how the people actually voted.

it all changed with proprietary-software voting machines.

has to be done quickly though or they will be destroyed

that 'as you can see, this is a very tight race and we cannot call it at this time'. But not too long afterwards I went to check the screen crawl again, and I thought I was reading it wrong, the exit polls had shifted considerably, and he, after saying that there were not enough votes counted to predict, decided to call the election with only 23% of the votes counted and people still lining up to vote.


It all happened so suddenly, from a 'tight' race to what looked like a wipeout in less than an hour. Then they had to readjust the figures, as they had called it too early to make a more accurate prediction and it looked at that time, Republican dists being counted, like 60/40. It was a mess, and I will never again bother to watch the MSM.

The other thing they did was to wrongly call the Senate Race for Republicans. So I walked away, figuring it had been total loss. It was not until last night I learned I believe, that Dems won the Senate after I got an email from one of the Organizations I subscribe to. I was stunned, couldn't believe this was not a huge part of the story.

Edited to add, but then they want us to believe the lie that the exit polls showed that people opposed the call-outs. I tried to verify that somewhere, but could not. All I could find was that one woman had said that. We KNOW Republicans hated them, this time. But they were trying to promote the idea that the recalls were unopular and that is why we lost. Not so, I found out WHO was promoting that idea, and will write about later.

We're working on this very issue

And yes the senate race was odd too, I heard--GOP Waangard was enjoying a comfortable lead that just sort of slipped away in the last hour or so

and hearing him say it was too close to call.

I can say fairly certainly that it was in the late afternoon, California time. Maybe around 4.00 - 4.30 CA time.

Maybe CNN has the schedule for his show on their site? I know he's on every day for his regular show, but maybe he had extra time that day.

I was confused when it all seemed to change so quickly I remember.

Someone in another thread, the OP I posted today, said that the media had reported the Senate race going to the Repub with only 10% of the votes counted. I do not know which channel s/he was watching but I know I got the impression they had won the Senate also. Until I received an email telling me the Dems had taken over the majority.

I'll try to see if CNN has the video from election day. And I will ask the poster in my thread what s/he was watching when they declared the Repubs had won the Senate.

everywhere in the world EXCEPT the USA.

Odd how that works.

one might think "Well we know how Oklaohoma votes" but their model was accurate down to the a 1,000th of a percent. That was the model that started the science.

Germany uses exit polls and then counts the votes over a 15 day period -notice that they don't rush the vote OR the count. The vote count is always dead on with exit polls.

What we have here 99th is a clear effort to undermine exit polls. Why? because the fix is in. It has been since before 2000.

Given the childish and weirdly sociopathic nature of the Right I would not be surprised if they created exit polling organizations to get it wrong on purpose.

The game is fixed. It is like a basketball game at a power team's home court - you have to beat them by 8 to have a chance to win. Voter suppression and discounting exit polls is all a part of the same thing.

How will we ever know whether the actual votes were counted?

The exit polls that are published 'after' the polls close (or in this case with people still standing in line) are adjusted to match the vote totals. The raw data is considered proprietary and only a handful ever see at AP and a couple of other organizations. That data is never released. I believe this has been going on since the Great Selection in 2000. Sometimes of late, like in North Carolina, no exit polls were done at all.

So, you wonder why the exit polls are nutty this time? Prolly 'cause the vote total they are adjusted to is a little nutty. But, who knows? Cause we will never see it.

There are exit polls, and then there are exit polls.

Please see here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002778183

It started to settle in around 3:30 in the afternoon that the turnout was big for a non-presidential election but it was big in places we didn't expect it to be big. If you look at the history of my posts and replies to posts you can see the concern about not know what the high turnout meant.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=769223

Apart from typos and some poor style, it's still accurate. If you can't afford a real random sample, you pick your sample to be close to the expected turnout.

Did the electorate that turned out match the profile of the sample that the exit pollsters actually took? Hardly. You expect 64% of registered voters to turn out, 43% of that (D), 28% (R), and the rest (I) and you get 120% turnout, you probably doubt that you've profiled the precinct correctly.

And if they misprofiled a district, then their initial weights are trashed and the data are meaningless.

Until you see the final numbers of voters by precinct. Then you have a good idea of the demographics of each precinct, a good idea of how each demographic voted (because you did collect data for that), and you can revise your model.

You may think it's meaningless at that point. But they ask more than just, "So, who did you vote for?" They ask about attitudes and motives, about other electoral races. When they adjust the data to match the actual turnout, they carry all that other information along.

I was mildly outraged that anybody bothered to think the exit polling data was in any way useful until a while after the polls closed.

(Note that exit polling in the US and in Europe are different kinds of critters. Their sample is much larger and compasses a far larger number of polling stations. They don't have to rely on weightings, or, more precisely, their weighting are pretty much 1 for each demographic. Early US exit polls were more like that, but still we had some pretty egregious mis-predictions.)

I'm oversimplifying his argument...but not by very much.

I don't recall any huge rallies of excited, committed pro-Walker voters. Same in 04. Yet, somehow, they appear out of nowhere to vote against their best interests. People worry that Democrat votes are undercounted...I wonder if Republican votes are overcounted. Easiest vote to steal is a Republican registered vote who might not bother to show up at the polls.

I'd really like to see an independent canvassing of voters in randomly selected precincts to see if the interviewed voting results match the actual voting results.

Where did that turnout come from?

they are masters of projection and keep screaming about 'voter fraud' on our side. Makes you go hmm.

Exit polls skew the expected result and cause one side or the other to cry foul if said polling doesn't match the final tally.

Why have a system of secret voting if voters are asked how they voted as soon as they exit the booth?

Fuck exit polling.

Voters who give untruthful answers to exit pollsters lead to claims of election fraud.

Never fails.

As for me, I simply refuse to answer.

Fix that and you'll never have to worry about dishonest voters again.