Rachel just said exit polls always wrong & tend to favor Dems. They didn't start being wrong until

[Amaryllis]

the 2004 presidential election. Prior to that, they were considered the gold standard for predicting election results. The fact that exit polls don't match results does not mean that exit polls suddenly became wrong. So in Alabama, we have exit polls showing much higher than predicted African AMerican turnout, and lots of voter suppression and them being given provisional ballots after being told they are missing from the registration list. Favorite trick of Rs. Those provisional ballots end up being trashed.

The right question is why do the results not match the exit polls?

[octoberlib]

1. Yes, they were. I took a Democratic Development course from Stanford and

Professor Diamond said they're still the gold standard in the rest of the world. If exit polls are wrong (if they're done correctly) it's an indication of fraud.

[Amaryllis]

2. Exactly. Sorry to see RAchel buying into this. She literally said they are always wrong and

favor Dems...but then the results favor them a lot less.

[octoberlib]

4. That's just lazy. Do some research, Rachel

[Amaryllis]

7. It's not even logical to not ask the question why?

[octoberlib]

9. All journalists ( with the exception of people like Greg Palast)

have the attitude that election fraud is some kind of crazy conspiracy theory. They should do their jobs and investigate.

[questionseverything]

17. brad blog is good too

[Hortensis]

38. Octoberlib, could the extreme polarization and

partisanship that have developed compared to some other eras be affecting exit poll accuracy? Such as, for one possible dynamic among others perhaps, embarrassment over some of the bizarre choices it's causing them to make? I.e., causing people to lie or exaggerate more?

I've read that pre-election live polls seriously undercounted the people who went on to vote for Trump, and also those who voted for Roy Moore in the primary, a theory being that some didn't want to publicly admit they were going to.

Might both this and perhaps self image as being political players in a polarized election be changing the kind of answers given in exit polls?

[octoberlib]

39. I think its entirely possible. I thought one

of the reasons exit polls were off last year was because people were too embarrassed to admit they voted for Trump.

[Hortensis]

40. Sounds like a very interesting course.

I'd need it in a MOOC, Stanford being a long commute from north Georgia.

[octoberlib]

41. I took it in a MOOC! It was offered on Coursera.

The course was so good I plan on taking it again.

[Hortensis]

44. Oh, thanks, Octoberlib. I'll go check it out.

[triron]

3. Rachel is buyin into a hoax.

[Gabi Hayes]

8. all depends upon whose dogma you choose to believe:

OHIO'S ODD NUMBERS
No conspiracy theorist, and no fan of John Kerry's, the author nevertheless found the Ohio polling results impossible to swallow: Given what happened in that key state on Election Day 2004, both democracy and common sense cry out for a court-ordered inspection of its new voting machines.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2005/03/hitchens200503


don't like this one? check some of these:

have at it.....many many many threads focused on this highly suspect election, particularly Blackwell's role in Ohio

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&hl=en&ei=PCQvWoO0D6HJjwT9yJW4DA&q=2004+election+stolen+in+ohio&oq=2004+election+stolen+in+ohio&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i22i30k1.93436321.93448035.0.93449833.44.28.8.8.9.0.136.2415.22j4.26.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..3.32.2127...0j0i131k1j0i67k1.0.-kX3HeQPEkM

[TDale313]

6. Yep. Final results not matching exit polls

Is widely seen around the world as a sign of election fraud. I can remember very clearly screaming at my tv a few weeks after the 2004 Presidential election as members of the Bush administration made this point- with no hint of irony- about probable voter fraud in another country’s election (The Ukraine iirc) It was such a down-the-rabbit-hole moment.

[KelleyKramer]

24. Jimmy Carter has said that many times

Exit polls are one of the first tthings they check for signs of a rigged election

[diva77]

5. Too bad Rachel made such an assumption without documentation to back her statement

[questionseverything]

10. a lady on rachel's show just mentioned the lawsuit we lost last night about

preserving ballot images

rachel didnt pick up on it at all but that young woman knew what was what..i am thrilled to hear it on the tv machine

[flamingdem]

11. Can you explain this

because I missed it, what lawsuit, what does it mean? thanks

[questionseverything]

12. ei peops sued and won to get the digital images preserved,then late last night al supremes overturne

it

http://bradblog.com/?p=12395

Why not just fight to view the actual paper ballots? Brakey explains: "You cannot get at the original ballots. They will not let you touch them. In order to get to them, you have to prove fraud first. And how are you going to prove fraud if you can't get to the ballots? That's the Catch-22. The ballot images are a tool to get us to the originals.

[flamingdem]

14. Thanks. This issue makes my blood boil

Why don't we get this addressed, it's our future, more than any other issue imo

[questionseverything]

16. me too..i don't think hrc actually lost either wisconsin or michigan

palast has been good helping get the word out as has brad blog

we just have to keep fighting for transparency

[flamingdem]

18. I think it was stolen

from what I've read.

I remember how difficult it was to verify the ballots

[Amaryllis]

28. Or PA; she didnt lose that either.

[DeminPennswoods]

34. She underperformed Josh Shapiro (D)

the winning state atty general candidate in a lot R areas. That's why she lost. Had she just matched his votes, she'd have won the state.

[questionseverything]

13. info in the following op too

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141937125

we are just trying to bring transparency and citizen oversight to the election...to be clear when i say "we" i mean that loosely as i support these goals

[RandomAccess]

15. More info

Alabama Supreme Court issues late night stay blocking preservation of Tuesdays digital vote records
Source: Alternet https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141937125
The Alabama Supreme Court stepped into Tuesday’s U.S. Senate race between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones on Monday night by blocking a lower state court’s ruling earlier in the day that told statewide election officials to take steps to preserve digital images of every ballot cast Tuesday.
https://www.alternet.org/activism/alabama-supreme-court-issues-monday-night-order-blocking-best-practices-verify-vote
This is how Trump won. Vote ain’t sacred.
and this: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029966965

[diva77]

20. I think most media people do not understand election integrity. It takes about 3 months to really

catch on. The reporting on it is abysmal, even from well-meaning people.

[questionseverything]

29. you would thinks would of used the repubs nontransparency an issue

but it is the 3rd rail

only the hill,bradblog and palest reported the law suit

[malaise]

19. I've been saying this for years

Rec

[Ezior]

22. In Germany, we treat exit polls almost like preliminary results

Right after polling places close, news outlets publish exit poll results and those are always quite close to the official preliminary results, which are published a few hours later, with some updates for the exit polls based on (100% hand-counted) actual votes in-between.

I'm not sure what's wrong in the US regarding exit polls, but something smells fishy.

[TheFrenchRazor]

37. you said it. nt

[Awsi Dooger]

23. Rachel finally got something correct

Call it Shy Tory or whatever you want to call it. Exit polls are not fully reliable and tend to favor Democrats. That's why I was so discouraged tonight when DemocratSinceBirth posted some early exit poll info on the gender gap. It aligned with virtually a dead even race. To me, that seemed to indicate a likely 2-3 point defeat for Jones.

Years ago there was great conversation and input here from posters like Febble and OnTheOtherHand. I haven't seen posts from them in a while. I know they went to Kos when the Election Reform forum got out of hand here, and they were ruthlessly attacked.

Their stuff was far better than my own, and I don't own the energy right now to post a competent version of my own material. Let's just say I am never impressed with a sample of one, not when that sample bucks the established and logical trend. I suspect exit polls will continue to overstate Democratic strength.

[diva77]

30. yah, the Election Reform forum was once filled with great discussions

here's an old link for the sake of nostalgia:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=203

[UCmeNdc]

25. Agree! No one seems to do a scientific, logical, exam on why suddenly exit polls are always wrong.

What is the real reason?

[Loki Liesmith]

26. Do you have data to demonstrate this claim?

[TheFrenchRazor]

32. i personally remember in 2000 the pundits talking about how accurate exit polls "used to be,"

and wondering what went wrong this time (and i think the deviations in 2000 were much less than they are now). there seemed to be a lot of agreement then these polls had previously been very accurate. now the conventional wisdom is apparently that they're "always" wrong.

[Lee-Lee]

42. Thats not data

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

27. Exit polls for so long were so reliable that they

were used to announce results before polls closed. That's what happened in 1980, when all the networks called the race for Ronald Reagan several hours before polls closed on the west coast, causing thousands of people to walk away from polling places and not bother to vote. After that, the networks agreed not to make such predictions until the polls in the west coast closed.

I also understand that in 1992 the Clinton campaign knew by noon on Election Day that he was going to win big because of their own polling.

They also used to use the results from certain specific precincts that had been excellent predictors of the outcome for their states. I'm not sure if those results were also called exit polls but I know that they were important in the predictions, which is why you'd see a network calling a race with only a very tiny percentage of results in, so long as they had the results from those precincts.

It's hard to know what made exit polling less reliable. One thing in many states would be the advent of advance voting. Another might be that whoever was doing the exit polling wasn't being as careful as before. Maybe significant numbers of voters are lying to the exit pollers, or maybe who was willing to talk to them has become skewed. I'm inclined to guess that they're not being as careful and precise as before in many ways, including not selecting precincts very carefully. And the benchmark precincts may well have changed and the polling isn't keeping up with that.

Right now three states (Oregon, Washington, and Colorado) have mail-in voting only, which means exit polling as such can't happen in those states. I bet by 2050 around half of all states will be mail-in only. It's probably a lot harder to suppress voting in those mail-in states.

[TheFrenchRazor]

36. agreed, except you forgot election hacking as an explanation for the skewed exit polls. nt

[TheFrenchRazor]

31. started in 2000 i think, and they've been "wrong" ever since. nt

[DeminPennswoods]

33. Results depend on when and where the exit polling is done

On Tuesday I also heard Chuck Todd say that NBC had found some things they did that tended to make the exit polling less reliable and that this election, they were trying a couple different ideas to correct it. I think it's an evolving process.

[TheFrenchRazor]

35. how come they knew how to do it 20 years ago, but now it's a very inexact, "evolving" science,

as you put it? that's what i want to know.

[Lee-Lee]

43. Maybe they were not as good as everyone thinks they were two decades ago

I’ve seen lots of people saying “they used to be exact” and such, but nobody has posted any actual data, actual numbers saying “before XXXX the polls were accurate 98% of the time within 1%, in the last 5 years it’s onky 60%.”

What does actual hard data say about accuracy rates then and now?

[DeminPennswoods]

45. 20 years ago computers, internet, social media, cell

phones, cable, wireless, etc were in their infancy. Society was different. .The science/math hasn't changed, but maybe the attitudes of the electorate toward participating in polls has.