Political WTF? - Exit polling - AND VERY NON-TECHNICAL

I drove from Washington DC back to Tennessee on Tuesday.  While on the road, I got to listen to "talk radio" discuss exit polls and how poorly President Bush was doing in the exit polls.  By the time I got to Tennessee, I figured that John Kerry had won the election.  I listen to early results last night before going to bed.  I figured that the numbers would change over night and that we would have a new President when i woke up.  I woke up this morning to FoxNews stating that President Bush had won.  Results are still not in and obviously nothing is official at this point.  Ohio and Iowa are still in limbo at this point according to CNN.  FoxNews has called them based on the margins and the number of absentee votes still to be counted.

The thing that kept running through my mind for the last couple of hours has been how wrong these exit polls were.  I was fooled by them.  All I could think of was the infamous "Dewey Defeats Truman" newspaper headline.  A "Kerry defeats Bush" newspaper headline would have been too funny.

 

4 Comments

  • You're surprised? Voting was done on systems from the Diebold company, owned by a person who said was 'committed to get Bush elected as president', and no paper trail is available for these machines.



    As a european who lives in a country where we vote by electric machines from Nedap for a decade now (which do have paper trails and no problems), I can only say: it's sad, sad, sad that americans did let it come this far.



    I too woke up this morning hoping for Kerry as a president of the USA so the world would be better of, however again the christian fundamentalist Bush is re-elected as it seems.



    Oh well, the more oppertunities for Europe.

  • Sorry Frans. I don't believe in conspiracy theories. I never have bought into the "Diebold" conspiracy.



    BTW, I voted for Bush. I was merely surprised that the polling results were so far off from the way that people voted.



    Wally

  • I'm just curious. Do you believe in accounting? Does the concept of checks and balances matter? I'm not saying there is a Diebold election 'conspiracy', I'm just asking should the Presidential election process be susceptible to a 'conspiracy'. (no Bush, no Kerry, just the process as an abstract thing). Again, I'm don't believe there was a conspiracy, but do you REALLY thing the possibility of one should exist when it's perfectly plausible to eliminate it?

  • Richard,



    Don't worry about it. Its a personal thing between me and Paul. Paul thinks that everything is a conspiracy. The Diebold issue is merely one of several.

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