Three separate studies predict that Barack Obama will win the coming election with between 52 and 55 percent of the vote. The studies, highlighted in this Raw Story article, predict election outcomes based on our economic condition, and have been right in almost every postwar U.S. election.
Problem: Exit polls in 2004 showed John Kerry winning the popular vote in that election by three percentage points. Yet on the Wednesday morning following the election, George W. Bush was on top by 2.5%. Something was amiss. There was a 2.75% flip. (There was a similar flip in 2006, but the Democratic victory was so large that the exit poll discrepancy has largely been pooh-poohed.)
Exit polls, a powerful tool used by the Carter Center and the United Nations to judge the fairness of elections throughout the world, have been pretty much dead on in the United States – up until about 1998. Then they went haywire. What changed?
This study, from the National Election Day Archive Project, pretty well demolishes all of the arguments used to explain the disparities between the exit polls and the vote count in 2004. It boils down to vote-counting irregularities, which in almost all cases favored George W. Bush. In other words, enough of the vote was flipped to him, usually by unauditable electronic voting machines that count the votes in secret (using proprietary software), to swing the election in his favor.
So the problem with the Raw Data article that predicts an Obama victory is that it puts the winning margin within the ‘flippable’ range – if Barack Obama secures 53% of the vote, the final tally will show him with 49.9%, losing a squeaker.
Democrats are weak on this issue, as on almost every other important issue of the day. I do not understand why. John Kerry privately admitted to Mark Crispin Miller in 2004 that he suspected the 2004 election was stolen, but publicly has been submissive and denies saying so.
Piece of Mindful 
there is a simple reason that these polls are off. the only people who ever possess much less answer the actual old fashioned land line phone these days are
1. businesses
2. older folks who have no cell phones and who have not been scammed over the phone by telemarketers.
the slice of america that is being polled is very small so i don’t believe polls anymore.
LikeLike
There’s no data to support you on that contention. Polling is as accurate and scientific now as ever before, with pre-election polls being less reliable than exit polls due to people changing their minds or not voting. The cell-phone myth is still a myth, and is easy to correct for anyway.
LikeLike
Actually, this is the real reason why polls are inaccurate.
In a recently released study, Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., found nearly 11% of people who have reported being polled said they have lied to pollsters about their views on politics and public affairs. “Why they’re lying is probably as varied as individuals are varied,” says Jerry Lindsley, director of the school’s polling institute. “Halfway through a survey, they might all of a sudden get nervous about the kinds of questions they’re being asked and start to lie or not be totally straightforward.”
LikeLike
Pollsters have been doing this for many, many years, and have learned to correct for inaccuracies. Pollsters are trained, questions are staid and unbiased. Sacred Heart (??? who the hell???) is the latest in a long list of apolgists who are trying to prevent reform of the election system, which has been handed over to private corporations so that votes can be counted in secret. I’d look a little closer at their study. Who funded it? Have you no capacity for curiosity?
Up until 1998, and by 2002 in earnest, the polls went south on us. It was around that time that we started hiring Republican-friendly corporations to count votes in secret. It should be no surprise. If what Sacred Heart says is true, it should have manifested long before that time. Bunk.
LikeLike
Unproven bunk you say…look what happened in San Fran’s 82 mayors contest.
This from Wikpedia
The polls on the final days before the election consistently showed Bradley with a lead. In fact, based on exit polls on election day, a number of media outlets projected a Bradley win that night; early editions of the next day’s San Francisco Chronicle featured a headline proclaiming “BRADLEY WIN PROJECTED”. However, Bradley narrowly lost the race. Post-election research indicated that a smaller percentage of white voters actually voted for Bradley than polls had predicted, and that voters who had been classified by those polls as “undecided” had gone to Deukmejian in statistically anomalous numbers.
My prediction, this will happen with the Nov. election.
LikeLike
Well looky here, the Wall Street Journal backs me up.
Peter Hart, a Democrat on a bipartisan team conducting the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, estimates that 10% of current Democrats and independents who say they support presumed Democratic Party nominee Barack Obama may not be giving a fully honest answer, at least based on their responses to broader questions about race. “This election is exceptionally tricky,” he says.
While most political pollsters say they don’t find large numbers of people lying on polls, they are taking extra precautions. At CBS, pollster Kathleen A. Frankovic says she will ask voters whether they think most people they know would vote for a black candidate — an indirect way to fish for racial bias. John Zogby, president of the polling firm Zogby International, is asking white respondents whether they have ever been to a dinner party where a black person was present. It only takes a handful of people hiding their true opinion to skew poll results, he says: “A small number can loom large.”
Damn Liars.
LikeLike
Swede – you’re talking about pre-election polls, not exit polls. You’re getting confused. And anyway, notice how the pollsters are trying to ferret out the liars. That is a real problem since there’s so much latent racism about.
But you’re confusing this with exit polls. They’re quite different. Prior to 2002 there had been only a few exit poll discrepancies – three that I know of involved a Bush. Seems that faulty exit polls follow that family like Mary’s little lamb. Go figure.
LikeLike