(Note: I consider this post the most important one I've written on vote fraud in quite a while -- you'll see why by the end. I'll be grateful to readers and fellow bloggers who help spread this news around.)
I may owe you folks an apology.
Yesterday, I directed your attention to this report, by an entity called the Social Science Research Council, on the exit poll discrepancies -- a report I had not actually read at the time I linked to it. Turns out the damn thing is a politely-worded whitewash based on the presumption that the exits, not the "actuals," must have been flawed.
Indeed, the biggest "flaws," according to the SSRC, were the leaks of early exit poll results -- even though no-one has presented one particle of evidence indicating that information published on various blogs on election day affected anyone's vote. (Are that many Iowa farmers really die-hard fans of Daily Kos?)
However, we do know from other sources that, as the night progressed, the exit polls were conformed to match incoming "actual" data. Thus, only the early exit polls offer any sort of objective indication as to whether the vote was honest.
In the Ukraine, only the exit polls -- and nothing else -- indicated the problems with that nation's election. If, in the future, the unconformed polling data remains hidden, as the SSRC insists it must, then we will never learn whether an exit/actual discrepancy exits.
So why, in the eyes of the SSRC, did the exit polls show a Kerry win?
The SSRC researchers believe that there was a demonstrable Democratic bias in the data, and they repeat the National Election Poll line that "differential response" is to blame. This amounts to an endorsement of what I call the "chatty Dem" theory: "Kerry voters were more likely to agree to be interviewed while Bush voters were less likely."
Both the NEP and the SSRC place this explantion in the "subjective" file -- which means they have no proof. One could, with as much evidence, decree that the exit poll numbers were changed by a wave of Professor Dumbledore's wand.
Fortunately, we now have concrete evidence that the "chatty Dem" explanation is wrong, wrong, wrong.
The evidence can be found in this Democratic Underground forum, which derives from an analysis by "Truth Is All," who has done a great deal of fine work in this area. (Even so, I do wish progressives would choose less embarrassing pseudonyms!)
The exit pollsters, as we all should know, did not merely ask folks whether they pulled the lever for Bush or Kerry in 2004. The polls included a number of other questions. Specifically, respondents were asked to divulge the recipient of their vote in the year 2000.
In a preliminary exit poll released on CNN at 12:22 a.m., the results for the query about 2000 were 41% Bush, 38% Gore.
Two hours later, the final exit poll was released. At that time, the respondents said that they had voted in 2000 in a ratio of 43% Bush, 37% Gore.
Have you found the oddity yet? Feel free to re-read the last two paragraphs. And when you do, ponder this little factoid:
Al Gore WON the popular vote in 2000!!!
How, prithee, can the NEP and the SSRC (not to mention Dick Morris and innumerable other GOP propagandists) ask us to believe that the exit polls were skewed in favor of John Kerry? If such weighting existed, then the question about the 2000 race would have resulted in a demonstrable preference for Al Gore.
If you scroll further down in the DU forum, you will note that one reader suggested that 2004 respondents may have lied about who they voted for in the year 2000. But this "explanation" explains exactly nothing. If, as alleged, the exit polls were weighted in favor of the Democrats, why would Kerry supporters make false claims about having voted for George W. Bush in the previous cycle? Logic and experience tell us that people are usually reticent to mention that they once voted for a candidate who has since left them feeling disenchanted and ill-used.
But once we allow ourselves to consider the possibility that the exit polling was actually weighted in favor of Bush -- well. Much is explained.
Obviously, any party attempting to rig the election would also have to think seriously about ways to shade the exit polls.
"Truth Is All" further points out that if the 43% "I voted for W in 2000" figure is correct, then we can extrapolate that number into a figure of some 52.5 million voters. In fact, Bush received 50.5 ballots in the year 2000 -- and a number of those voters must have died or switched parties. Here we have a further indicator that that the NEP results were indeed manipulated -- against Kerry, not for him.
So: According to Warren Mitofsky and those wacky folks at the SSRC, the exit polls were marred by an over-abundant supply of "chatty Dems" who -- for God knows what reason -- bragged about voting for Dubya. And this, we are told, is why we must weight the 2008 exit polls more heavily favor of the G.O.P.
These people are not only rationalizing the 2004 vote theft, they are laying the groundwork for an even grander heist in the future.
4 comments:
Provocative as the data is, the original post you link to doesn't provide enough information to justify drawing the conclusion that the exit polls actually queried more Republicans than Democrats.
The 43% and 41% figures for Bush 2000 (assuming they're accurate) may not be "raw" -- they could reflect the same sort of "adjustments" made to the 2004 data, as the night wore on, and pro-Bush votes got more weight than pro-Kerry ones.
Until we know how these figures were generated and arrived at, not much can be said.
Since I have an affection for surrealism, I will let Sayre's response remain in all its glory. As for the first observation...
Remember the main point (strangely de-emphasized by TIA himself): The entire "mainstream" argument about the exit poll discrepancy rests on the belief that Democrats, not Republicans, were over-represented in the sample.
Once we toss that claim into the garbage pail, as we now safely can, then the case for vote fraud becomes damned difficult to refute.
That's the problem -- there's no knowing whether the data cited actually proves more Republicans were actually polled, or whether the figures were adjusted after vote tallies starting coming in.
We know that "exit polls" cease to be real exit polls as the night wears on. As best I understand it, the adjustments performed on these polls can effect other measures as well, as (for example) Bush exit polling votes are given more weight than Kerry votes, because Bush is showing a lead in the official count (right or wrong).
There's just too little to go on now. You can't launch a campaign based on one anonymous and unverified post.
I'm basing my observation on the numbers released by NEP, not on someone else's post.
Look, casuistry should not blind us to a point which is simple, important, and almost impossible to counter. Let me lay it out in the briefest terms:
1. Pretty much the sole official defense ofered for the pro-Kerry exit poll results is that the poll favored Democratic respondents.
2. In fact, we know that the poll was NOT skewed in that direction -- in fact, the skewing went in the other direction. How do we know? Because, by a wide margin, the respondents in this same poll also said they had favored Bush in 2000. Bush was actually the less-popular candidate then.
3. Having demolished the official explantion for the exit poll discrepancy, vote fraud is our only option.
My only problem with TIA's work on the Democratic Underground is that he is making the issue needlessly complex. The three facts above are all we need to make the case that fraud occurred.
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