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Re: Are the Forces of Darkness on the March?



The early exit polls sharply skewed toward Kerry because the polling was done only in cities and
made it look like Bush was losing by 20 % in several states that later turned out to be either much
closer or were in Bush's column. Why should anyone think that sampling a small percentage of
people leaving a polling place will yield more reliable results than the actual count? The exit
polls are about as accurate as the pre-election polls, most of which turned out wrong too. The pre-
election polls were all wrong in 2000 as well. Only Zogby got 2000 right. I like Dick Morris very
much. What he was saying is that foul play was going on in the early exit polls to make it look
like Kerry was going to win, which might make some Republicans stay home.

Again, I ask why we should believe the exit polls over the actual results?

David Marx writes:

Any attempt to understand this election in terms of exit polls,
which have been shown to be wrong, is misguided.

I was not aware that the exit polls had been shown to be wrong. What
I think we know (and I'm not even sure of this) is that the published
exit polls were in very significant disagreement with the published
election results.

I read an interesting article by Fox News analyst, Dick Morris, who
explains why it is extremely unlikely that the exit polls were simply
"wrong."

<http://www.hillnews.com/morris/110404.aspx>

His conclusion:

This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the
board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play.

John Mallinckrodt
Cal Poly Pomona