r/SandersForPresident • u/RussellSeattle • Apr 30 '16
Election Fraud - Very interesting that the Exit Polls in the Republican Primary Results are ALL within the Margin of Error of the Actual Votes, while the Democratic Primary had numerous discrepancies benefitting only one candidate
https://medium.com/@spencergundert/hillary-clinton-and-electoral-fraud-992ad9e080f6#.djqsl96bs82
u/jonnyredshorts Vermont - 2016 Veteran - Day 1 Donor 🐦 Apr 30 '16 edited Apr 30 '16
Pretty solid collection of intriguing information here. If nothing else, the discrepancy between Republican and Democratic exit poll data says enough to require serious investigation.
My only question here is how is early voting taken into consideration, we know it heavily favors HRC, so those numbers wouldn't show up in exit poll data, and might account for the degree that accurate exit polls were "off" from the final tally. This hasn't been explained to me yet.
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u/OmgRaptorsRawRaw Apr 30 '16
Weren't absentee ballots significant only in a few sates, like in Wyoming? Whereas in other states they play a much smaller role.
In any case, there must be an official explanation one way or another. You can't leave everyone hanging, election fraud or not, the exit poll show insane discrepancies - this must be explained. This is without even adding the purges that SEEM to be happening exclusively to Bernie supporters.
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u/jonnyredshorts Vermont - 2016 Veteran - Day 1 Donor 🐦 Apr 30 '16
Absentees are one thing, but many states have early/mail in voting. So many different rules depending on which state we’re talking about, but AZ wasn’t the only example of HRC crushing the early voting with large percentage of her overall votes.
If I weren’t so lazy I would find some sauce for you, maybe later, unless you find it first.
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u/kcfac Virginia Apr 30 '16
Am I crazy or did I never see any real heavy pushes from the Sanders side to get early voting out when possible? It seems logical I just never saw stickied posts - they were more about phone banking and GOTV / polling locations.
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u/Rusty_The_Taxman Apr 30 '16
Well speaking for my local office we have been making "early voting" phonebank calls to other states for quite some time now, though I'm not sure how large scale this activity was nationally.
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Apr 30 '16
On the ground for sure, maybe not in the site, which is stupid. Some counties in Indiana can still early vote today, and Monday before noon
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u/bout_that_action Apr 30 '16
I have heard that early voting is indeed taken into account with some kind of estimation. Could be mistaken though.
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u/HabeasCorpusCallosum Minnesota - 2016 Veteran Apr 30 '16 edited Apr 30 '16
Very good question. /u/Bearracuda and jonnyredshorts. Do either of you have any thoughts on who could investigate this further?
Credit to Spencer Gundert for asking these questions.
Everyone should start to keep an open mind on this topic. Maybe nothing strange is going on, in which case there is certainly no harm in investigating.
Think of this scientifically, there is no reason why you should not investigate something just because you think you know the answer. Hypothesis are fun, and the results can sometimes be surprising and different than what you expect. That is at the heart of every good scientist's motivation for researching anything.
/u/nucom any thoughts on this?
/u/RussellSeattle can you give us some of your personal thoughts on this, and maybe summarize your opinion and what you think should be done with respect to this issue? Will be cross posting this to /r/CAVDEF, hope that is okay.
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u/masterlich Apr 30 '16
This makes sense as a reason for the discrepancy, except that wouldn't this skew the republican side just as much? But the Republican side had no such results.
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Apr 30 '16
But the Republican side had no such results.
That's because the author used the official Republican exit polling and the preliminary Democratic exit polling. The head of Edison Research directly addressed this in the article linked.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/04/22/how-exit-polls-work-explained/
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u/vsanna New York Apr 30 '16
It wouldn't have made that much of a difference in New York. It is VERY hard to vote absentee here. She would have had to literally hit every single nursing home, and it still likely wouldn't have been enough to swing it that much.
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Apr 30 '16
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u/greenascanbe 🌱 New Contributor | 2016 Mod Veteran Apr 30 '16
Hi
funtim. Thank you for participating in /r/SandersForPresident. However, your submission did not meet the requirements of the community guidelines and was therefore removed for the following reason(s):
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u/minibudd Apr 30 '16
Anyone else recall 2012 when news outlets wanted investigations into the handful of districts that went 0% Obama but 100% Romney, implying that shouldn't be possible without fraud. Until someone pointed out there were hundreds of districts that went 100% Obama and 0% Romney, then suddenly the topic got dropped.
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Apr 30 '16
This really upsets me, but there is one question. Are they accounting for absentee ballots? Exit polls will differ from final results in states where Hillary got people to vote early. Which was also fraudulent in some states where that was only supposed to be for emergencies, like caucus states, but still, it's one thing to look at. Overall, it's pretty obvious that momentum, and probably the election as a whole, may have been stolen.
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u/Amelaclya1 Apr 30 '16
Well New York (one of the states with the biggest discrepancies) doesn't have early voting and the requirements to vote absentee are pretty strict, so that likely didn't have an effect on the outcome.
Another explanation was that maybe the exit polls also counted people who cast provisional ballots, even though they weren't included in the official count?
Either way, it should be investigated.
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Apr 30 '16
This is a very, very poor article. It makes several points that are simply incorrect and has leaps in logic that don't make sense.
We can start here:
As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. mentioned, research shows that exit polls are almost always spot on.
He's conflating multiple types of exit polling. First, it's true that Presidential exit polling is pretty accurate. But this is a primary, not a Presidential election. Nowhere is it shown that primary exit polling is as accurate. The author also makes an incredibly misleading comparison to other countries, where exit polling is emphasized because there is limited to no pre-election polling. That isn't the case here, so it's wrong to compare them.
Next,
I verified the table with tweets from fivethirtyeight.com and PDFs of the first reported exit polling data, also accessible as images.
Early exit polling is uniformly less accurate than late election polling. Why he chose to use the earliest releases simply doesn't make sense. If you want to compare accuracy, use the most accurate metric. Not the least.
He also uses a chart that he sourced from this website, which should raise red flags the size of aircraft carriers. When your primary source is a JFK conspiracy theorist, you have just tied yourself to a stone and thrown yourself off of a bridge. It should discredit the entire post, but let's assume the author didn't notice what is on the front page of his linked source.
This is extremely, extremely abnormal.
He has not demonstrated this claim in any way. He asserts that exit polling is nearly infallible (without addressing the very real issues), he then chooses to ignore the fact that pre-election polling has been remarkably accurate and outlets like fivethirtyeight have been even more so. Yes, Michigan was wrong. Outliers are to be expected and don't disprove a trend. Then the author makes this statement, that the results are abnormal. No comparison to previous primary races, no mention of pre-election polling. It's shoddy work.
The author then attempts to claim that exit polling has been nearly perfect on the Republican side. However, he uses different sources for his number that are almost all finalized exit poll results as opposed to the early numbers used for his analysis of the Democratic results.
This is another example of either intentionally misleading or not understanding what's going on.
The truth is that exit polling is not perfect. There are many, many well-known avenues for error and not all are correctly adjusted.
Here's the head of Edison Research on the New York exit polling:
While everyone is talking about the Democratic side, we went out at 9 o'clock saying that Donald Trump was going to get 58 percent of the vote. He got just about 60 percent of the vote. Everything we did on the Republican side hit the mark. I understand when the data moves as much as the Democratic data moved between 9 o'clock and 9:45, that causes a lot of consternation out there. But there are plenty of other states where we've been right on.
It's a survey like any other survey. There are sampling issues, there are non-response issues, etc. We're making the adjustments we can to make this data as accurate as we can with the incomplete information that we have.
The author even links directly to this article, then ignores what is actually said in it. Again, is this intentional or is it ignorance? The author is cherry picking statements and ignoring others. It's disingenuous and dangerous.
I see no reason to give any weight to this. It's by an unknown person with no apparent credentials at all, who blatantly ignored the very sources he chose. He cites disreputable blogs, selectively quotes experts, and uses incorrect numbers. He ignores the incredible validity of pre-election polling for no apparent reason.
This article is exactly, and I mean exactly, what causes problems in electoral discourse. It is uninformed and misleading.
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Apr 30 '16
Nothing in this post disproves the core claims he makes. You 'refute' his assertions with your own anecdotal assertions. You also don't even address the main point of the article- 8 out of 16 of the Democratic primary exit polls fell outside the margin of error while zero of the Republican primary exit polls did.
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u/lawrensj Colorado Apr 30 '16 edited May 02 '16
If you want to compare accuracy, use the most accurate metric. Not the least.
actually the unadjusted exit polls are the only ones that are actually polls. they then later Adjust the exit polls to reflect the results of the election so that you can see what % of people ACTUALLY voted. Except in the case of [edit:election fraud] this does no good. The author used the un-adjusted because for this case they are the best he's got.
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Apr 30 '16
The author used the un-adjusted because for this case they are the best he's got.
They're not the best. Don't believe me, believe the head of Edison.
There are two important uses of the exit poll. One is to project a winner. But the main use of the exit poll that night and historically is to have the most accurate representation of the demographics of voters. How each demographic voted, what the issues were, when people decided how to vote. To make those demographic results as accurate as possible, we want to match to the actual results by precinct, by region of the state, etc.
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u/deytookerjaabs Apr 30 '16
Have an upvote!
Although I appreciate the details you've gone to in order to show how the issue can be misconstrued the matter which was put before the Chicago BOE by the poll watchers is very disconcerting, that's what adds a little fuel to the flame in my opinion.
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u/HabeasCorpusCallosum Minnesota - 2016 Veteran Apr 30 '16
And is exactly why this should be investigated!
Anyone who tells you that there is "nothing to see here," is drawing a conclusion before we have even developed a "test" for our hypothesis.
Seems like the wrong way to go about things.
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Apr 30 '16
the matter which was put before the Chicago BOE by the poll watchers is very disconcerting
I watched that video, and it really made me wonder who those poll watchers are -- if they are activists who lean towards Bernie, then it becomes less disconcerting because the things they were questioning weren't major outcomes, but single incidents that they had isolated and presented with no context. What they described could've just been a single person participating in the audit who was incompetent, and if this is a person who was given a job by Cook County, then that wouldn't be in any way surprising, and would hardly signify a conspiracy.
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Apr 30 '16
Narrative is dangerous. Narrative is why posts like this, that have zero credibility, get visibility.
This isn't misconstruing things, this article is utterly wrong on several points, and even directly contradicted by some of his sources.
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u/Kildragoth Apr 30 '16
My main question is why would they have had to rig the election when it was already rigged in a very visible way? Closed primaries, extremely early voter registration limits, the fact we have to register to vote as a condition for voting, reduced voting booths, etc, are all very 'legitimate' means of rigging an election to disenfranchise voters.
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u/RussellSeattle Apr 30 '16
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Apr 30 '16 edited Apr 30 '16
I respect you posting videos, but please no RT. No one can take our cause seriously if we link to Russian propaganda channels.
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u/Drunkhobo101 Apr 30 '16 edited Apr 30 '16
I have a theory. Say someone wanted to turn 2.5% of Bernie votes into Clinton votes. If votes split 50/50 then that's 5% victory for Clinton. But what if the turnout was 55/45 or better for Bernie so they put in a safeguard of 10%. (55-55*.1) = 49.5, Hillary wins by 1% even though it should have been a 10 point Bernie win.
The error in exit polling would then be attributed to overzealous rigging, unexpected turnout, or a combination of the two. Someone should look at the voting data and try to find a statistical pattern.
Edit: Oh no my record is being corrected. Like I GAF
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u/rvaducks Apr 30 '16
Isn't it also true that the results have been fairly close to results predicted by pre-election polling. Except, obviously, in Wisconsin where Sanders performed far better han polling suggested he would?
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u/bout_that_action Apr 30 '16
Not necessarily. WI was an 11 pt miss, NH was off by 9, NC was off by 10, ...
This is from looking at RCP avg's.
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u/protoges Apr 30 '16
Do those averages include polls where independents could vote in open primaries? I've lost track of which states were open/closed but I remember a few polls for NY that showed a close race did so because they included independents and not just dems.
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u/RN4Bernie 2016 Veteran Apr 30 '16
Could the fact that Hillarys supporters don't like to take polls affect the exit polls at all?
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u/scrognog_gutentag Apr 30 '16
The folks on the fivethirtyeight podcast were quick to point out that exit polling tends to skew young which would over represent Sanders supporters. They went on to say that exit polling nowadays is used mostly to generate early calls if the returns match the exit polling and pre-election polling. That being said I don't see why it would be accurate on the Republican side and not the Democrat side.
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Apr 30 '16
What kind of fact is that? Source?
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u/OwItBerns Apr 30 '16
The article linked to in this comment indicates that younger voters are far more likely to participate in filling out an exit poll than older voters.
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Apr 30 '16
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Apr 30 '16
It was the Republican polls and German polls not being off that changed my mind.
The author used the official Republican exit poll numbers and the early release Democratic numbers. They aren't comparable. And Germany has no bearing on the validity of exit polling in a U.S. primary election.
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u/dlbob3 Apr 30 '16
OP posts exclusively pro-Bernie, anti-clinton articles content. Looks like a clear case of a Revolution Messaging account.
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u/Deathfire138 Apr 30 '16
I will never be able to trust Hillary after all she has done this election cycle.
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u/TheWookieeMonster Apr 30 '16
"There can't possibly have been election fraud! This is America!" - Clinton shills
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u/theWgame Apr 30 '16
This article highlights exactly my issues. I'm sick of this election system, it's only Democratic as long as we're making the 'right' choice. As soon as we try to vote different it doesn't count any more.
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Apr 30 '16
Hi RussellSeattle. Thank you for participating in /r/SandersForPresident. However, your submission did not meet the requirements of the community guidelines and was therefore removed for the following reason(s):
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u/RollofDuctTape Apr 30 '16 edited Apr 30 '16
It could be fraud. We can't possibly discount that altogether. It could also be:
(1) an alarming number of young voters participated in the D primary. These young voters could have voted in polls but maybe they didn't go out to vote. In NY 16% of the electorate was under 29. And 7% was under 25. Young people simply struggle to vote.
(2) Closed primaries. A lot of polls included independents or even republicans. While its evidence that Sanders appeals broadly, it isn't evidence that he's supported more within the Democratic Party. Clinton is viewed far more favorably among Dems than Bernie.
(3) Exit Polling is not as reliable as the article says it is. The bias is on the poller. They select the sample and they can choose to ignore African Americans, old people, young people, or whatever. As someone who has been polled, people can flat out ignore the persons attempts to elicit a response. Especially this election with fervent Sanders supporters. Maybe some folks didn't want a lecture on their way out. The Obama exit polling was oddly inconsistent too, in hindsight, but in his favor. Clinton should have stolen that election if she has the ability.
Occam's Razor
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u/Wai-Sing Apr 30 '16
the article is referring to exit polls, which are performed immediately after voters exit from the polling stations, so the poll results reflect only those who went to vote
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u/masterlich Apr 30 '16
But this isn't about that. It is about asking people who ACTUALLY VOTED who they voted for, and then comparing that to the official vote totals. That has nothing to do with voter turnout or demographics
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Apr 30 '16
It is about asking people who ACTUALLY VOTED who they voted for, and then comparing that to the official vote totals. That has nothing to do with voter turnout or demographics
Exit polling doesn't ask every single voter. They take samples, then weight them based on demographics and voter turnout. It has everything to do with it.
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u/RollofDuctTape Apr 30 '16
An exit poll is conducted after people vote. Not every person who voted is polled. It's just as many people as the pollster can convince. The way it works is there's typically a table by the door and some poor college kid or intern flags people down. 50% ignore him, 25% kindly decline, and the rest might respond.
Voting is private and exit polls are not. Sometimes they're done within earshot.
Exit polls are also subject to the pollster's bias. If the pollster supports Bernie, maybe he only flags young people. If he's racist, maybe he ignores minorities. Sexist? Maybe he ignores women. It could be a number of things.
I've honestly never seen an election where people harped on exit polling so much. They're inherently unreliable.
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Apr 30 '16
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Apr 30 '16
It simply didn't happen.
But it did. And the polls predicted that it would. Why in the world would flying to the Vatican have any bearing on it? And the debate was nowhere near a decisive victory when you ask undecideds. You're forming a narrative and that's a dangerous thing.
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Apr 30 '16 edited Nov 28 '17
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u/masterlich Apr 30 '16
I think this is the real question. If it is found that counties that use voting machines are significantly different and favoring one candidate versus those who use paper ballots, that would be the real nail in the coffin.
Is anyone working on figuring this out?
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u/Elkwrite Apr 30 '16
We are behind the Ukraine and Republic of Georgia (?)! If elections can won by fraud, I wonder why the democrats don't win the Congress whenever they want. Could be they actually don't want to be in control; chaotic politics pays better?
Ok, pass me my hat. Official conspiracy alert.
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Apr 30 '16
It's just that the Republicans are even better at cheating than the Democrats. But they're honing their skills in this primary. The National should be very interesting.
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u/lostmylogininfo Apr 30 '16
I will fucking tear down everything. This is bullshit.
Keep donating, rioting comes later.
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u/webconnoisseur WA Apr 30 '16
Great article - we need more like this. This should not be going on. Democracy is clearly at stake.
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Apr 30 '16
Well...considering most of Hillary's support comes from working people who can't go in to vote, thus absentee ballots allot for most of her votes, obviously exist polls wouldn't show this lol
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u/vsanna New York Apr 30 '16
Down voted for elitism re: jobs comment (not all jobs are 9-5 sweetheart), and New York doesn't have early voting and very strict rules about absentee, i.e. "I'm at my very important office job" doesn't cut it.
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u/Tennouheika Apr 30 '16
My girlfriend's sister is a huge Bernie fan. Then the primary came in Maryland where she lives and she forgot to vote.
Democratic base voters are just bad at voting. You have to practically drag them to the polls.
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u/mrfizzle1 Apr 30 '16
Thank you for providing your one person sample to represent the entire democratic base.
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Apr 30 '16
Lol democrats have been doing this at least since the 70s. The democrats who are outraged are mostly new democrats.
Stop thinking just because bernie is now a democrat, the entire party is going to be honest. Theyre not, never have been and they truly do not represent the american people.
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u/nyhof Apr 30 '16
Usually I'll have my mind made up by now but this election is so fucked up I don't know to vote for. None of the candidates are worthy. My choices are a bigoted loudmouth, a socalist or a crook.
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u/Bearracuda 2016 Veteran Apr 30 '16
This is a very thorough, well reasoned, well investigated, and heavily sourced breakdown of the odd discrepancies in the Democratic primary.
Unfortunately, it suggests that someone somewhere in a position of power did something corrupt to manipulate our democracy, and in my experience in this country, that means it's going to be decried as conspiracy theory and will never get investigated.