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Also Try Exit Polls in Election Reform News -01-28-05 Exit Polls: The Shifts (ExitPollz.org) Provides the results from the exit polls for 2004 by time of day. Also provides the percent of shift from the exit poll to the reported votes by state. 1-05 -11-17-06 Landslide Denied: Exit Polls vs. Vote Count 2006 (Election Defense Alliance) "When we compare the results of this national exit poll with the total vote count for all House races we find that once again, as in the 2004 Election (“E2004”), there is a very significant exit poll-vote count discrepancy. The exit poll indicates a Democratic victory margin nearly 4%, or 3 million votes, greater than the margin actually recorded by the vote counting machinery. This is far outside the margin of error of the poll and has less than a one in 10,000 likelihood of occurring as a matter of chance." 11-06 -11-18-04 Study: Reported Vote in Key States Not Valid (University of Pennsylvania - Steven Freeman) Provides evidence that exit polls, properly conducted as they were by the National Election Poll, are extremely accurate. Provides a statistical analysis which shows that the reported votes in key states in the 2004 presidential election were definitely different from the exit poll results. Points out that the United States and other countries have so much confidence in exit polls that when the exit polls and the reported votes disagree, it is solid evidence that the reported votes are incorrect. The United States took this position successfully in the elections of the Republic of Georgia. The United States sided with the exit poll results and against the official tally. Further, the United States played a key role in unseating the person "officially elected" as President, replacing him with the person who won in the exit polls. It has been the official position of the United States government that properly conducted exit polls are the "gold standard." The results of exit polls reveal who won. Reported votes, on the other hand, are more easily manipulated. Editor's Note: Freeman attempted to explain his statistics in everyday language, but fell short. However, he made a compelling analysis that leads to the conclusion that Kerry won the 2004 presidential election. 9-05 12-03-04 Ohio Supreme Court Judge to Hear Challenge to Ohio Vote (Guardian Unlimited) "George Bush's victory in the US presidential election will be challenged in Ohio's supreme court today, when a group of Democratic voters will allege widespread fraud." "The election challenge will be reviewed by a single judge out of the seven members of Ohio's supreme court, who may let the election stand, declare another winner, or throw out the result, forcing a recount or even a new vote. The ruling can be appealed to the full court." Exit polls on election day suggested that the election could be heading towards a Kerry victory, deepening the despair in Democratic ranks at the Bush win. The anomaly was blamed on the exit polls, but Mr Arnebeck argued that it was evidence of malpractice." 12-04 Papers "Red" Shift Away From Exit Poll Results Greatest in Five Most Contested States (Selftest.net) Provides a graphic regarding a shift toward reported Republican votes and away from exit poll results. Also shows election results on a spreadsheet. 12-04 "Smoking Gun" from Ohio 2004 Election Results (ElectionArchive.org)  "Ohio's electoral votes were pivotal in the 2004 presidential election, where its exit polls predicted a John Kerry win, but official vote counts gave the victory to GW Bush. Precinct level Ohio exit poll data show virtually irrefutable evidence of vote miscount." The conclusion one gains from analyzing the exit poll data is that Kerry actually won the 2004 election. 01-06 -12-23-04 Bush Gains Mysterious 5% From E-Touch Machines (NewsTarget.com) "Or, put another way, all the exit polls showed Kerry winning, and the exit polls asked people who they actually voted for. But strangely, the 'official' count appears to have been boosted in favor of Bush." "How was it boosted?" "Another burning question is surfacing: if this was such a record turnaround, with long lines all over the country, where did all the votes go? Because the vote totals don't show much of a difference from the 2000 election. It's as if a few million votes just vanished..." 12-04 -Editorial - Exit Polls Were Not a Mistake (TheHill.com - Dick Morris) "Exit polls are almost never wrong. They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots but never do and by substituting actual observation for guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different parts of the state." "So reliable are the surveys that actually tap voters as they leave the polling places that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries. When I worked on Vicente Fox’s campaign in Mexico, for example, I was so fearful that the governing PRI would steal the election that I had the campaign commission two U.S. firms to conduct exit polls to be released immediately after the polls closed to foreclose the possibility of finagling with the returns. When the polls announced a seven-point Fox victory, mobs thronged the streets in a joyous celebration within minutes that made fraud in the actual counting impossible." "This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play." Editor's Note: Dick Morris, the author of the editorial, is a commentator for Republicans. Staff of the Awesome Library also have expertise in survey research and strongly agree that foul play is much more likely than mistakes. For example, "over-sampling of women" is not a credible explanation. Even introductory survey research classes show how to avoid this error. The exit polls were jointly funded by the major networks, including Fox News. Such a beginnner's mistake is extremely improbable for the exit polls. Morris's explanation is that many of the exit poll results were deliberately faked. That is one explanation. After looking at the actual voting results, such as in small counties in Florida, another explanation is much more likely: The exit poll results were correct--but the electronic voting system was sabotaged. 11-04 -Editorial: Paper Trail Not Needed to Prove Fraud (Zogby.com - Drobny) "While there's been a lot of talk of problems with not having paper trails, computer fraud is uncovered most of the time without paper trails." "As a former C.P.A and auditor, I have used statistical sampling throughout my career with great confidence. With electronic record keeping, it's easy to create a program to falsify the books. But there are ways to uncover that. Auditors have developed statistical ways to cut right through corruption in companies. You don't even need a paper trail. These statistical approaches can be used with almost 100% accuracy to uncover fraud." "The reliability [of exit polls] can be, not plus or minus 4 percent as we see with predictive poplls, but rather a much more reliable plus or minus one half or one tenth of one percent with exit polls, because those are based on asking people who already voted. I would even say that if the exit polling were done in the key precincts of Florida and Ohio, which it was, then these results should be practically 'bullet proof.' " "So if you want to fight the battle correctly, you must get more statisticians and forensic accountants involved as well as the lawyers. These statisticians can show with great credibility the probability of manipulation within the computer programs used for counting the ballots. They do this kind of work all the time to uncover fraud based upon computer manipulation in commercial and corporate activities. And these types of expert analyses are admissible in a court of law. The problem with all of this is determining who is going to fund such an investigation. Where will the money come from?" "Leadership and funding-- these are the two real challenges that must be dealt with in the coming days. We have a Watergate story here that could give the media a post election explosive news story that could make the 2000 Florida vote debacle look like small potatoes. We need to get the media to see that votergate 2004 is huge news and we need to quickly fund the investigation and get Democratic leaders behind it." 11-04 -Editorial: Summary of Fraud Allegations, With Data (Alternet.org - Freeman) "The question is whether the official count is an accurate reflection of ballots cast. In a system where campaign managers serve as election supervisors, where voting machines provide no assurance that votes are counted as cast, and where counts and "recounts" are conducted in secret, we must rely, unfortunately, on indirect evidence, such as exit polls, to ascertain the veracity of this official count as a measure of actual ballots cast." 1-05 -Exit Polls - Accurate or Unreliable in 2004? (InTheseTimes.com) "Exit polls are highly accurate. They remove most of the sources of potential polling error by identifying actual voters and asking them immediately afterward who they had voted for." "The reliability of exit polls is so generally accepted that the Bush administration helped pay for them during recent elections in Georgia, Belarus and Ukraine." 2-05 11-29-04 Jackson: Kerry Supports Full Investigation in Ohio (FreePress.org) "John Kerry supports a 'full investigation' into voting irregularities in Ohio, Rev. Jesse Jackson said Saturday, during a teleconference with media regarding a recount and legal challenge of the Nov. 2 vote." " 'We want to look at the exit polls,' Jackson said, referring to at least two non-partisan Election Day polls, by Zogby and CNN, which gave Kerry 53 percent and 51 percent of the vote, respectively. 'We don’t want to be presumptuous, but these numbers in the Butler, Clarmont, Warren and Hamilton counties are suspicious.' ” "By suspicious, Jackson is referring to the latest analysis of the Nov. 2 vote by a coalition of Ohio voting rights activists. In analyzing the still-unofficial results, the totals reveal that C. Ellen Connally, an African-American Democratic candidate from Cleveland for Ohio Chief Justice, received 257,000 more votes than Kerry. It is highly improbable that Connally’s vote totals would be so much higher than Kerry’s,' Fitrakis said." " 'Statistically, Kerry, as the Democratic presidential candidate, should have more votes than Connally. In a presidential election, most voters have the priority of casting a vote for president and the votes for president are almost always much higher than those of candidates farther down the ticket.' " 11-04 Academic Papers Examining the Likelihood of Fraud (dKosopedia.com) "Since November 2nd at least 6 academic papers have been issued doing statistical analysis and models to justify the claim that voting patterns cause "Smoke Alarms" to go on: something is afoot." 01-06 Analysis of Exit Polls (Solarbus.org - Beckwith) Shows how the results from the 2004 election differed from the 2000 results and provides alternative explanations for why the exit poll results favored Bush in a statistically impossible fashion. 2-05 Comparison of Predicted vs Reported Votes (USCountVotes.org) " Mathematicians of many political colors have become interested in studying the November 2004 election because the likelihood of election results being significantly different than exit polls in over a half dozen battleground states is very very low. Exit polls are more accurate than pre-election polls." 12-04 Data from the Mitofsky-Edison Exit Polls for the 2004 General Election for President (ICPSR) Provides the data and the methodology. 01-06 Editorial: Exit Polls Wrong (FoxNews.com) "By the time most of the polls closed in precincts across the country Tuesday night, real numbers began to suggest that the early estimations that had been so upbeat for Sen. John Kerry were over-inflated — so much so, that FOX News Channel decided to quit using the exit poll results Tuesday evening, calling them inaccurate and unreliable." Editor's Note: Exit polls are normally accurate within 1/2 of a percent if results are statistically adjusted to match the electorate. If "raw" data were used, rather than adjusted results, then the oversampling of women would have resulted in an incorrect "tilt" toward Kerry. Adjusted results, however, should have been quite accurate. 11-04 Editorial: Reform Needed in Voting Security (CommonDreams.org) "On December 4, 2000, in time to change the outcome of the Electoral College vote, Greg Palast published an article in Salon.com, made into a BBC television documentary shortly thereafter, that laid out solid evidence of massive electoral fraud in Florida, perpetrated against the majority-Democratic-voting African American community by Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush. Without this fraud, Gore would have easily carried the state." "Ironically, the Democratic Party knows how to highlight election fraud and start national movements to bring down administrations that try to steal elections. A Party-affiliated group has helped do it four times in the past four years." "But not in Ohio, Florida, or anywhere else in the USA." "Instead, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (Madeleine K. Albright, Chairman) has joined up with a similar organization affiliated with the Republican Party (the International Republican Institute - John McCain, Chairman), other NGOs, and US government agencies to support the use of exit polls and statistical analyses to challenge national elections in Ukraine, Serbia, Belarus, and the former Soviet republic of Georgia." "In three of those four nations they succeeded in not only mounting a national challenge, but in reversing the outcomes of elections." "The election reversals were accomplished by funding local groups - most made up of a core of activists and college students - who worked to topple regimes that had rigged their own re-elections." 12-04 Exit Poll Data Analysis: Kerry Actually Won the Election (ElectionArchive.org - Mitteldorf) "Our conclusion is that the data appear to be more consistent with the hypothesis of bias in the official count, rather than bias in the exit poll sampling. No data in the report supports the E/M hypothesis that Kerry voters were more likely than Bush voters to cooperate with pollsters and, in fact, there is some indication that the opposite may have been the case." Editor's Note: In other words, the data indicate that Kerry won the election. 4-05 Exit Poll Results (Slate.MSN.com) Provides "raw" exit poll results as of 4:28pm on November 2nd."  "As this item posts, the first raw exit-poll data are streaming from the National Election Pool consortium owned by the Associated Press and the five television networks (CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox, and CNN) to their news divisions and to the newsrooms of NEP subscribers—big city newspapers and other broadcasters." "These early exit-poll numbers do not divine the name of the winner." "As you read this posting, the political reporters at the networks, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, NPR, Newsweek, and about two dozen other news outlets are cracking their knuckles over their keyboards, contemplating the story, while statisticians and political analysts at the networks prepare to run the numbers through their computer models to generate a prediction." 11-04 Exit Polls - Review of Mitofsky-Edison Exit Polls (USCountVotes.org) "The Edison/Mitofsky report confirms there were large differences between their exit polls and the official results of the 2004 presidential election – much more so than in previous elections(p. 31). The national exit poll indicated a 3 point victory for Kerry, whereas the official election results indicated that he lost by 2.5%, a difference of 5.5%." "The Edison/Mitofsky report fails to substantiate their hypothesis that the difference between their exit polls and official election results should be explained by problems with the exit polls. They assert without supporting evidence that (p. 4), “Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polls than Bushvoters.” In fact, data included within the report suggest that the opposite might be true." "Their analysis of the potential correlation of exit poll errors with voting machine type is incomplete and inadequate, and their report ignores the alternative hypothesis that the official election results could havebeen corrupted." 2-05 Exit Polls - Review of Mitofsky-Edison Exit Polls for the National Election Pool (Exit-Poll.net) "Our investigation of the differences between the exit poll estimates and the actual vote count point to one primary reason: in a number of precincts a higher than average Within Precinct Error most likely due to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters." Editor's Note: We find the above statement to be bizzare. Mitofsky-Edison's report data contradict their summary statement. 01-06 National Election Poll (Exit-Poll.net) "ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC, have created the National Election Pool to provide tabulated vote counts and exit poll surveys for the 2004 major presidential primaries and the November general election." 11-04 Reported Vote Results Impossible (San Francisco Chronicle) "If the United States were a Third World country, our Nov. 2 election would not pass certification by international monitors. As former President Carter has explained on National Public Radio, we lack a central, nonpartisan election commission to guarantee fair and equal treatment of all voters nationwide, our candidates do not receive free and equal access to the media to deliver their message, voting procedures are not uniform throughout the county, and there is not a 'paper trail' available in all cases to guarantee an honest recount where called for." "In our own recent presidential election, exit polls were conducted nationwide for the media by two of the world's most respected professional exit-polling firms: Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International." "Total samples from each state were large -- about 2,000 or more voters -- and the error of estimate was small -- plus or minus less than half of 1 percent in 99 cases out of 100." "In state after state, Kerry saw his expected lead shrink or vanish. And when he lost Ohio -- which exit polls estimated he would win by 4.5 percent -- he 'lost' the election. According to Steven Freeman, who teaches research methods at the University of Pennsylvania, for 10 exit polls among the 11 battleground states he analyzed to be this far off as a result of random error, particularly when all discrepancies favored Bush, is essentially impossible." 9-05 Study Claims Odds of Reported Results to be 1 in 50,000 (BlueLemur.com) Provides a statistical analysis from the presidential election of 2004, comparing exit polls with reported election results in 16 states. Editor's Note: The precision of exit polls, accurate within one percent, is what justifies their extreme cost. One reason they are so accurate is that they statistically adjust the polling sample to fit the electorate. 11-04 Study: Difference Between Exit Poll and Reported Vote Impossible (Truthout.org - Freeman, University of Pennsylvania) "How could the exit polls in this year's presidential election have diverged so drastically from the results that election officials and the media announced?" Professor Steven Freeman, a statistician at the University of Pennsylvania, offers a disturbing answer. Looking at the exit polls and announced results in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania, he concludes that the odds against such an accidental discrepancy in all three states together was 250 million to one."  " 'As much as we can say in social science that something is impossible, it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote counts in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error.' "  "Read Dr. Freeman's well-reasoned, well-written argument, and make up your own mind." 11-04

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