Freeman acknowledges in his paper that the man who was responsible for designing the 2004 presidential election exit poll - Warren Mitofsky -says the exit poll was not designed to verify the election, yet that is precisely what Freeman's paper attempts to do.
"
The pollsters have taken great pains to argue that their polls
were not designed to verify election results" (page 3.)
This is bizarre in light of a footnote on page 3 of his paper that states: "
Warren Mitofsky, the founder of Mitofsky International, is credited with having invented the exit poll."The premiere exit poll expert on the planet says that his exit poll cannot be used to verify the actual election results and what does Freeman do ? He tries to use the exit poll to verify the actual election results.
Freeman is certainly no exit poll expert. Consider this quote from page 4:
"
It’s an awful mistake, but entirely understandable –
few of us realized that these data were corrected. Neither the CNN website, nor any other site of which I am aware, gives any indication that the data were anything other than what
nearly all of us imagine exit poll data to be – data based solely on subjects surveyed leaving the polling place."
Yet, the fact that exit polls numbers are re-weighted by actual vote count is so fundamental to the way exit polls are conducted in this country that no expert could possibly say they did not 'realize' this or they did not 'imagine exit polls to be' that way. He does note that it's 'an awful mistake.' It *is* an awful mistake, and it's not one a real exit poll expert could make.
Other problems: Germany and US exit polls are apples and oranges. So says the man in Germany that conducted the German exit polls referenced by Freeman. That he equates them is indicative of other issues, that I may write about later.
Go here for the German - US exit poll comparison:
http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2004/12/what_about_thos.html