General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The most important issue affecting the US today (PLEASE read this article) [View all]ThoughtCriminal
(14,714 posts)If the discrepancy was random error, you would occasionally expect to see a blue shift - an election where the Democratic candidate's official results came out higher than the margin of error in unadjusted exit polls. I could be wrong, but I have not seen this happen. It seems that only Republicans our-count the exit poll results.
Let's say that there is a 50/50 chance that this would happen in one poll. Not much to get excited about. Twice, the odds would be 1 in 4, three times 1 in 8. After twenty anomalies the odds are over 1 in a million. Now when it happens scores of times, we are way beyond a plausible random chance.
There is at least one common explanation outside of election fraud: GOP voters are more likely to not cooperate with exit polling. But I have not seen any persuasive data to support that theory - outside of the discrepancies themselves - and that would seem to beg the question.