first release of data shortly before 1 p.m. that showed Kerry leading by one point was closer to the final result than the 3:50 p.m. release, which showed the Democrats leading 51 percent to 48 percent. That doesn't mean the early release was more "accurate." Early data are not necessarily a reliable predictor of the final outcome because different types of voters tend to cast ballots at different times of the day.
In a perfect world, early exit poll results would be treated just like early vote returns or the score at the end of the first quarter of a Redskins game. In a gubernatorial contest, the news media have learned not to get too excited about early returns from, say, Northern Virginia; we know from experience and common sense that partial returns from a fraction of the electorate are an unreliable guide to the outcome.
Sometime soon, I suspect that the electorate will come to see these early exit poll results the same way. The view of exit polls also will change, from blind awe and acceptance to respect tempered by a healthy skepticism. Thanks to the 2004 election and my new best friends the bloggers, we're closer to that day.
Author's e-mail:
[email protected]
Richard Morin is The Post's director of polling and writes Outlook's Unconventional Wisdom column. His experience with national exit polling goes back to the 1988 presidential campaign.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
GrowRebel
Well-Known Member
Yeah ... if Gore and Kerry got their rightful votes there wouldn't be an issue because the exit polls would have agreed with the results ... and you post bullshit that claims all of a sudden exit polls which proved election fraud in the past is no longer accurate ... only a bushie brownshirt like you would buy the 1 to 660,000 odds of the exit polls being wrong ...
... you take the word of a WP reporter who best interest it is to make dummies like you believe exit polls can be wrong ... the WP and other coroporate media when WAY out of their way to dismiss the election fraud ...
... I have presented evidence NOT from a corporate reporter or corporate news who controls the elections ... but from university professors and other experts in the area ... with SEVERAL sources ... yet you post this bullshit ...
... and I love throwing insults at the politically stupid ... it would be wrong of me truly believe you are completely stupid ... even though I love saying it in my post ...
... but it's what I live for ... ha-ha ha! ha-ha, ha, ha, ha!
So get used to it! Dumbass
... you take the word of a WP reporter who best interest it is to make dummies like you believe exit polls can be wrong ... the WP and other coroporate media when WAY out of their way to dismiss the election fraud ...
... I have presented evidence NOT from a corporate reporter or corporate news who controls the elections ... but from university professors and other experts in the area ... with SEVERAL sources ... yet you post this bullshit ...
... and I love throwing insults at the politically stupid ... it would be wrong of me truly believe you are completely stupid ... even though I love saying it in my post ...
... but it's what I live for ... ha-ha ha! ha-ha, ha, ha, ha!So get used to it! Dumbass
medicineman
New Member
VI, I think you have been owned! HAHAHAHOHOHOHEHEHE~LOL~.
medicineman
New Member
Speaking of which (Dankdude) did you meet and kill him or what. He just dissapeared. I sent him some PMs but no reply.
justin2937
Well-Known Member
Lol, well it had grown so juvenile, I just wanted to join in.
medicineman
New Member
Justin, I'll send you some diapers, I've got some left from my grandkids. Tell me, you still live with your parents, don't you, ~LOL~ pussy.
GrowRebel
Well-Known Member
Yeah ... expecially if it's from professors and experts in exit polling ...
... you'd much rather believe 1 in 660,000 chance that the exit polls were wrong ... and the bogus WP bullshit ... to cover up the obvious ...
... you just can't admit to the strong evidence that proves the illegitimate bush was NEVER elected by the people of this country.
ViRedd
New Member
I'm actually getting kind of worried about the Dankster, Med. He's not posting on the other site I visit either. He's not the healthest person on the planet and I know he gained a LOT of weight since he quit smoking too. I have his phone number and I'll try to call him. Hey, if he's still pissed off at me, he can always slam the phone down on me. No problem there ... commissioned sales, ya know.
Vi
justin2937
Well-Known Member
Wow, you're right. I never realized exit polls determined the outcome of an election.
ViRedd
New Member
Come to think of it, I never thought of it either ... and now that I am thinking about it, my brain is exploding.
Vi
mockingbird131313
Well-Known Member
What so entertaining about having a war criminal for a president?
Well ... at least you admit it's talking points (head) ... the economy good? ... for who other that the military complex , oil, and big buisness? And that unemployment figure is BULLSHIT ... that doesn't include people no longer drawing unemployment or people that are UNDERemployed .... when that is added in it's much higher ...
We've got republics in the Middle East? ... you mean in those countries where they are working to kill US soldiers in Iraq and Afghantisan? That's too funny.
Yeah ... right ... Gore couldn't possibly be a good president because of the way he runs! Shit for brains 20 somethings certainly have high standards for president. What the hell happened with the illegitimate bush?
Well that explains why you are so ignorant ... but once we confront you with the facts ... you will no longer be able to use ingnorance as and excuse.
Oh please ... the pig is a hypocrite ... which explains why you are too and defend him. How the hell do you know he had severe back pain ... are you a doctor ... did you see his diagnosis or are you just parroting what he told you?
Oh yeah like fat boy never takes advantage of someone situation ... you and Limberger should learn ... what goes around ... comes around ...
"The most feared man on the plant ...." Bhaw haw haw haw .... which plant? He's an idiot with nothing to back his statements ... just like his followers. He isn't feared on any plant or planet for that matter.
ACCIDENTALLY getting addicted! Bhaww haw haw haw haw! Now that's REALLY funny!
Wow ... your are easily impressed aren't you? If you mean by destroying as lying at every turn ... then your dead on.
Well ... it does explain why they are so stupid. Doesn't it?
.... and do you honestly believe leaving the troops in the middle of a civil war with no end without the proper equipment is "supporting the troops? Do you even knows what supporting the troops means besides not questioning the illegitimate bush?
The dems won't go on faux for obvious reason ... faux will only spin what happens to help the repukes ... so why should they play into that shit ...
Democrats, Fox News Channel Lock Horns
... and and like faux news would ask the illegitimate bush about the Iraelis spy ring that were arrested near the WTC, or why he disregarded the PDB about possible attacks, or the lies he told about WMD and the cost of the illegal war ... or would the illegitimate bush release HIS service records to the public ... you think they would ask tough question like that you hypocrite?
Besides ... faux news isn't really a REAL news outlet ... it's just propaganda ...
A myth in the unmaking
Fox News's status as a politically impartial channel is at last being exposed as a fiction.
[snip]
it's even run by a man, Roger Ailes, who helped elect Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush senior to the presidency. And yet, because it minimally adheres to certain superficial conventions, it can masquerade as a "news" outfit and enjoy all the rights that accrue to that.
[snip]
Fox can't admit that it's a Republican outfit. It would have no credibility with politicians if it did and would be too easily dismissed as "ideological media". To get around this problem, its marketers devised what must be the most deviously ingenious pair of advertising slogans of all time: "We report, you decide" and "Fair and balanced".
[snip]
Two executives of a major news organisation may have told a citizen to lie to federal investigators to protect a presidential candidate. It's a stunning charge. If proven someday, Fox will no longer be able to hide behind the fiction that it's a neutral news outfit.
Well at least most of us already knew faux was just that ... fauxnews ... a complete and total joke ... to even consider them as serious news is funny.
Not that ABCNNBCBS have crediblity ... they don't ... but at one time they did ... faux never has, and never will be.
... and I really love slaming right wing parrot retards with the facts ... You shouldn't believe everything lumpberger tell you ... but you do ... and you will ...
end quote.
It amazes me how someone can be so condescending, yet be unable to write and speak in English. I believe most of the people you have attacked here can speak and write English. Are you from a foreign country? What is you first language? Are really this stupid, or is this a joke?
ViRedd
New Member
Mockingbird ...
You are right in taking issue with GrowRebel's posts.
I suspect that GrowRebel is very young and inexperienced in the political thought process. I'm afraid he's bought into some of the more insidious conspiracy theories. He needs to understand that there are those who will mislead him and others for ulterior motives ... many of whom are on these conspiratorial websites. Grow Rebel is very naive and doesn't have the social skills necessary to discuss politics in a rational manner. Therefore, the personal attacks. The grammar and spelling errors, I can forgive ... but calling our/his president a war criminal and a nazi, never.
Vi
You are right in taking issue with GrowRebel's posts.
I suspect that GrowRebel is very young and inexperienced in the political thought process. I'm afraid he's bought into some of the more insidious conspiracy theories. He needs to understand that there are those who will mislead him and others for ulterior motives ... many of whom are on these conspiratorial websites. Grow Rebel is very naive and doesn't have the social skills necessary to discuss politics in a rational manner. Therefore, the personal attacks. The grammar and spelling errors, I can forgive ... but calling our/his president a war criminal and a nazi, never.
Vi