Votes Vs. Exit polls

source
Votes Vs. Exit polls

By Tom Trottier

Al-Jazeerah, November 7, 2004



Why did the exit polls show Kerry winning the election, but the vote showed Bush winning?

The apologia by the exit poll system architects reported in the New York Times Nov 5 sounds like post-facto reasoning which assumed that the vote is correct, and therefore the exit polls must be wrong. In its own words, it then "theorized" reasons why the exit poll could have been wrong.

Why did these problems occur now and not in previous elections? Didn't the poll architects plan for them? The wrong-exit-poll theories should be tested. At the polls where the reasons occurred, how are the results different from the vote at those polls? If those results are thrown out, do the remaining results still show a difference between the exit poll and the vote, at that polling station?

'"The last wave of national exit polls we received, along with many other subscribers, showed Kerry winning the popular vote by 51 percent to 48 percent, if true, surely enough to carry the Electoral College,'' Steve Coll, managing editor of The Washington Post, wrote in an online chat with readers Wednesday.' Assuming that the "last" exit poll covered the last voters, then the last exit poll should have been very accurate if there were sufficient numbers.

It's very scary to think that George Bush & co created or suppressed 4,000,000 or more American votes. It implies widespread conspiracy, and also implies that many other close races have been fraudulently won by Republicans. Is it a coincidence that Walden O'Dell, CEO of Diebold, the maker of electronic voting machines, told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

It cannot be assumed that the vote is correct and the exit polls flawed when the leadership of the US and the world is at stake.

This has to be investigated in a non-partisan manner.

References:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/politics/campaign/05poll.html http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00072.htm http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/04/11/ana04025.html http://www.tompaine.com/articles/kerry_won_.php

Tom Trottier, Ottawa ON Canada