As a follow-up to my previous post, I want to address the wrong analysis that most of the pundits are making. Keith Olberman and many others are stating erroneously that the polls were wrong because the actual results in NH were on target with the exception of Hillary. They attribute this discrepency to the fact that there were many undecided voters who voted for Hillary because of her emotional response on Monday. The fact that she was the only one who got any bump and the others did not lose a percentage points is strange. Since each candidate that gains percentage points should come from the points from other candidates, the results should have reflected a reduction in percentages from the other candidates. Voter percentage should be a zero sum game. Given that the other candidates did not lose any percentage points in the actual results, they kept their solid voters. Please explain how this could happen mathematically.
If everyone other than Hillary did not lose any points, where did her increase come from? It had to be from the undecided votes right? Wrong. Mathematically all the undecided votes would mostly have had to go to Hillary. Do you think that is possible? The fact that all the other candidates suffered no percentage loss leads to the opposite conclusion that the polls were wrong because of the undecided vote and the larger turnout.
All of this is theoretical unless we get the exit polls. There must be a reason that the networks have not disclosed the details.
I heard you propose your plan for independent, non-media-controlled exit polling, and I think this may be one of the best ideas for restoring the integrity of our elections.
My only concern is that, while I trust Zogby, it is still a private company, and I am wary of this precedent. Is there any way that we can be assured a rival private company will not present bogus exit polling results? How do we do oversight on this process?
Thanks for Nova M Radio and all the good work you do for our democracy.
Could have skewed the polls--entrance AND exit polls--as never before.
Kohut says the same thing happened in David Dinkins' bid for the NYC mayoralty. He barely won, but pollsters had him way ahead going in.
Just wanted to drop in and wish You and Anitta a wonderful New Year. Also, I've been rethinging the Mike Bloomberg for President thing, you may have been on to something with that posting after all. Agape.
agreed.
1/10/2008 2:47AM
"Even the Exit Polls showed that Obama should have won, according to Chris Matthews on Hardball today. It's the first specific indication that we've seen that the raw, unadjusted Exit Poll data, which only corporate mainstream media folks, not mere mortals, are allowed to see, confirmed all of the pre-election polling which predicted an Obama win."
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5535
CHRIS MATTHEWS: So what accounts for Hillary Clinton's victory in New Hampshire? What we don't know is why the victory is so much different in fact, then the polling ahead of time, including what we call the Exit Polls were telling us. Obama was ahead in those polls by an average of 8 points, and even our own Exit Polls, taken as people came out of voting, showed him ahead. So what's going on here?