Networks, AP cancel exit polls in 19 states. WTF???? Link to WP

[Whovian]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/10/04/networks-ap-cancel-exit-polls-in-19-states/

Breaking from two decades of tradition, this year’s election exit poll is set to include surveys of voters in 31 states, not all 50 as it has for the past five presidential elections, according to multiple people involved in the planning.

Dan Merkle, director of elections for ABC News, and a member of the consortium that runs the exit poll, confirmed the shift Thursday. The aim, he said, “is to still deliver a quality product in the most important states,” in the face of mounting survey costs.

The decision by the National Election Pool — a joint venture of the major television networks and The Associated Press — is sure to cause some pain to election watchers across the country. (For a full list of the states that won’t have exit polls scroll to the bottom of this post.)

Voters in the excluded states will still be interviewed as part of a national exit poll, but state-level estimates of the partisan, age or racial makeups of electorates won’t be available as they have been since 1992. The lack of data may hamper election night analyses in some states, and it will almost certainly limit post-election research for years to come.


There's more at the link.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Preparing for the coverup--

Everywhere else, exit polls are the gold standard by which elections are monitored. Funny--for some reason they don't seem to work in this country. People always lie & say they voted for the Democrat, I guess.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

3. It's a cost saving measure.

Here is a list of the states that will be excluded from coverage: Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Here's a hint, Mitt wins Utah and Obama wins Rhode Island.

In all likely hood they shift focus to the close states for even more accurate polling.

[Whovian]

17. Why not Alabama and Mississippi as well then?

In my thinking it looks odd.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

20. Well then, what state do you think they are going to steal?

Really, if you think that it's odd, give me an explanation of what "they" are up to.

[Whovian]

23. While my tin foil isn't seated on my head it does make me wonder.

I'm not a wonk and I couldn't tell you which state if I wanted to. I just have to wonder after so many years of polling practices that have been set in stone for presidential elections why the sudden change?

[former9thward]

24. Money.

Exit polling costs a lot of money. No point to waste it in states where the outcome is known. In some known states they will be doing it because of Senate or House races that may be close.

[Honeycombe8]

25. Those states are solidly one party or the other? Is that it? Looks like it may be. nt

[AverageJoe90]

37. I don't think they'd lie.

In fact, that actually sounds like a Republican talking point. C'mon man......

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

2. They are all in non contested states

This was discussed yesterday

[malaise]

4. This means they're planning to flip votes on voting nachines

They are out to steal the elections - this is Ohio 2004.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

7. Where?

What state on that list do you think they are going to steal?

[malaise]

21. Won't be those n/t

[Systematic Chaos]

5. Our election standards are fucked. Our nation is fucked.

Welcome to some interesting times.

[spanone]

6. get rid of evidence before it can happen

[NYC Liberal]

8. They are not doing exit polls in safe states where there are no close races

Here are the states:

Alaska
Arkansas
Delaware
District of Columbia
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Kentucky
Louisiana
Nebraska
North Dakota
Oklahoma
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
West Virginia
Wyoming

There is no "conspiracy" here, unless you think Republicans need to steal Wyoming and Oklahoma.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

9. Shhhh....

....it's funny to watch people write before they read. Even our side.

[ButterflyBlood]

15. The hilarious thing is right wing sites accusing the opposite

That this is proof Obama plans on stealing so many states. Maybe they'll be screaming about how DC was stolen by vote fraud on Nov 7.

[AverageJoe90]

38. Thanks for the heads up!

I'm still a little worried about my home state of Texas, though, because there are a fair number of Democrats here, and the GOP establishment would probably love the chance to disenfranchise them all.

[Overseas]

41. Don't want to encourage Democrats to think their numbers are increasing. Just believe.

Believe the electronic vote tallies.

Believe there won't be mass defections of moderate Republicans.

Don't want confusing exit polling telling us otherwise.

[freshwest]

42. WA and OR are not safe states now?

[NYC Liberal]

43. Kansas, Mississippi, Alabama are safe states still being polled.

The reason is cost cutting; they're most likely just cutting the most expensive (safe) states to conduct exit polls.

[freshwest]

44. No, that's not what I'm asking. Perhaps I misread. Why aren't WA and OR on the list?

[NYC Liberal]

45. No I know. I'm saying they're not just cutting all safe states.

They're limiting exit polling because of the cost. Thus they're most likely starting those cuts with the safe states where it costs the most to do the polls. WA and OR, and the safe red states I mentioned, may be cheaper for whatever reason.

Also, are there some big senate/house races in those states? That could be another reason.

[Angleae]

46. I doubt they're even considering WA & OR due to the fact it's nearly all mail-in voting now.

Last time I checked only one county in WA (Pierce) doesn't require mail-in voting and OR has been all mail-in since 1998.

[Nye Bevan]

10. When Romney carries Delaware and Rhode Island I will believe the conspiracy theorists. (nt)

[NYC Liberal]

11. Romney is obviously going to steal DC. Because nobody would notice an 85-point swing.

[NightWatcher]

19. When Obama wins Georgia and South Carolina, that's when I'll put on tin foil

[hlthe2b]

12. As long as they focus on the contested states, this may be ok...

[reformist2]

13. Never mind the conspiracy nonsense, don't they care about getting national stats on voting?

I always liked reading how the voting broke down by age, gender, income, etc., but they need to sample in all 50 states for the statistics to have real meaning. And we've been doing it so long now, it has historical importance, I should think. I think it's a huge step backward not to continue that data series.

[ButterflyBlood]

14. They are doing polls in those states for the national one

Just not a large enough sample to have state numbers.

[Thrill]

16. Sounds like they gone try to steal it

Damn

[KamaAina]

18. Are the 19 states safe Red (like Oklahoma) or Blue (like Maryland)?

Or, are they swing states?

[WillyT]

22. BradBlog's Take On This...

This news is disturbing, as you probably already noticed, for a number of reasons...

First, Democrats will be troubled to see that most of the states listed above are believed to be strongly Republican states, but keep in mind that Congressional and local races, even in such states, are often very competitive. The same is true for those few states mentioned above which are believed to be Democratic-leaning. So Republicans should be equally troubled by this news.

There will now be no simple way to check for red flags of fraud or simple mistabulation on Election Night without the media consortium's Exit Poll data. (Though it should also be noted that the consortium has long refused to release raw data from their Exit Polls to the public, ever since raw data for Exit Polls in 2004 showed John Kerry winning handily in the bulk of the contested swing states, only to have computer reported election results purportedly show George W. Bush was the winner in those states.)

For example, to focus on just one of the states where Exit Polling is being scrapped, in South Carolina they use 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems across the entire state. There will be no data at all for use in finding red flags to compare to whatever the computers report the election results to be. And that's very troubling.

But it's not only states which use 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems which should be a concern to voters.

In Palm Beach County, FL last March, for example, it was only a post-election hand examination of a portion of paper ballots that revealed the computers had gotten the results of three elections wrong, naming two losing candidates to be the "winners" in two of those contests. The correct results were only determined after a court-approved hand-count of all of the paper ballots in the race, during which the company who manufactures and programs the computer tabulators, Dominion/Sequoia, admitted that all versions of their electronic voting systems have a bug that can result in the same inaccurate election results.

Those same systems used in Palm Beach County are still used in dozens of states across the country. In that case, unlike South Carolina, there were paper ballots to examine after the election, though most states do no hand examination of paper ballots at all either on Election Night or afterward. They rely instead only on the computer reported results which are either correct --- or not. Who knows?

Exit Polling data might have helped to identify problem races in such states, but no longer in some 19 of them across the country.

It was Exit Polling during the Wisconsin Recall Elections in June which predicted a 50/50 tie in the Gubernatorial recall between Scott Walker and Tom Barrett. Yet, 30 minutes or so later, after all of the news nets had reported the incredibly close Exit Polling results gathered throughout the day, the computer results told us the winner was Walker by huge numbers.

Those questionable and completely unverified results (WI does no post-election spot-checks of any of the paper ballots cast in their state elections, and only a minimal check of Presidential races months after certification) led to a bi-partisan group attempted to hand-count paper ballots across the entire state. The group is still trying to count those ballots in many counties, even though where election officials are refusing to give them access to the ballots.

More: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=9613

[bvar22]

28. The elections in Venezuela...

..are more open, transparent, and verifiable than the elections here in the USA.


VIVA Democracy!
I pray we get some here soon!

[Wounded Bear]

26. I'm sure we're one of them (Washington)....

We have all mail in voting. There are no polls to exit.



For the rest of you, I don't think this is something to panic about.

[bluestate10]

36. You states is not one of the states, The D of C, Washington DC is on the list. nt

[brush]

27. Something's up

Wonder if they're excluding the battleground states where the repugs have stolen elections before? Very suspicious.

[onenote]

29. If you bothered to read the posts in the thread first , you'd know

Post number 8 has the list. Its not a secret. And it doesn't include battleground states.
laska
Arkansas
Delaware
District of Columbia
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Kentucky
Louisiana
Nebraska
North Dakota
Oklahoma
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
West Virginia
Wyoming

[brush]

32. What?

Last edited Fri Oct 5, 2012, 10:34 PM - Edit history (1)

Oh now I have to read all the responses to the original before I can make a comment? I come here to express my feelings. I don't think I have to read every post before I do that. And if you yourself had read all the posts you would know that I'm far from the only one who thinks the repug-controlled media may be setting us up to steal the election. And BTW, go pick on somebody else because the term "water off a duck's back" just occured to me.

[onenote]

34. As your post proves, it does help to read the responses to a thread

before you post a question "wondering" something.

So, no, you don't 'have' to read posts but it does sometimes save you from looking silly. And the fact that others are posting with the same conspiracy theory and that you don't seem to be persuaded by the facts of which states are no longer going to have full exit polls hardly improves your position in the debate.

[brush]

39. Looking silly

To me you're the one that looks silly if you think that the corporate-owned media doesn't have a reason for this. What if the races tighten in one or more of those states and there is after-the-fact vote switching that exit polls would reveal? But of course that could never happen could it? No voting machines have ever been hacked. Nah, couldn't happen. Don't be so naive.

[jsmirman]

30. It's funny - my post-election research never includes exit polls

I use the deepest drill down that things like census data, NIH reports, etc. can provide that can be matched one to one to ACTUAL listed voting returns.

Maybe there is useful stuff that comes out of these post-election analyses referred to, but it seems like it's all stuff that the punditry just argues back and forth about, forms a narrative initially, and is rejected as lacking in substance shortly down the road.

The stuff I've produced in the past is incontrovertible, unless you don't believe in census data and reports from bodies like the NIH. But I think you have bigger problems if you don't believe in those numbers.

So I'm open to hearing why this is important, but I'd like some tangible examples of where this stuff added lasting, proven value.

[Overseas]

31. very sad. we need good exit polling!

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

33. Why do we need it?

In the selected states, exit polling will just confirm the predicted outcome.

Exit polling can influence the completion of the states' colors on the political map on TV the night of the election. But that doesn't really influence the outcome, it just makes for quick settlement of bar bets.

When the results are finally known, and broken down by state, race, gender, age, income bracket, education, and any other parameter used to slice the data, will that information come from exit polling or from actual results?

[Overseas]

40. We used them to monitor the accuracy of vote counts here and in other countries for decades.

Until 2004 when the exit polling had Kerry ahead by a few points.

That's when we decided exit polling was unreliable.

[bluestate10]

35. 90% of them are red states that will vote for Romney no matter what.

What you will see is what was seen with John McCain. McCain led Obama by tens of electoral votes early on with the red states reporting, but as soon as the Northeast states reported, Obama swamped McCain and never looked back.

[mfcorey1]

47. The fix is in! God help us all! nt