For every Clinton supporter demanding Obama supporters not question polls

[cindyw]

I do not want to see any of you complaining election night when Romney goes in 8 point down and magically wins by 3 points.

Clinton or Obama supporters need to be concerned that NO Polling saw this AND Obama got bigger crowds AND exit polls were showing Obama winning. This means that we have no standing come November to say that we were robbed. You know I'm right.

Consider this:
-Obama was up in every poll 8 points
-3,500 of Hil's votes over Obama came in 2 counties alone, Manchester and Nashua

I'm just saying you can't blame us for being sceptical. The only other time we have seen the polls and fhe exit polls wrong was November 2000 and you know we all questioned that.

[NOVA_Dem]

1. hmmm....They got it "right" on the Republican side.

I wonder what that means.
:eyes:

[cindyw]

3. Exactly

The polls that said McCain winning said Obama winning.

The polls that said Obama by only 1% said Romney by a small margin.

Makes you think

[Laura PourMeADrink]

5. I never saw a Obama poll with 1%. Who was that?

[cindyw]

8. Mistype, 5% Obama (lowest lead). Suffolk

[Laura PourMeADrink]

12. Right - even if you take 5 and add the 2 pt win - that's 7 unanswered

points overnight. It could only be explained if people in the exit polls made up their mind
the day they voted. CNN's said those people split evenly between O & H.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

2. Amen. And don't forget - Repuke poll was only off by 1.4 !

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/...

Average McCain Poll Lead - Night before election: 3.6 Pts
Actual at this moment: McCain leading Romney by 5
VARIANCE: 1.4%

Average Obama Poll Lead - Night before election: 8.3 Pts
Actual at this moment: Clinton leading by 2
VARIANCE: 11.3 %

The kicker: I heard Wolf say that the people that made up their mind TODAY split between Obama and Hillary.

This scenario is almost EXACTLY what happened in Florida in 04. Kerry led by 3 and lost by 6 - Variance of 9 %. But with last minute deciders going to Kerry.

Now, before you say poor sport - I would be the first to say congratulations when it's fair and
square. But this stinks too high heaven. And most everyone here, if they didn't have any
vested interest would say the same damn thing.

[billbuckhead]

4. White voters say they voted for the black guy but really voted for the white guy

Women voters say they voted for the man but in the safety of the voting booth really vote for the woman.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

7. And all this "manipulation" accounted for a 11 pt swing?

[billbuckhead]

17. Most of it. Some is I think the media is helping Obama to hurt Hillary

People are scared to say they don't want Obama because they don't want to be painted as racist. Women don't want to be confrontational so they don't stand up for the woman candidate around men but in private they feel free to do so. Both factors working at once in an emotional election with black vs white interplaying with man vs woman.

[K Gardner]

15. A mass secret conspiracy of NH voters?

[tomp]

27. boy, are you dense. nt

[K Gardner]

38. WTF?? LOL.. do you REALLY need a sarcasm tag? OK, here..

:sarcasm:

[tomp]

59. no thanks, i meant it literally. nt

[babylonsister]

6. I'm stunned and skeptical. Everyone is stunned,. This is weird. nt

[Orangepeel]

9. but the exit polls weren't wrong

(for the record, I'm supporting Edwards)

The exit polls that got leaked before the polls closed indicated that it would be close or a narrow win by Clinton.

[Jane Austin]

Where did you see an exit poll?

The MSNBC folks were indicating all night that it was closer than thought but that Obama still wins.

That's why they didn't call it for her earlier.

[Orangepeel]

21. see post #19

Also, jezebel linked to an ABC leak of the polls about 6:30 this evening

ABC is reporting it is much closer between Obama and Clinton, saying Clinton may be giving a victory
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=3997437

[Laura PourMeADrink]

13. CNN's EP showed O winning. (albeit narrowly).

[Orangepeel]

19. Not the posted exit poll results

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/index.html#NHDEM

If you calculate the percentages on the gender line, it is 39% to 37% in Clinton's favor

Here's a link to a post about the ABC leak of the results before the polls closed:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=3997437

[Laura PourMeADrink]

41. well, it was posted here earlier - have to look for it.

[Jane Austin]

10. That's not a bad point.

And one I confess I've thought of tonight.

If a few polls had been different, or if Hillary's own internal polls had shown a different result, it would make more sense.

This doesn't make complete sense to me. Polls just aren't usually off that much.

[Botany]

11. Smell test

A 11 point swing in 24 hours?

Bill was bitching about the bad press today being behind Hillary's expected loss.

Her Campaign was making plans to change key staff jobs.

Her campaign talked about keeping the loss @ under double digits today.

Her "crying game" monent and her "a vote for Obama is a vote for terrorists"
struck a bad chord w/ many.

Freaking exit polls had her getting beat by Obama.

[K Gardner]

18. Do not forget either, that really CREEPY speech Matthews gave this morning..

yeah, I know its Tweety.. but I sent it to some friends and they read it. My friends are all calling me, freaking out, asking me how I knew they were going to do that! And my friends are not wacky, like I am.. but they're freaked.
Watch the video.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Chris_Matthews_predicts_establishment_to_defeat_0108.html

[regnaD kciN]

40. Actually, I think that speech was dead-on...

...and probably one of the few accurate things he's said in years.

It's damn hard to overturn the established forces in a political party. Dean supporters learned it in 2004, and it looks like Obama supporters need to realize it now. The status-quo won't just exit gracefully, and they have the resources -- much, much more than the advocates of "change" do -- to make any effort at reform an uphill struggle all the way.

In fact, I fear that the only way to drive the established party elite out of power is if the entire structure crashes and burns...say, if Hillary gets the nomination and loses to a Bush-clone even this year, or if she gets elected and does so poorly that Congress flips back to the G.O.P. in 2010 and the White House in 2012. I hope that won't be necessary this time, but those of us who want to free the Democratic Party from the inside-the-Beltway, DLC-supporting, Bush-enabling business-as-usual types who are back in the driver's seat tonight should realize that it's going to be a hard fight, with the outcome very much in doubt.

[Egnever]

57. Well said

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

33. Yeah, we all justifiably doubted 2004 for same reasons

Something's very fishy about this. These individual polls aren't weathervanes, and it's understandable if one indicator is amiss. But when every single indicator-- internal polling by both campaigns, 3rd-party polling, negative reactions to Hillary's "a vote for Obama is a vote for the terrorists" claim, *and* exit polling-- all point to an Obama win, and the counted votes show something different, well let's just say this is like Ohio in 2004 all over again. Can't help but be skeptical, as has been said by many before-- it's not who votes that matters, it's who counts the votes that matters! We need to be able to follow the paper trail.

[Botany]

37. Ohio 2006

Mary Jo Kilroy (D) v Deb Pryce (R) U.S. House 15th district

Polls had Kilroy up by 12 points with less than 10 days to go
Pryce highest poll #s were 44 %
She ran out of her last interview w/ the press when asked about
Iraq.

And yet on election day Pryce keeps her seat w/ 50.2% of the vote.

EES machines were used.

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

42. Yeah, I remember that, the way Kilroy was robbed got my blood boiling

And it wasn't just DUers who thought so-- remember, there was a serious article in, I believe, the New Yorker about how the votes in Ohio were manipulated.

This is the problem with any kind of electronic voting system (or even paper ballots lacking in proper auditing and transparency)-- it's just way too easy to hack. There was a video in Youtube a while back that showed just how easy it is to hack into an electronic voting system and change the totals, while leaving hardly a trace of the intrusion. It's chilling, frankly.

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

58. Reminders of the Kilroy race

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/the06fix/index.php

I still get a heavy heart and an angry stomach when I look at that link.

[K Gardner]

14. Its not all "Obama" people saying it. Its a legitimate concern. We do NOT want to see a trend

like this developing this early on. Gads, am I the only one having deja vu? Thanks for posting this, BTW. Recommended.

[Jane Austin]

16. Russert just said that Clinton's own internal polling showed her down 11%

and Obama's internals showed him up 14%.

And it ended up with Clinton winning?

Odd.

[cindyw]

20. The campaigns have to be wondering how they could trust their polls

I would not be surprised if tomorrow the major pollsters are out tomorrow scrambling to explain this.

[BenDavid]

22. oh come on people. Hell, next thing we hrc supporters will see

is SOME of you all will say what some ass said on cnn, was this about race? So now new hampshire is a state full of bigots as well as people that somehow rigged the results.....

Hey obama and edwards supporters after hrc got beat last thursday I did not see us asking for a recount or it was rigged in some way. We accepted the lost and battled you all for five days about who was going to win in New Hampshire.

The race continues:

[cindyw]

25. The polling was not wrong in Iowa.

I didn't say she cheated either. My big problem is the polling was wrong. If the Democrat party accepts the results on face value, then we have NO standing in November when the Republican candidate suddenly has a 11 point swing in 24 hours. You know I'm right. We will loose all credibility. This is a BIG problem.

[rinsd]

62. Pre-Polling in Iowa had Obama with a slight lead with Hillary leading 2 polls

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/ia/iowa_democratic_caucus-208.html

"You know I'm right. We will loose all credibility. This is a BIG problem."

Because crying fraud in the absence of evidence does nothing to one's credibility?

[Joe the Revelator]

26. Last week's CAUCUS was completely open

You could watch the damn thing on C-span.

[K Gardner]

28. Yah.. called transparency :-)

[unc70]

50. The count in Iowa was in full view with real people. Not so in NH.

I agree that the NH results seem strange, but we don't yet have enough data to determine whether the NH voters (particularly Independents) changed their minds at the last minute somehow, or all the polls including exit polls were flawed, or there is something seriously wrong with the tabulation, or maybe there is something else. For the moment, I want us to examine these results very carefully and with adequate skepticism.

My background is software, security, data analysis, and data validation and I have been active in ensuring election integrity for some time. I support Edwards and did not expect him to do much better than he did tonight so this isn't sour grapes for me. Something really strange happened today, something very important, and something we must identify quickly. Whether the election was hacked or the voters just told us something important; either way, we ignore this at great peril.

We really need access to the raw exit poll data. That would allow a variety of cross validation rules to check for anomalies -- sampling biases at the precinct level, time-of-day differences, reasonableness checks against precinct rolls and results.

[KittyWampus]

23. Thanks. There's no way to know what happened because of electronic voting equipement

and that just isn't acceptable in a democracy.

[Jane Austin]

24. Did I see here today that somebody with Black Box Voting

had hacked machines similar to the tabulators used in New Hampshire?

Can anybody link to that?

[KittyWampus]

30. yes, see bradblog.

[creeksneakers2]

29. The exit polls had it too close to call tonight

Exit polls were used in 2004 to claim the election was stolen. Now exit polls are discarded by conspiracy theorists.

I can't figure it out. I was sure Hillary would be blown out so I realize I have no idea what I'm talking about. Guess about this one?

One thing I discount is poll respondents giving wrong answers to pollsters. If that was the case, they would have given exit pollsters the same bad information.

Something happened at the end. Maybe the last minute negative attack mailings worked. The media analysts who got it all completely wrong say Hillary's tears won if for her. Who knows?

It doesn't look like it was stolen though. The results match the exit polls.

[LostinVA]

31. Exit polls are meaningless

Kerry was up 15% in NH exit polls.

[Kucinich4America]

47. They didn't used to be

Exit polls used to be reasonably accurate predicitions of the outcome. Funny how that has only changed since the invention of electro-fraud voting machines.

[Texas_Kat]

32. Polling is not voting

You'd be surprised how often polling isn't accurate. Even 5% undecideds can change the results of an election.

[Bishop Rook]

34. Sigh.

"Obama was up in every poll 8 points" -- sometimes, polls are wrong.
"3,500 of Hil's votes over Obama came in 2 counties alone, Manchester and Nashua" -- Manchester and Nashua are cities, not counties, and this isn't really fishy considering they are by far the two biggest cities in the state.

I'm as saddened by this turn of events as anyone else, but these results just aren't fishy enough to warrant conspiracy theories, especially since we can establish motive but nobody's even volunteering the means or opportunity.

On edit: To make the Manchester/Nashua thing clearer... About 110,000 people live in Manchester and about 90,000 people in Nashua. 200,000 between them, in a state of 1.2 million--one sixth of the state's population lives in those two cities. Seeing that a lot of her lead came from those areas, therefore, shouldn't be too surprising.

On edit: I thought Clinton won Concord, I was wrong. Obama did.

[cindyw]

35. Obama won Concord

Excuse my county... city

[Bishop Rook]

39. Did he?

Oh, so he did. My bad.

Go Concord! :D

[kansasblue]

36. Get your Fox News Polling here!

Sorry to have to drift over to Fox but it is interesting:

The poll consisted of 800 telephone interviews with Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire, conducted the evening of January 7 and throughout election-day on January 8.

Over half of Democratic primary voters (52 percent) would be very satisfied if Obama wins the Democratic party’s presidential nomination. The same is true of 41 percent if Clinton wins the nomination, and 32 percent if John Edwards wins the nomination.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,321191,00.html

[regnaD kciN]

43. For those Clinton-backers who are laughing-off talk of a rigged election...

...might I ask for some consistency?

You may very well be right that everything was above-the-board tonight. (Personally, I'd suspect the same.) But, then, could we have an end to any 2004 conspiracy theories? Because what happened tonight is an eerie echo of four years ago. In each case, polls showed one candidate ahead (exit polls showing that candidate far ahead) and then, as the results came in...the expected pattern never formed.

Now, maybe there was fraud in the 2004 general election, which means there could have been fraud here, too.

Or, maybe, this election was on the up-and-up, and it just happened that all the polls were wrong -- it just happens sometimes. But, if that could happen tonight, it could have happened in Ohio and Florida in 2004 as well.

But I don't think it's tenable to assert, on the one hand, that Bush's win in 2004 must have been the result of fraud, while at the same time flatly stating that there's "no way" anything could have happened this time.

[Orangepeel]

48. not the same thing at all

First, I'm not saying there's "no way" anything could have happened -- anything can always happen. Second, I'm not a "Clinton-backer." I'm supporting Edwards.

However, I trust exit polls more than pre-election polls. The sampling frame for an exit poll is well defined -- people who go to vote. The pollster does not have to make assumptions about turnout and weight the sample based on who answered their phone.

Exit polls in 2004 indicated Kerry won. Exit polls in the primary indicated Clinton won. (unless CNN posted bogus exit poll results, which I think is much less likely then the possibility that that Clinton really won)

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/epolls/index.html#NHDEM

[TheWraith]

44. I understand where you're coming from, but I don't really doubt the results.

New Hampshire is infamously unpredictable--in hindsight, I can easily see a certain sect of voters deciding to vote Clinton for no better reason than the fact that Obama got a big bump out of Iowa. Besides that, it seems that Hillary grabbed the sympathy of a bunch of voters, mostly women, with her tear-jerker in the NH diner.

I do completely understand and support your premise, though--we can't allow reasonable inquiry to be dismissed as simple sour grapes, as long as it is reasonable.

[samdogmom]

45. If "we're" stealing elections now, I'm through!

I am so concerned about this outcome. How can a pre-election poll be so wrong???? Obama was up well over 10 points--yet he lost less than a day later? Huh? So, how can this be explained?

If our side is "stealing" too--I'm shocked! But, I think there's still time to rectify this. The "old guard" that did things "back in the day" needs to be RETIRED! DO NOT support "old guard" candidates (they resort to dirty tricks and crime--that's all they know, unfortunately!)

Here's to a new day in America!

[cindyw]

46. Could have been Repub test run, never know

:tinfoilhat:

[Konza]

53. don't laugh but

a poster on the abc story actually suggested the republicans stole NH for Hillary.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2008/01/new-hampshires.html

Now, I've been pretty stoned before, but I want what that dude's on.

For me, yep, it looks odd and I don't care much for Hillary, but in my gut I know she didn't rig the vote machines.

My guy lost by 2 percent instead of winning by 5.
A week ago he was losing. Then he was winning. Then he lost.
Shit happens, you move on.
Peace out.

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

49. Yeah, not just one poll-- the whole collection of data, and exit polling

That's why it seems fishy. I'm not at all saying the Clinton campaign itself was involved in anything, but the establishment of the Democratic Party is much more in favor of Clinton (look at those ridiculous Superdelegate numbers), not to mention big business interests, and I wouldn't put it past them to manipulate the results in either of the primaries. There has to be absolute transparency with this sort of thing.

[kurt_cagle]

51. Polling

New Hampshire has long had a reputation for its independent status, and one of the key pieces in all of this was that the independents were generally undecided until literally going into the voting booth. This fact was recognized by most of the local polling, but the dynamic was one that was easily missed by the big, simplified assumptions that the MSM have likely used, especially if you assume that there is some question about bias at that level.

If you assume voting machine manipulation is possible (and I do), it frankly doesn't make much sense to start using it from New Hampshire - for all of its symbolic importance, NH is a small state with a limited number of delegates and a great deal of visibility, and the chance that such manipulation will be detected at this stage is much higher than it would be down the road. Moreover, a 2% differential does nothing to prove that Hillary is "the front runner" - rather it indicates that it is a tight race, as everyone but the MSM are likely to agree on.

Finally, I think that the MSM at this stage is more shocked than anything that the person they had been trying to bury for the last several weeks has managed to come out alive and well and kicking. Most of the MSM does not want Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic nomination. For all of Obama's talk of change (and a hell of an oratorical style) he doesn't know where the bodies are buried. Clinton does, and moreover she is likely to use that leverage in a far more sophisticated way than Obama will.

I should say that at this stage that I am not enamored of Hillary Clinton as a person - I think that as a campaigner, she has considerably fewer people skills than her husband does, though she also has some of the best coaches in the world in that regard. However, one of the things that a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum are asking themselves is that after eight years of disastrously failed policy and rampant corruption, who is likely to be the better president at both cleaning up the corruption and redirecting the country in a time of economic hardship (which is definitely coming)?

One other point to consider. Bush has left the country, and the government, bankrupt. Hundreds of billions of dollars have disappeared into the pockets of Halliburton/KBR, the oil companies, and the mercenary corps, and lax regulations have made it possible for the final sector to siphon off hundreds of billions more in fees and bonuses. The Republicans are frankly fielding non-candidates because the RNC recognizes the reality - there's nothing left to steal. A mammoth recession will come into full bloom around the time of the election, one which will likely end up taking several years to work through. All of the inspiring rhetoric at this stage is going to be meaningless in December 2008, because the person who inherits this mess is going to have to spend at least the next four years, and probably the next eight if they can manage re-election, just trying to get things back to a point of stability.

My own personal feeling is that the most dangerous combination that the Dems can come up with to the Republicans is the one that's shaping up tonight. After nearly six months of battling, Clinton will likely end up winning, but will need Obama's support in order to pull the party together again. Together they represent a powerful combination - Clinton's political savvy, previous experience (and by this I mean BOTH Clintons) and yes, ability to play hardball when necessary, and Obama's oratorical flair and skills and his ability to step out of the establishment in a way that Hillary can't. This recognizes the fact that politics needs both.

So what of Edwards? Edwards actually has a very pertinent economic message, even if its getting tiring to listen to it, but Edwards also is fighting some serious limitations - being an also-ran VP can be a major headwind, questions about his wife's health and his ability to concentrate in the face of that make him vulnerable there and the rather ironic situation that he is neither black nor female may actually end up working against him as well. I would also suspect that while he may do very well in the south, that region has become so guaranteed a Republican bloc that it is unlikely that he will in fact add significantly to a power ticket there in any case. He will likely take South Carolina (if he doesn't, then he's through), but if he fares badly during Super Tuesday, his support will dry up as well.

I'm not committed toward any candidate at this point, though leaning towards Hillary - she's shown her mettle in the past and hasn't cracked, and you can be sure that every misstep she takes will be the subject of intense scrutiny (and venom) by the MSM. Moreover, after more than thirty years as both first lady and senator, there are likely very few skeletons of hers that haven't been unearthed somewhere. Obama is the more powerful visionary, but he's also still largely a blank slate, which is what makes him so attractive right now to undecided voters and those seeking "change" - they project what they'd like to see on him. If the US were in good shape, I think he'd be a good president - one likely to lead a prosperous country well into the twenty-first century. As it is now ... no.

One final note in what's rapidly becoming an essay (sorry). There is a tendency in the largely rightist media to view women as being sentimental and "feel-oriented". However, in my experience, women, especially older women, are likely the ones that keep the accounts for their families, manage the day-to-day operations in their households and increasingly are the ones running most small-to-midsized companies ... meaning that they have to be far more aware of what's actually going on than most multi-million dollar male CEOs. I suspect that those same 40+ year-old women walking into the polling booths are factoring that into their selection, and their calculus as they press the level is going to be informed as much by who, at the end of the day, will be able to clean up the s**t that the good-old-boys left behind in their partying from the previous night.

[Muddy Waters Guitar]

52. Good points, but our looming fiscal crisis has many authors-- including Hillary

Hillary contributed mightily to our impending disaster with her foolish support for the Iraq War, not only in 2002 but in all the years hence. That needless, foolish war, in which we all almost certainly face a humiliating defeat, is going to siphon more than $2 trillion out of our treasury when we need it most. Hillary should have been there at the start, asking tough questions and demanding to study the intelligence, but she gaved in and even encouraged the rush to war.

I used to support Hillary back in 2000, but I'm currently undecided. You make a number of good points in your posts, but I'm skeptical that "older women" in this case would do any better than the idiotic old men in the Bush Administration who've been the chief authors of this debacle. Quite a few older women and men (as well as quite a few younger ones), in Congress, the media, Executive Branch and other halls of power have contributed to this mess. And as we sink into more than $10 trillion in debt, with the baby boomers on the verge of retirement and as the interest on the debt eats away our finances, there's little that anyone-- man or woman, young or old-- can do to fix it. It's going to be a rough decade or two for us upcoming, to say the very least.

[Venceremos]

54. Great post kurt_cagle

No need to apologize for length - very interesting and insightful. More of the same, please.

[BootinUp]

55. NH voters had not made their final decision

review the polls underlying data.

Creating conspiracies is probably easier to do than understanding polls.

[donheld]

56. Kick and Recommend

[rinsd]

60. Exit polls got it right. Pre-election polls did not.

Here's a thread someone posted with Zogby's explanation

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4011969

[zulchzulu]

61. I'm moving on...congrats to Hillary...now let's get back to work

We can look into discrepancies and do some investigation, but it's like to look at the next races, and namely February 5th. That's the prize.