Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Exit Polls
Lean Left?
Last night, while deploying our test network in rural Rhode Island, we were listening to the election results from all sorts of stations across the country on AM radio. Ater 9:00 Eastern time, they all seemed to report some of the exit polls with a disclaimer that "exit polls for the last few elections seem to lean to the left"... "and this "democratic bias" wrongly predicted several elections in the past."We discussed this a bit. With an exit poll, people vote and then are randomly selected to answer a quick little quiz. If exit polls really leaned to the left, then that must say a bit about people and how they answer polls.
Here are some plausible hypotheses to explain this phenomenon:
1) The Democrats have a tendency to tell the truth when they are polled and the Republicans lie - they say they voted Democrat and really vote Republican.
2) Republicans tell the truth and Democrats lie about voting Republican.
3) Democrats are more likely to answer the poll. Republicans' time is so valuable tha they have no time to answer an exit poll.
4) Republicans rig elections to swing the votes in their direction.
Maybe it's a myth:
Here is something I found this morning:
Spinning the Exit Polls Early
The RNC just sent out detailed talking points about how unreliable exit polls have been over the past several elections. The key arguments are that exits polls typically have a Democratic bias and have wrongly predicted Democratic victories in recent years.
According to a source, the RNC expects leaked exit polls to show Democratic victories and do not want the news to discourage Republican voters from going to the polls late in the day.
I happen to believe it may be a little of all of the above reasons. Mostly, people tell the truth. In Europe, exit polls are used to determine whether an election has been tampered with.
Truly amazing as to how this propaganda machine works, isn't it?
Hitek
Um why does there have to be sides i know to have a balance but seam to be if balancing would be best to have a happy calm fair middle balance.but yeaahhh
Polls only serve as a substitute for the idea of voting ones conscience by voting for the most popular just to be on the winning side and the illusion of being eaten last. But since both parties run complete strangers on issues remote from personal problems, conscience is pretty useless anyway. The system is too big for fair representation. It must be fragmented into more local responsibility reducing the central government to no more than a monitor and justice system for interlocal relations requiring such service. Maybe.
Puzzling do people in the USa still think after all these decades of facism that the Democratic party is "left wing"???
For me exit polls doesnt mean anyhting in the US. The elections are a mere illusion. The only way forward and to keep the US menacing claws from the rest of us is for regime change and the installation democracy in the USA
In retrospect, what was really interesting is that the exit polls were spot-on with the actual election results except in two states - Virginia and Montana. The exit polls predicted Democratic party wins in both of those states.
It's interesting that wedge issues like the religious factor worked against the Republican in the end with the Foley and Taggard scandals.
It will be intersting to watch if Bush, Cheney and Gonzalez and the rest of the cronies get impeached. Rumsfeld resigning is probably the beginning.
I think the election results put the country back into a much better position to install a new Democracy. The new Democrats in office are readly to atke on that challenge.
