by Theodore de Macedo Soares
According to the exit polls conducted by Edison Research, Clinton won four key battleground states (NC, PA, WI, and FL) in the 2016 Presidential Election that she went on to lose in the computerized vote counts. With these states Clinton wins the Electoral College with a count of 302 versus 205 for Trump. Clinton also won the national exit poll by 3.2% and holds a narrow lead in the national vote count still in progress.
Exit polls were conducted in 28 states. In 23 states the discrepancies between the exit polls and the vote count favored Trump. In 13 of these states the discrepancies favoring Trump exceeded the margin of error of the state. See Table and its footnotes below.
Readers may find it helpful to read the answers by this author to comments and questions below.
Updates:
November 14, 2016: As requested by a few people attached is the zip file (very large at 5,300KB) containing all the exit polls downloaded from CNN shortly after the polls closed in each state. If using these files please credit www.tdmsresearch.com and Theodore de Macedo Soares as the source and most importantly cite the article that shows the results of the exit polls: http://tdmsresearch.com/2016/11/10/2016-presidential-election-table/
The vote proportions for Clinton and Trump were derived from the gender category (all the other categories would have the same result). Clinton’s proportion of the male vote was multiplied with the total male proportion and added to Clinton’s proportion of the female vote multiplied with the total female vote to arrive at Clinton’s vote share in the state. The same procedure was applied to arrive at Trump’s proportions of the vote.
Clinton’s wins in the exit polls of four key battleground states are highlighted in blue. Trump’s wins in the computer vote counts in these same states are highlighted in red.
[1] Exit polls (EP) conducted by Edison Research and published by CNN shortly after the closing of state polls and downloaded by TdMS. Edison Research conducted one national EP and EPs in 28 states. As these first published exit polls are altered/adjusted to conform to the unverified computer vote counts, the discrepancies shown above are adjusted to near zero in the final EPs.
[2] New York Times reported vote count. Most states with 99%-100% completed vote counts. Washington at 72% and Utah at 78% are the exceptions. Last updated on November 10, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results
[3] The margin columns subtracts the Clinton totals from Trump’s. A Trump win is shown by a positive sign and a Clinton win by a negative sign.
[4] Note that the Margin of Error (MOE) is for the differences between the two candidates (at 95% CI). This MOE is about double the usual MOE for each candidate. MOE calculated with multinomial formula discussed in sections 2 and 4 in: Franklin, C. The ‘Margin of Error’ for Differences in Polls. University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin. October 2002, revised February 2007. Available at: https://abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/MOEFranklin.pdf
Thanks for doing this work.
Thanks for reading it and passing the information and link to this article to others!
Sign the petition demanding an audit of 7 states:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/810/285/388/
Screw that. Do an audit of the Democratic Primary first. Hillary got what she deserved. She stole the primary, Trump stole the general. Poetic Justice under a system where there is no other justice. She created Trump and Trump ate her lunch. All is fair.
Go play in your baskets. You bots cost the election.
Nah. The DNC running with an already vastly unpopular candidate lost the election. She lost to Trump. TRUMP. That’s pathetic, even with election fraud.
It is only 5 days from the election. When it sinks in that in all likelihood a foreign power stole our election, we will take action. Please see the post Hacked at a ParallelWorld.com/news. And sign the petition here:http://www.aparallelworld.com/news/did-a-foreign-power-corrupt-our-election-we-must-know/
Check it out, please. https://www.change.org/p/department-of-justice-request-the-department-of-justice-obtain-an-injunction-against-electoral-college
#HillaryforPrison2016 ← √
Did you even read the article? Trump rigged the election. Not Hillary. You fucking idiot.
I recall an article in the NY Times, many years ago, relaying the conversation between the heads of state of France and Canada in a banquet at the White House. Not realizing the event was being recorded they candidly remarked to each other that if the politicians in their respective countries behaved as in the United States, they would all be in prison,
I live in France, and trust me this place is extremely corrupt. Politicians get busted for misappropriation of funds, keep their jobs, and get re-elected. It’s crazy. The only time they really go to jail is when they’ve pissed off the wrong people. I’m guessing the frenchman was humoring the canadian 😉
Just to make sure I understand correctly, these exit polls are the ones you grabbed before the adjustments right?
If I recall correctly they were talking about the massive amounts of corporate money our politicians receive. What you are referring to in France is just run-of-the-mill crookedness found in all countries.
The exit polls were downloaded almost immediately after the polls were closed in each state and before their wholesale changes to match the computer vote counts. Please do note that as Edison Research assumes that the computer vote counts are accurate they probably alter their exit polls prior to this initial publication to conform with the vote count in progress when they can get this information. See my comment below.
WE MUST MAKE OUR VOICES HEARD! Tell the Electoral college DO NOT VOTE FOR TRUMP! It is a Constitutional right and the .Duty of the Electoral College. The Founders brought about the Electoral College to Insure No Man Unfit to be President would ever be elected POTUS by the Electoral College. In MY Opinion and the Majority Opinion, since Hillary Clinton has won the Popular Vote by a Very Large Margin,Donald Trump is the Most Unfit person to ever run for POTUS. Pence is even worse, so no hoping Trump will go to prison to save us. https://www.change.org/p/electoral-college-electors-electoral-college-make-hillary-clinton-president-on-december-19?recruiter=28458950&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
Sign the petition demanding an audit of 7 states:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/810/285/388/
The petition says it was started by Verified Voting, but there is no mention of the petition or this issue on their website. Do you know if this petition was started by verifiedvoting.org?
Take Action now: http://www.aparallelworld.com/news/did-a-foreign-power-corrupt-our-election-we-must-know/
Name calling and obscenity is not helpful or even appreciated . It doesn’t change anyone’s mind and is not remotely a rational argument or strategy in debating. It just makes you look small.
In full agreement
LOL..You have the IQ of a hamster. Thanks for making the rest of the country suffer for your ignorance.
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Where is the original data?
I will be uploading pdf copies of all the exit polls I downloaded on election night. If you would like to see a few of them now send me an email to tdms@tdmsresearch.com.
The exit polls are now posted above. The computerized vote count results are widely available from the major news networks,
I’m new to this and not sure how to interpret this data. It appears to me that in the case of North Carolina, exit polls showed a Clinton by +2% but the Reported Vote Count showed Trump by +3.8%. That would be a “swing” of 5.8%. That sounds like a lot. What is considered within the acceptable limit? Doesn’t this big discrepancy indicate fraud?
Yes. It shows voter fraud on the part of the Republican party, who owns 80% of the voting machines, by the way…
What percent of digression between the exit poll and the final tally is considered suspect? 2%, 3% . . ??
Thank you for commenting on this blog. I think you mean election fraud instead of “voter fraud.” “Voter fraud” is the term used primarily by Republicans alleging that as individuals may want to illegally vote more than once that stringent voter ID laws mus be enacted.
Of course the voter ID laws adversely affect the poor, African Americans, and the elderly–the demographics most likely to vote for the Democratic candidates. To my knowledge voter fraud is non-existent as there has been no “voter fraud” prosecution ever in this country.
In any case, “voter fraud” would only amount to insignificant “retail” theft. Potential election fraud is at the “wholesale” level altering the results of elections by miscounting the votes.
Yes it is a lot. in 13 states the swing exceeded the margin of error for the state poll. The same story occurred in the 2016 Senate races (to be published in the next few days) favoring the Republican Party candidates. The same occurred favoring Clinton in the Democratic Party primaries.
Yes. When the vote count varies from the exit polls by more than the margin of error it is considered to be an indicator of election fraud. As the US Agency for International Development (USAID) stated in their 2015 booklet “[a] discrepancy between the votes reported by voters and official results may suggest that results have been manipulated.”
The bottom line: Our votes are counted by unobservable computer software and the counts are not verified by human counting. To protect the integrity of their elections, in 2009 the Federal Court of Germany (their version of the US Supreme Court) ruled that every aspect of an election must be publicly observable and effectively banned the use of computers to count their ballots. In Germany there is no longer any concern about possible computerized election fraud as now every ballot is now hand-counted in public.
Countries such as Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, Denmark, Finland and 53 other countries protect the integrity of their elections with hand-counted paper ballots. See The Suspect Massachusetts 2016 Primary article
So what then is the margin of error? Are we talking .01% or more? Is 1% acceptable?
So what then is the margin of error?
The margin of error (MOE) in an exit poll is a mathematical function mainly dependent on how many people you sample. In North Carolina, a very large number of people (3,947) filled out the anonymous exit poll questionnaire and the margin of error is calculated to be +-3% (see MOE column in the table).
The exit poll for NC indicated a 2% Clinton win. A vote count within the MOE would fall between a Clinton win of 5% and a Trump win of 1%. The unverified computer vote count came up with a Trump win by 3.8%. This result therefore is 2.8% greater than the MOE for this state (see last column in the table above).
The state with the largest MOE at 5.8% had 594 respondents. The national exit poll with 21,753 respondents has an MOE of only 1.3%.
Thanks, that helps understand the methodology.
Can this information be gotten into the hands of the people who will be voting in the Electoral College? The press? Our Congressional representatives?
Very much so, the UN regards any discrepancy over 2% spread to be signs of a rigged vote.
Hi, Can you please provide the primary source for this data? I cannot find in CNN exit polls where it shows that Clinton won Pa by 4.4%, for instance. Thank you!
Mary, I will be uploading them later. As noted in footnote 1, Edison Research alters the exit poll values to match the unverified computer vote counts. Meanwhile feel free to email me at tdms@tdmsresearch.com and I can send you the states you are interested in.
Possible use of FOIA requests to verify ballots via types of captured images …
http://blackboxvoting.org/ballot-images/
Pingback: Implausible: the 2016 Unadjusted Exit Poll (Ohio) | Richard Charnin's Blog
Okay, so can anything be done about it? Expose it to all?
Media was too busy talking about f’ing emails anyway.
There was election fraud in Florida in 2000 with the suppression of black voters. I wondered then why the democrats didn’t raise holy hell. I came to the conclusion that it’s because both sides cheat. They will absolutely not touch this, because too many people would end up in prison. That’s my take on it.
One thing that can be done is to demand a post-election audit of the paper ballots in key states.
Sign the petition: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/810/285/388/
Welcome to the party, Hillary supporters.
The science of statistical analysis led the revolution into modern agriculture in the study of seed test plots and the revolution into modern manufacturing in the development of machine capability. If the statistical results were ignored then as they are in today’s polling results, modern agriculture and manufacturing would not exist. To ignore the science of these results is equivalent to ignoring climate change and its science. As we honor the Veterans who gave their lives for our democracy, we dishonor them with our apathy. Our nation has suffered a coup d’état of third world proportions. Yet we as a nation cower to those who too readily speak of the Constitution and the right to vote while actualizing fraud and contempt for these instruments of democracy. Has our nation become so blind, deaf, and dumb that it will just acquiesce to today’s demigods of power and corruption? Have we become a nation so ignorant of truth and reason that we placidly subjugate ourselves and our nation to people who have no interest in democracy but for how it can be manipulated to serve as a means to their own ends? The science and truth of these exit polls have brought no uproar, no outrage, no calling for a re-election with paper only ballets. The science and truth of these exit polls shout of fraud, insurgency and treason. Our nation now stands on the gallows and the perpetrators of our demise are pulling the lever. Millions of people have suffered horrible deaths over the centuries to bring the ideals of democracy and freedom to birth within our mass consciousnesses and actualized in the formation of The United States of America. We have put great energies and effort to develop a vast military to protect our very existence. But we are now being devoured from within by parasites who perceive our great nation as nothing but fodder for their own feast. We do nothing about the enemy within; within our borders and within ourselves. We have been very cleverly wooed to sleep by people who speak of service and concern yet act to dominate and control. Will we wake up? Will we come to our senses? Will we perceive the deceptions woven around us? I fear I may have only lived to see us die.
Thank you so much for this information. What can we do? Everyone deluge email/call/protest Obama to look into it? Change.org petition to Obama? Getting it in main stream media? I think we actually have some republicans, media, etc. to help, no one who’s using their brain wants reactive Trump to be president and have his hand near the nuclear buttons. I believe this info could change things. (From moment one 11/8 after Trump “chosen” I wondered why no one talking about election fraud/rigging).
Thank you!!!
Sign the petition demanding an audit of 7 states: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/810/285/388/
I sent this to every media outlet I thought was worth it. I tweeted this to Clinton, Podesta Bernie etc..
Please do the same.
Put this on every group you belong to, and all the Election fraud pages.
The exit polls were done by the usual NEP, correct? The same people that were the basis of Charnin’s analysis showing Team Hillary stole the glass slipper from Bernie beginning in Iowa then Massachusetts, etc? Then when it became public knowledge that those exit polls were being overturned, they stopped using them, right? So while they stayed out of sight, they were reprogrammed to make sure they confirmed to the rigged polls that had been oversampled, which is one big reason that satanist was overconfident all year and couldn’t bring herself to concede til the next day. Stop The Steal organized an exit-polling operation that indicates Trump actually won 5 MORE states than he was officially recognized for, and they were scrupulous in their neutrality despite the tirades against them coming from pro-Hillary forces. The ONLY way we can assure transparent elections in future is to get rid of electronic voting machines. Bev Harris is the best in the business; you ppl that can’t believe Hillary actually lost should read her site at Black Box voting (not sure of the URL offhand).I know firsthand that nary a single Democrat in my town voted for Hillary, who is probably the most corrupt, greedy, and NON-Democratic party nominee ever.
1. Calculating MOE at 95% CI seems extremely strict. I don’t know if I’ve ever personally seen anything more than 90% used for corporate decision making, and some mature clients even use 80%. At the 90% CI level are they still outside MOE?
2. MOE applies only to sampling error, correct? Isn’t there all kinds of other error, I’m thinking non-response error (do the exit polls show how many people refused to do the survey when asked?). What is the non-response error, is it higher in swing states, and was any effort done to follow up with non-responders or what do we know about non-responders in exist surveys?
3. There is lots of buzz about many people that voted for Trump not wanting others to know about it, given the angry backlash among friends, etc, and perhaps even their own internal angst for voting for the man (but, perhaps feeling a need to vote for him because of singe issue abortion, feeling pressured to vote for him from their evangelical church). Given this, is there a higher propensity in this particular election for non-responders to be more likely to be Trump voters, and/or to false report on exit surveys?
Thanks…
Please. Trump supporters shy of vocalizing their support? Are you kidding me with this?? It’s their very hallmark! No.
Ed, great questions.
1. I agree with you, 95% confidence interval (CI) seems too strict. I use it because it is the standard applied to exit polls and surveys in general. Contrary to intuition, however, when the CI is decreased from 95% to 90% for example, the margin of error decreases. “As the confidence level increases, the margin of error increases…the relationship between confidence level and margin of error seems contradictory to many students because they are confusing accuracy (confidence level) and precision (margin of error). If you want to be surer of hitting a target with a spotlight, then you make your spotlight bigger.” http://inspire.stat.ucla.edu/unit_10/solutions.php . Decreasing CI results in more states exceeding the margin of error and increasing the amount by which states are outside the margin of error. If I decreased CI it would be more suggestive of election fraud.
2. You are correct, the MOE applies only to sampling error. Edison Research attempts to correct for non-response error by noting the demographic characteristics (such as race, age group, gender, etc) of those refusing to fill out the anonymous questionnaires and then adjust their polls accordingly. I discuss criticisms of exit polls in my article http://tdmsresearch.com/2016/07/26/exit-polls-and-computer-vote-counts/ (about halfway down) for Democracy Lost.
3. No doubt that the theory of shy Trump voters will be put forth to explain the discrepancies between the exit polls and the unverified computer vote counts. As I noted in my article noted above, this theory has been debunked for previous elections (see section on youthful voter impact on the Clinton/Sanders races and footnote 19)
im curious as to what can be done with this and do you forward it to any election officials in those states so it can be investigated ? I mean whats the point of sharing this with us if you arent going to do anything with the clear truth of fraud ?
This is a pretty big deal , we are looking at a leader who’s practices runs parallel with Hitler
Millions of marginalized communities are at risk right now ,, and if there is a clear path that can show that these things need to be investigated then it should also be your responsibility to forward it to the proper authorities in the GOP and DEM parties ,,
Hanna,
Exit polls are widely used as a indicator of possible election fraud. By themselves they do not prove fraud.
The most direct way to determine if our votes have been accurately counted by computer “black boxes” is to hand count the ballots. This may be accomplished by making open records act request (similar to FOIA) in states that consider election materials and ballots to be public records. As a reader above commented with this link, http://blackboxvoting.org/ballot-images/, a request for the ballot images is a possibility to consider.
It is up to all of us do demand we follow the example of the many countries that protect the integrity of their elections with ballots hand counted in public view. You are most welcome to spread the link to this article to others,
Shy Trump supporters not wanting to admit to voting for him, given adverse coverage can be counterbalanced by shy Hillary supporters not wanting to admit to voting for her because of pressure from spouse or church or community, etc. advocating strongly for Trump.
There was also plenty of negative comment about Clinton, so there should be very little discrepancy to the accuracy of exit polls, as found elsewhere in the world.
Main news agencies are ignoring this argument. – Norm
Who the fuck is afraid to vote for Hillary? Church or community are you kidding me? Trump supporters are called Racist by everybody constantly, the fear of being exposed as a Trump supporter is much greater, and for Hillary it doesn’t exist.
Trump didn’t steal anything. I agree that machines were built for fraud and does exist but it wasn’t trump. I’m not sure what the author Means when they say they adjusted this for computer data but guy check shoots off red flags. This election wasn’t clinton and democrats vs trump and republicans. It was clinton and democrats and republicans vs trump. The republican big wigs and funders backed Hillary.
Im very experienced in vote fraud and I can tell you that bush stole 2000,2004 and Hillary stole the primaries in several states like California from Bernie. So she wouldn’t try against trump? Trump had no political pull snd contacts and he couldn’t rig the vote if he wanted. You do know the bush fam supported Hillary right? Look it up. Review bev Harris she was the anti bush crusader and stated that Hillary did try to rig this election just not by enough. I don’t think Obama stole anything but he didn’t fight to fix the systems either…
You say you are experienced in voter fraud. That would be individual voters and fraudulent ballots. This article is about election fraud where the discrepancy comes from the officials counting the votes.
Republicans rigged the primaries in favor of Hillary because they would rather run against her than Bernie. Her disapproval ratings are very high. They rigged the presidential election in favor of Trump and key Senate races (e.g., Wisconsin) so they could take control of the White House, Senate, House, and Supreme Court.
Trump called the election rigged to sucker the Democrats into making big public statements about how it couldn’t be rigged, and then when the rigging comes in favoring Trump, they can’t say a word.
We have just witnessed a very sophisticated subversion of democracy – a quiet coup d’etat.
There were leaks coming out from dark web that computerized voter machines could be hacked and tampered ,,, We are talking about 4 states,,, it would have been a small operation and easily done . He bragged about his relationship with Putin, and The foreign Minister of Russia came out and said they had been in contact with the campaign ,,, You’re daft if you dont think this election was rigged .. MAybe not directly by Trump himself ,, but it would have certainly been possible for those who wanted him in power to do so … But I personally believe he knew and his nefarious public claims of her “rigging” if he loses was him bragging about rigging the election.. its called projection..
I just want to know how the info should go to , or what can be done if any
Where is Massachusetts?
Edison Research conducted exit polls in only 28 states. Massachusetts was not one of the states.
Thanks for the information!
Do you have the raw data that you used to produce the image in the 2016 Presidential Election Table (chart)?
Yes. It will be uploaded soon.
Who fills out the exit polls? Is it volunteer-based? Are the respondents randomly selected?
The respondents are randomly selected, Every fifth, sixth (or some other number) voter is approached to fill out the anonymous exit poll questionnaire. The demographic characteristics (such as gender, race and age group) of those refusing are noted and the exit poll adjusted accordingly.
I wish there could be a Revote and get A Beloved Person in for the People as President. You Better Believe their will be Great Change in America as we Know it. I didn’t vote for him and I will Never Respect him Ever. I feel sorry for all of the up and coming Children who are going to have to Endure Trump and His Basket Hideous Demand’s, all Because People couldn’t get Past President Obama and Hillary Clinton. They aren’t looking so bad now are they.
Mr. Soares, I have a couple of questions for you. I’m a business journalist in New York, but I’m not reaching out to you on behalf of any news organization. I’m just asking as a concerned citizen.
First, let me say I’m with you in spirit. I’m asking these questions only to get a better understanding of your work and to get an idea of how compelling this story might be to a broader audience.
Re: the exit poll data — I went to the Edison Research website. They don’t publish a state-by-state list of the winner. Instead, they publish data on voter characteristics — gender, ethnicity, age, etc.
You say in your “about” section that you used the “gender” results to arrive at an overall winner. I assume that means you used the percentages of men and women who voted for HRC and Trump to get an overall figure of how many votes each one got.
I understand using the gender category, since there can only be two genders, and everyone has to be one the other — theoretically, the gender number should be all-inclusive.
But how do you know that the gender number wasn’t adjusted?
Edison says that they routinely adjust all their exit poll data — in other words, they “conform” it to the actual results — in order to come up with results they think is more truly representative of how people actually voted.
An article published on Raw Story in April quoted an Edison staffer saying two things about their process that make me wonder if their data can be used to create an assumed overall result, as you’ve done.
First, he said the “voter characteristics” exit poll that they do for US elections is not designed to catch voter fraud — it has 20 questions on it, and the sheer length dissuades some people from taking it, which skews the results.
In contrast, an exit poll that’s designed to catch voter fraud, which is used in some foreign elections, typically only has one question on it — “Who did you vote for?” — and gets a much higher response rate.
Second, he said all their data is adjusted, which suggests that the overall results numbers you’ve assumed might not be right.
Here’s a clip from that story:
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/04/on-tim-robbins-election-fraud-and-how-nonsense-spreads-around-the-internet/comments/
I asked Joe Lenski, executive vice president of Edison Media Research, about all of this. Edison has conducted all of the exit polls for major U.S. media organizations since 2003, and Lenski has also done exit polling in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Venezuela.
As for using his results to suss out fraud, he says that American exit polls are “just not designed for that type of precision. They’re surveys, and like any other survey, they have a margin of error. The precision that a lot of these people are talking about just doesn’t exist with our polls.”
In emerging democracies, says Lenski, “the exit polls are designed specifically to catch any manipulations of the vote count, and also to bring some transparency so voters can trust the vote count. They have a lot more locations in the sample, they do a lot more interviews and they use a much, much smaller questionnaire. In some cases, they just ask, ‘who did you vote for?’” A brief questionnaire, he explains, increases the response rate. “The more interviews you do, the more locations you cover and the shorter the questionnaire, the higher response rate you’ll get, and that all leads to a much smaller margin of error.”
The news organizations that sponsor our exit polls are just looking for a sense of who voted, and what motivated them to vote. They use longer questionnaires – typically with about 20 questions – and it takes a little longer for voters to fill them out. Lenski says that while the methodology hasn’t changed much since exit polling was first introduced in 1967, the fact that news organizations post preliminary data in real-time leads to “a lot of commentary on social media.”
When people claim that early exit poll data are “unadjusted,” they’re wrong. Edison adjusts its data throughout the day to compensate for “non-response rates and other sampling issues that come up when we conduct the survey.” When someone is approached to take a survey and says ‘no thanks,’ Edison’s pollster notes that individual’s gender, race and approximate age. They then adjust the raw data to match the demographics of the people they saw voting at that location during the day.
The early data news organizations post on their websites has already been adjusted. In states with large numbers of absentee voting, the data are also merged with phone interviews conducted before Election Day. If the number of absentees is significantly higher or lower than expected, they adjust for that difference as well. And then, finally, the data are adjusted again to match not the results of the election statewide, but the vote tallies at the specific polling places they surveyed.
Lenski stresses that pre-election polls are also adjusted to conform their samples to what pollsters know about the populations they’re trying to measure. The irony of all of this is that the adjusted data are far more accurate than the raw data.
“Remember the process here,” says Lenski. “In most of these states, we’re talking about having interviewers at several dozen locations. The vote returns at those locations are used in the model, and the vote counts at the county level are used in the model, so if there were some sort of fix involved, there would have to be hundreds or thousands of people manipulating the data at all of those locations to make it work.”
So, Mr. Soares, I wonder how would you respond to these points? Do you think it’s statistically valid to use an assumed number for your state-by-state results that’s based on adjusted data for gender? And do you think the fact that these Edison exit polls were long and time-consuming could have skewed the results in way would make your assumed number invalid?
Thank you in advance for your response.
Thank you for your questions on the suitability of Edison’s exit polls as an indicator of possible election fraud.
First it should be noted that we would not be having this discussion (or this website) if our ballots were counted by hand right after voting. Instead our votes are counted by computer software universally proven to be vulnerable to hacking in the election as well as in every other context. These counts are unobservable and unverified by human conducted counts. See comment above. In effect we are asked to take computer generated election results on blind faith. This state of affairs should be unacceptable to any reasonable person.
Without blind faith in the unverified computer counts we are left with exit polls as an indicator of the accuracy of the vote count.
Yes, it is true that Edison Research did not design their exit polls specifically to detect election fraud. It is immaterial that such exit polls would have a greater number of respondents and result in a lower margin of error. The margin of error applied in the table above is specific to the actual exit polls conducted. They designed and executed their exit polls using well established scientific methodology to accurately project the vote proportions of each candidate with additional information on the electorate. As Edison Research assumes the computer count is accurate their mission is to arrive at exit poll results that match the official vote count.
As I wrote in Exit Polls and Computerized Vote Counts “[a]s Mr. Lenski of Edison Research explained, when states such as ‘New Hampshire, Kentucky, Indiana, Florida and Texas (and others) have split poll closing times where part of the state closes at one time and the rest of the state closes at a later time…we may have quite a bit of actual vote returns to use in our estimates that are broadcast…when all of the state polling locations have officially closed.’ [Mr. Lenski, email correspondence]. Although Mr. Lenski did not explicitly state that in other states without split closing times they also used vote returns acquired from the precincts they were polling or from other sources, there seems no reason why Edison would not use them if available.
The problem with altering exit polls with vote returns from computer counts that overwhelmingly favored Clinton compared to the states’ exit polls is that such returns would have depressed Sanders’ exit poll totals even further, resulting in an even larger discrepancy between the exit polls and the vote counts.”
The same applies to the 2016 Presidential election where 23 of the 28 states that were polled had computer vote counts that favored Trump compared to their respective exit polls. In other words, the discrepancies noted in the table above were likely much larger in favor of Trump in the unadjusted exit polls. This is reason for more concern rather than less.
The other adjustments you mention, such as adjusting for non-response rate and early voting are necessary for a properly conducted exit poll designed to project the vote proportions for each candidate.
I am not clear why you focused on my use of the gender category to arrive at the vote proportions for Trump and Clinton. I could have used any of the many demographic or other questions to derive these proportions as they all have the same result.
The quote of Mr. Lenski about hundreds of thousands needed to fix an election is also puzzling to me. The issue in question is computer software common to vote counting machines possibly designed or hacked to miscount the votes particularly in battleground states where one or two counties may decide the outcome in that state. Very few people are needed to accomplish such a task.
The main point is that we should join the many other countries that recognize the vulnerability of computer software and protect the integrity of their elections with hand counted paper ballots in plain view of observers. To do this efficiently we probably need separate federal, state, and local elections instead of what we have now with these many contests occurring in the same day.
Thanks for your response. And let me stipulate that I agree with you entirely about our voting machines being vulnerable to hacking, and about the need to return to paper ballots. No argument from me on that.
But just to dwell on your methodology for a bit longer, you provide a statement above that appears to be quote (or is the quotation mark after “vote counts” an error?). If it is a quote, I guess it would have to be from Lenski, but I’m guessing it’s not a quote, it’s part of your own discussion, and the quotation mark was just a slip of the keyboard.
Let me repeat it here:
“The problem with altering exit polls with vote returns from computer counts that overwhelmingly favored Clinton compared to the states’ exit polls is that such returns would have depressed Sanders’ exit poll totals even further, resulting in an even larger discrepancy between the exit polls and the vote counts.”
In effect, this seems to be saying that the process of adjusting the data to conform to the actual results ends up skewing the results farther away from the true vote count.
But if that is the case — if “adjusted” exit poll results create a less accurate view of the real vote — doesn’t that mean that your assumed overall results, gleaned from the adjusted gender numbers, would also be less accurate?
If I am missing something, please point it out. Thanks.
Thank you for pointing to the lack of clarity in the quotes. the quote from Mr. Lenski is now in single quotation marks within the double quotation marks of the article excerpt.
What I am saying is to the extent that Edison Research adjusted the the exit polls prior to first publication by CNN with incoming computer vote totals these exit polls will be closer to the official vote count. From Edison’s perspective this is good because they apparently believe in the accuracy of the unverified computerized vote count.
The results of such adjustments, however, undermine the carefully designed and scientifically conducted exit polls. It makes them less accurate as exit polls per se.
As the computer vote count in 23 of 28 states show greater margins for Trump than their respective exit polls it is logical to assume that any “adjustments” to the exit polls comprised of increasing Trump’s totals and decreasing Clinton’s totals in order to match the incoming vote counts.
We don’t know the actual adjustments made by Edison Research but many of the disparities between the vote count and the exit polls that favor Trump may have been even larger in the non-adjusted polls than what we see now.
If Clinton’s exit poll totals in states such as Ohio, Michigan, and Georgia which show close races in the exit polls were decreased and Trump’s increased to match the incoming vote totals, these exit polls may have shown her winning these states.
When you add these states to the list of states that she won in the exit polls but lost in the vote count, the unadjusted exit polls may have shown Clinton winning the Electoral College vote in a landslide.
It would be valuable to see the unadulterated exit polls. It would be priceless to have confidence in an election where the votes were openly counted by hand in front of the public as is done in many countries such as Germany, France, Canada, etc.
A number of my viewers have sent me this data and I’m finding it compelling. I am considering doing a story on this during the week. If people have more info that would be relevant to understanding and interpreting the data please send it through the contact form at davidpakman.com
Theodore de Macedo Soares,
When will you be uploading the raw source data? I’d like to share this but am reluctant to do so without verifiable origination. Are you able to be more specific than “soon”?
It is uploaded now. See link in the post above.
Thank you
PLEASE READ THE PETITION ENTIRELY AND THEN PLEASE SIGN AND SHARE.
https://www.change.org/p/department-of-justice-request-the-department-of-justice-obtain-an-injunction-against-electoral-college
Im sorry, but I will still like an answer in regards to what can legally be done about this , who can it be submitted to for investigation ?
Hanna, please see my response to your previous comment above.
The Russians , the Republicans , everyone has their pet suspect as to who rigged the machines so that Trump would win. Ask yourself who had the strongest motive and you’ll have the culprit.
It seems pretty clear to me : Bernie Sanders rigged the election for Trump. Sweet revenge.
Haha, hadn’t thought of him, but who knows!
were mail in ballots and early voting taken into consideration? exit polling was most likely only done during election day.
Yes. Edison Research conducts telephone surveys in states with significant early voting and or mail in ballots. The results of the surveys are incorporated into their exit polls.
Comparisons to previous elections?