Exit Polls, and Why the Primary Was Not Stolen From Bernie Sanders
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/upshot/exit-polls-and-why-the-primary-was-not-stolen-from-bernie-sanders.htmlThe background music of my life is the steady drumbeat of tweets about how Hillary Clinton stole the presidential primary from Bernie Sanders.
Its there when I wake up in the morning. Its there when I go to sleep at night. The constant thrumming of election fraud conspiracists is like the noise made by that board game in the movie Jumanji.
I didnt write about this during the primary season, since I didnt want to dignify the views of conspiracy theorists. But theyre still going.
The allegations are remarkably consistent. They go like this: Mr. Sanders did better in the early exit polls than he did in the final result. Therefore, Mrs. Clinton probably stole the election. The exit polls are a sufficient basis to make this determination, in the eyes of the conspiracists, because exit polls are used internationally to detect fraud. Theyre supposedly very accurate and well controlled (where this phrase comes from, I dont know). Furthermore, they say, the exit polls were right on the G.O.P. side confirming the underlying validity of the methodology and raising suspicions about the Democratic vote count.
All of this starts with a basic misconception: that the exit polls are usually pretty good.
I have no idea where this idea comes from, because everyone who knows anything about early exit polls knows that theyre not great.
-------
The piece goes on, and gives good explanations for the discrepancy. I have heard endlessly about his exit poll thing and finally am happy to see a good explanation
Gothmog
(145,554 posts)Cha
(297,655 posts)Gothmog
(145,554 posts)I know that some idiots are buying this theory and I pity them
Fast Walker 52
(7,723 posts)And I still wonder. But looking more into this primary election controversy, I see that exit polls really are useless for determining election fraud, unfortunately.
Of course, there are people really won't accept that the primary was honest.
Richard Charnin, who has done a LOT of this work, seems to be really deluded.
There's this guy too:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/28/alabama-democratic-primary-proves-new-york-times-nate-cohn-wrong-about-exit-polling/
But this interview he did was most interesting, and kind of settled my thoughts on how bad exit polls are for determining fraud.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/11/an-interview-with-lead-edison-exit-pollster-joe-lenski/