Nate Cohn: Exit Polls, and Why the Primary Was Not Stolen From Bernie Sanders

[riversedge]

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.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn JUNE 27, 2016


............................

It’s there when I wake up in the morning. It’s 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 didn’t write about this during the primary season, since I didn’t want to dignify the views of conspiracy theorists. But they’re 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. They’re supposedly very accurate and “well controlled” (where this phrase comes from, I don’t 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 they’re not great.



We can start in 2008, when the exit polls showed a pretty similar bias toward Barack Obama. Or in 2004, when the exit polls showed John Kerry easily winning an election he clearly lost — with both a huge error and systematic bias outside of the “margin of error.” The national exits showed Kerry ahead by three points (and keep in mind the sample size on the national exit is vastly larger than for a state primary exit poll) and leading in states like Virginia, Ohio and Florida — which all went to George W. Bush.

The story was similar in 2000. ...................



www.c-span.org/video/?411661-1/hillary-clinton-senator-elizabeth-warren-campaign-cincinnati-ohio&live

[CrowCityDem]

1. I don't know how anyone could honestly say exit polls are more accurate than actual vote counts.

[TwilightZone]

5. Yeah, I never understood that.

Outside of the obvious - that vote counts reflect actual votes - a couple of other issues with the reliability of exit polls:

First, we would have to assume that people always tell pollsters the truth.

Second, using exit polling of in-person voters to represent intent of mail-in ballots is misguided, at best.

[transatlantica]

10. this statement makes no sense

and I don't know anyone who claims that "exit polls are more accurate than actual vote counts".

[CrowCityDem]

11. Plenty are claiming the exit polls show Clinton stole it, ie. the exit polls are more accurate.

[transatlantica]

12. ...

The plenty claim that exit polls have been reliably accurate, everywhere, not that they are "more accurate than the actual vote count", which makes no sense, logically.

They argue that the empirical proven accuracy of exit polls can be used to show that the published vote count is not the actual vote count, in other words: fraud.

[CrowCityDem]

13. And people who understand math and statistics have proven exit polls are fairly bunk.

[Lord Magus]

14. That's the thing, exit polls AREN'T "reliably accurate, everywhere" at all.

And I have no idea where people ever got that idea.

[transatlantica]

15. ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/23/brexit-exit-polls-dont-hold-your-breath/

[Lord Magus]

18. ...

http://www.thenation.com/article/reminder-exit-poll-conspiracy-theories-are-totally-baseless/

[Hortensis]

19. Another good article. I now know a LOT more

about how exit polls are conducted than I did. Feels good to know more.

Nate Silver:

"The background music of my life is the steady drumbeat of tweets about how Hillary Clinton stole the presidential primary from Bernie Sanders. It’s there when I wake up in the morning. It’s 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've read a number of psychological pieces over the years about why some are prone to discard truth in favor of conspiracy theories, yet I don't really feel I understand. It's always no more "real" to me than Ben Carson's ability to accept the intensely complex science that reveals our molecular makeup and implicitly believe the earth is 6000 years old.

Here in the very condensed political atmosphere of DU, Silver's thrumming has been an angry verbal seething and agitation that's boiled up and over with every long-predicted yet always completely unforeseen failure to pull ahead. A grim combination of the anxiety and frustration of not understanding what is happening and a predisposition to believe that all disappointments must be the result of malignant forces.

[transatlantica]

21. I just realized that Nate Cohn addressed the bias problem in the NYT

he says it is a result of young people mostly voting for Sanders and subsequent weighing of the results.

This is a pure hypothesis, not very convincing, and I don't buy it. It's amazing by the way that the pollsters work with weighings and guesses. Why don't they just leave the raw data?

[Lord Magus]

22. That "mere fact" ISN'T ACTUALLY A FACT though.

The claim that "90% or so of the exit polls were in favor of Sanders" is complete fiction. A total fabrication invented by conspiracy theorists.

And it's not that Hillary voters would be likely to tell exit pollsters they voted Bernie, it's that they're more likely to just refuse to respond to exit polls. The more enthusiastic a voter is, the more interested they'll be in telling everybody about how they voted. Bernie voters are well known to be very enthusiastic. Hillary's voters are for the most part people who just went to the polling place, cast their ballot and went home.

[athena]

2. Great read.

Thanks.

[lillypaddle]

3. Thanks for posting

K&R

[cosmicone]

4. One needs a copper hat with a thousand spiny antennas

to believe the primary was stolen.

[pnwmom]

6. Thank you!

[DemonGoddess]

7. Thank you!

[transatlantica]

8. "Exit polls are generally considered among the most accurate ways of polling during elections"

a quote from a recent article

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/23/brexit-exit-polls-dont-hold-your-breath/

[NurseJackie]

9. Thank you! Glad you posted this ...

... not that it really matters to the TFH crowd, this is good information for everyone else to have.

[Bill USA]

16. really informative article; rational, empirically based conclusions. All reasons 4 True Believers

to ignore it. LOL!!

[NurseJackie]

17. Oh, Bill ...

[Cha]

23. Mahalo, rivers~