Networks, AP Changing Exit Poll Strategy

[highplainsdem]

Source: AP via NYT

NEW YORK (AP) — A growth in early voting and tough economy for the media are forcing changes to the exit poll system that television networks and The Associated Press depend upon to deliver the story on Election Night, all with the pressure-filled backdrop of a tight presidential race.

The consortium formed by ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News Channel, NBC and the AP is cutting back this year on in-person exit polls while upping the amount of telephone polling. This is to take into account more people voting before Nov. 6 and households that have abandoned land lines in favor of cell phones.

"It makes it trickier," said Joe Lenski, executive vice president of Edison Research, the company that oversees the election operation for the news organizations. "It means there are a lot of different pieces to keep track of."

On a perfect Election Night, Americans who are tracking results won't notice all the work being done behind the scenes. The Associated Press reports actual vote counts nationwide and news organizations use those numbers, plus the exit polls, results from precinct samples in some states and telephone polls of absentee voters to do their own race calls.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2012/10/25/us/ap-us-exit-polls.html

[SoapBox]

1. I say "exit polling" should be banned.

When the votes are counted...then we hear results.

Call me old fashioned!

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. Exit Polls Are Checks On Election Results To See If There Are Irregularities

.

[Bacchus4.0]

5. not really, you can say whatever you want in an exit poll

there is no requirement to state who you actually voted for.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

6. Then How Do Know If There Are Irregularities?

[Bacchus4.0]

16. Thats the question isn't it?

If you base your assumption that there are irregularities because of exit poll numbers, all you may be discovering is that people are saying they voted one way when they actually cast something different. No way to prove or disprove that. But you can't discount it either. Given that, you can't immediately jump to a "there must be fraud" conclusion. You will also have people who refuse to respond at all and there may be more of those who support one candidate than another thus skewing the results again.

I'd say paper receipts but that is just a hard copy of who you voted for. For verification of the voting results you would need to count the paper receipts against the electronic ballot or paper ballot submitted at the election center. How you gonna do that? have everybody who voted come back the next day with their receipt and recount?

[bjobotts]

24. Video here shows 10%votes flipped

flipped from dems to repubs and never vice versa. Exit polling is the only current means of checking actual results. Since the voting machines are all owned by republican activists and since 5-6 corps. own the media, I feel their refusal to do exit polling makes it that much easier for those who are suppressing the vote etc...makes it that much easier to steal the election.
The president or the DoJ should have done something sooner to protect voting because recent history has taught us if the election is stolen it is too late to do anything about after the voting process is done.


I wish every one would watch the video above and follow the link to the report from that retired NSA rep that demonstrates 10% of dem votes are already being flipped to republican nation wide systematically in large precincts through a central tabulator program...probably written by Mike Connell who was murdered before he could testify in Ohio against Ken Blackwell where he was to demonstrate that he had put in a back door to the vote counting program. He was threatened by Rove activists and left a note that if killed it would be no accident...then he died in a small engine plane crash. This IS a serious grab for power across the country where races that are close a 10% vote flip would always get the repub elected.
Repubs are lying, suppressing the vote, threating and pressuring their employees and committing election fraud because if they were honest about their agenda they would never win an election. The American people would never tolerate them. They didn't even mention Bush because they don't want to admit the last time they were in power they nearly destroyed the country.

[99th_Monkey]

7. Historically, exit polls have been the gold standard for detecting fraud.

And given all the voter & election fraud shenanigans being played by GOP,
it makes me nervous to abandon them altogether; although I do at

the same time appreciate how it is becoming an increasingly challenging task

to perform.

Cell phones & early-voting, not to mention vote-by-mail in several states, have
all 3 made exit polling in the traditional sense of the term (asking people
coming out of voting booth how they voted) a bit obsolete.

[davidpdx]

28. I agree, the model of exit polling is becoming outdated with the changes in the way things are done

I do have to wonder how they can still keep it accurate with all of the ways voting is changing. Also keep in mind exit polls do not include overseas voters because there is no way to poll them.

Now the one caveat here is that in a state that is completely vote-by-mail (like Oregon) it would be a little easier to do. I think there are still only a handful of states that have vote-by-mail.

[valerief]

12. Exit polls validate election fraud. nt

[robinlynne]

19. Exit polls are the old fashioned way to protect elections.

[snot]

25. Call me old-fashioned;

I say it's 'cuz somebody's hoping to get away with election fraud on a scale more massive than we've yet seen. (And that's pretty massive.)

[snot]

26. If I may add:

The Elephant in the Voting Booth: Electronic Machines
http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/breaking-retired-nsa-analyst-proves-gop-is-stealing-elections/article20598.html :

A retired NSA analyst has spent several sleepless nights applying a simple formula to past election results across Arizona. His results showed across-the-board systemic election fraud on a coordinated and massive scale.

More at the link.

[JackRiddler]

29. Exit polling is old fashioned.

It's supposed to be a tool against fraud in the vote count, and actually far more scientifically reliable than pre-election polls.

Some countries do ban pre-election polling for a period before the election, because those are the ones that are used to spin propaganda for and against candidates.

[questionseverything]

2. what about the "news" just waiting til the votes are counted?

and then reporting that?

http://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/update-daily-presidential-true-voteelection-fraud-forecast-model/

[99th_Monkey]

14. Isn't Real Clear Politics on DU's shit-list?

4TH PARAGRAPH IN ARTICLE: "The source of the polling data is the Real Clear Politics (RCP) website"

I don't have an ax to grind here. Especially since this is now projecting Obama's chances of winning
as quite high. But just sayin', I've seen RCP disparaged of late on DU (unless I am mis-remembering).

[questionseverything]

30. i have no idea about the du disparaement of rcp

i am new to du..so i have not learned the inside who is who yet...the author charnin lists other sources also but this is what i found terrifying...The Ultimate Smoking Gun that proves Systemic Election Fraud:
1) The Likely Voter Cutoff Model eliminates newly registered Democrats from the LV sub-sample. Kerry had 57-61% of new voters; Obama had 72%.
2) Exit poll precincts are partially selected based on the previous election recorded vote.
3) In the 1988-2008 presidential elections, 226 of 274 exit polls red-shifted to the Republicans. Only about 137 would normally be expected to red-shift. The probability is zero.
4) 126 of the 274 exit polls exceeded the margin of error. Only 14 (5%) would normally be expected. The probability is ZERO.
5) 123 of the 126 exit polls that exceeded the margin of error red-shifted to the Republicans. The probability is ZERO.

victoria collier has an article in harpers this month that says the exit polls are always adjusted to match the machine reported outcomes

and there is this account of what happened in 04
http://witnesstoacrime.com/....Richard Hayes Phillips has been the leading investigator of the
fraudulent 2004 presidential election in Ohio. His work was relied
upon by John Conyers in challenging the Ohio electors in Congress,
by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in his article for Rolling Stone magazine,
and by Algenon L. Marbley in issuing his federal court order protecting
the ballots from destruction. Assisted by teams of volunteers equipped
with digital cameras, Phillips amassed some 30,000 images of forensic
evidence. Then he analyzed it all himself, examining 126,000 ballots,
127 poll books, and 141 voter signature books from 18 counties in Ohio.

Phillips' long-awaited book, "Witness to a Crime: A Citizens' Audit of
an American Election," was published by Canterbury Press on April 12.
The book is 448 pages, with a hard cover and a dust jacket. The book
includes eight color plates, and a CD with 1200 digital images of actual
ballots, poll books, voter signature books, ballot accounting charts,
and other forensic evidence from the 2004 presidential election in Ohio.

so i am just trying to look at all possibilities...

[99th_Monkey]

31. Totally. It's about time we put a stop to GOP cheating

I can't for the life of me understand why Obama's DoJ has
been so wimpish on this subject, maybe because all of it's
resources are too focused on ruining perfectly good peoples
lives who happen to be participating in one of the 17 states
with Medical Marijuana legalized by voters.

As for Real Clear Politics, there appears to be a mix of opinions
about their trustworthiness on DU
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021595076
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021622871

I've never experienced them to be deliberately misleading myself,
so my mention was just a heads up, not getting on your case.

Welcome to DU

[djean111]

3. On the other hand, I think it best to be aware when the exit polls

favor one party and then the other party magically wins when the votes are "counted".
But then, I live in Florida.

[99th_Monkey]

9. That's my concern as well. Exit polls detect fraud, so why lose them? ~nt

[hrmjustin]

8. While I am nervous about this plan there might be good reason for it.

More people will be questioned in the swing states, and that is important.

[Panasonic]

10. In other words, they are about to lie for RMoney and will be 100% discredited.

Once the numbers for Obama comes in and it's a big fucking landslide - nobody in the red states are voting for Rmoney either.

(I can dream, can I?)

*boots up machine*
*gets hack software ready*

No Agent Mike, I don't have said software.

[LynneSin]

11. I don't think any states should be called until all the polls are closed

Mind you, I would be ok if that was based on just the 48 Mainland states since I know Alaska and Hawaii close really late for the east coast. But it's all a ratings prime time and every station trying to be the first to say 'GUESS WHO WON!'

[bemildred]

13. We need a paper trail and audits.

Why should the government of the USA be left to the machinations of fools and weasels? Eh?

[radhika]

15. I think voter supression drives encouraged early voting...

People wanted to get through the system early, not waiting until 11/6 to see if they were bumped from the rolls.

[ProudProgressiveNow]

21. +1

[montanacowboy]

17. In 2004 Exit Polls in Ohio said Kerry WON

and then, guess what? he lost.

If the Exit polls were correct, then Ken Blackwell and his minions flipped the ES&S Machines

And..nothing was ever done. Kerry capitulated. So if Exit polls are taken or not, what the hell makes the difference?

[FiveGoodMen]

18. Doncha kinda wanna know?

Whether the election was stolen or just lost?

[brooklynite]

20. And yet, somehow those same machines allowed Democrats in Ohio to win in 2006...

...including defeating Ken Blackwell.

[FiveGoodMen]

23. Cheaters would NEVER be smart enough to back off before getting caught.

[Ford_Prefect]

22. Here we go. This is the setup to hacked election.

The meme that exit polls are suspect was started when GW won. It was spread by operatives of the Bush machine to discredit questions raised about the vote count numbers in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere. MSM picked it up and ran with it further although exit polling has historically been very reliable for accuracy and methodology.

Since 2000 the urban myth has been repeated many times with no substantiation. It was one of the arguments offered when the federal law mandating electronic voting was argued in congress. Historically in recount after recount the exit polls have been show to be typically accurate, until you get to the Bush era when massive vote manipulation altered the count and in some cases the actual ballots.

To assume that the voting systems we have are inviolate or not subject to political influence, is to ignore past and recent electoral history.

If you have any further doubts about it see how the math works:

Retired NSA Analyst Proves GOP Is Stealing Elections

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021632694

http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/breaking-retired-nsa-analyst-proves-gop-is-stealing-elections/article20598.html

[Dustlawyer]

27. The U.S.A. And all other industrialized nations use exit polls as the Gold Standard.

Germany has not had a difference of over 1% between exit polls and the actual vote totals. If an election has a significant difference b/w the two, the international monitors, including the ones from the U.S., refuse to certify the election and claim it was stolen (I am paraphrasing from an article on the subject). They claim that very few misrepresent their vote. Also, it is not a poll of what they will do where things can happen to change their minds, it is a poll of what someone just finished doing and why. It is still extremely important in these non swing states such as Texas where I live. They would be happy to rig state and local elections to keep in power. Here, Republicans know their days are numbered with the changes in demographics and are very desperate to hang on. Funny how they decide to cut back so much and so suddenly in a Presidential election where crazy money has been spent by both sides and one candidate, and his family have a majority interest in the voting machines in those states. In the Wisconson recall election there was a difference of up to 7% in i believe, Milwaukee. Come on, coincidence?