Exit Poll Versus Reported Vote Count
By Theodore de Macedo Soares
Election results from the computerized vote counts of the 2020 Michigan Democratic Party presidential primary differed significantly from the results projected by the exit poll conducted by Edison Research and published by CNN at poll’s closing. The large discrepancies greatly exceeded the margin of error for the exit poll projected differences between candidates. In this election candidate Sanders underperformed his exit poll projected proportions by 15.4%. Sanders consequently received 105,000 less votes than projected while others (mainly Biden and Bloomberg) received 111,000 more than projected by the exit poll. Of concern is Michigan’s destruction of the ballot images, that could have been used to greatly facilitate a recount, that were created by their scanners for their counts. This destruction appears to violate both federal and state laws.
This large vote shift is made more remarkable by the fact that Edison Research had almost an hour’s access to Michigan’s rapidly accumulating vote totals from almost the entirety of the state that closed an hour earlier than the small sliver in the central time zone, to alter, as is their normal practice, the exit poll to conform to the vote totals. After this hour’s adjustments the exit poll used herein was published. Undoubtedly candidate’s Sanders exit poll proportion was much larger than the proportion first published and Biden’s much less. Conceivably, given the large discrepancy remaining after alteration, the pre-adjusted original exit poll may have shown a Sanders’ win.
The same can be said for Sanders’ and Biden’s vote-count-adjusted exit polls for Texas, New Hampshire, and next Tuesday, Florida. Unless Edison or others release the unadjusted exit polls for these and other states with dual time zones, U.S. citizens will never know the original exit poll’s projected proportions of votes for each candidate. This is unfortunate as these same citizens will also never know with any degree of certainty the actual proportion of votes cast for each candidate as they were counted by unobservable computers.
It was to protect the trust in its elections that the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled in 2009 that all important aspects of an election must be observable and its citizens able to witness the counting of their ballots. Now, due to this ruling all counting is done by hand in the same precincts in which they were cast and in view of the public. With the same concerns most major technologically advanced democracies in the world protect the trust in their elections with hand-counted ballots.
In Michigan, the combined discrepancies between the exit poll and the vote count for candidates Sanders and Biden totaled 7.5%, much larger than the 4.6% margin of error for the exit poll difference between the two. These same discrepancies between Sanders and Bloomberg totaled 10.2% about four times the margin of error at 2.5%. All margin of errors calculated at 95% confidence interval (CI). See table note 5. Values greater than the margin of error are considered statistically significant. The discrepancies in favor of Biden and Bloomberg substantially exceed the margin of error at 99% (CI).
The United States remains one of the few major democracies in the world that continue to allow computerized vote counting—not observable by the public—to determine the results of its elections.[i] Countries such as Germany,[ii] Norway, Netherlands, France,[iii] Canada,[iv] United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and many other countries protect the integrity and trust of their elections with publicly observable hand-counting of paper ballots.[v]
The common belief that the mere existence of paper ballots, allowing for a recount, lends reassurance to the voter, is in practice without foundation. If the computer system is suspected as the source of a possible miscount, obviously it would be improper to repeat this method and a hand-count made necessary. Even absent the necessity for litigation, the costs assessed by the state for such a recount would be prohibitive to the petitioner.
Many states, such as Michigan, use scanners to make images of the ballot that are then counted by computers. Approximately 80% of U.S. jurisdictions use such image-creating scanners. These images easily aggregated and disseminated would immensely facilitate recounts. According to trusted sources Michigan’s Secretary of State ordered all precincts to disable the default setting in the machines to save these images.
The reason given is that such image retention would pose a delay in the processing of votes and that the paper ballots are a sufficient record. All federal-election materials are required under federal and state laws to be preserved for at least 22 months. As it is the images and not the actual ballots that were counted, their destruction appears to violate federal and state laws.
Inquiries may be made to Michigan’s Secretary of State. For the important elections occurring next Tuesday, particularly in Florida, with dual time zones and less reliable exit polls resulting from the incorporation of Florida’s machine counts, inquiries may be made to the Secretary of State of these and other states.
Although the retention of such
images is invaluable in facilitating recounts, in practice the only count that really
matters is the first one. As in all other major democracies this first count, if
the U.S. wishes to engender trust in its elections, must be done by hand.
[1] Exit poll (EP) downloaded from CNN’s website by TDMS on election night, March 10, 2020 at 9:00 PM ET. Candidates’ exit poll percentage/proportion derived from the gender category. Number of EP respondents: 1,685. Exit poll proportions rounded to nearest integer as appropriate for data derived from whole integers. As this first published exit poll was subsequently adjusted towards conformity with the final computerized vote count, the currently published exit poll differs from the exit poll used here and available through the link below.
[2] Candidates’ percentage/proportion of the total computer-generated vote counts derived from reported counts (99% reporting). Published by The New York Times. Total number of voters: 1,585,360.
[3] The difference between the exit poll proportion and reported vote proportion for each candidate (subtracting values in column two from the values in column three). A positive value indicates the candidate did better and received a greater share of the total reported count than projected by the exit poll. For example, candidate Sanders, reported percentage/proportion of the total vote decreased by 6.6% compared to his exit poll share.
[4] This column shows the percentage increase or decrease from the candidate’s exit poll projection (difference in column four divided by exit poll proportion in column two). This value is used to show how many more or less votes the candidate received than projected by the exit poll. Shown only for candidates with 4% or more share in the exit poll.
[5] This column presents a distinct Margin of Error (MOE) of the exit poll (EP) for the differences between candidate Biden and each of the other candidate’s EP results. The exit poll MOE, for example, between Biden and Sanders is 4.6%. For simplicity MOE not shown for candidates with less than 4% share in the EP. MOE calculated at 95% CI according to multinomial formula 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
[6] The disparities between the exit poll and the reported computer-generated vote counts comparing Biden and Bloomberg with each of the other candidates (subtracting each candidate’s difference between exit poll and computer count from Biden’s and Bloomberg’s differences of 0.9% and 3.6% respectively. Disparities between Sanders and Biden are much larger than their MOE. Between Bloomberg and Sanders, they are four times their MOE. These disparities are significant as they cannot be attributed to the MOE.
Endnotes
[i] Fittingly, according to a recent Gallup World Poll, only 40% of Americans say they are confident in the honesty of U.S. elections. Finland and Norway with 89% of their citizens expressing confidence in the honesty of their elections along with the citizens of 25 other countries have greater confidence in their elections than do Americans.
[ii] In 2009 the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled that every important aspect of an election must be observable by the public and thus “meet the constitutional requirements of the principle of the public nature of elections.” No amount of machine testing, security requirements, and licensing procedures can compensate for the constitutional requirement that “the essential steps of the electoral procedure being examined by the citizens.” And “trust in the regularity of the election [can] only [be realized] by the citizens themselves being able to reliably retrace the voting.”
The court also noted that while vote fraud with hand-counted ballots would be easy to detect, “programming errors in the software or deliberate electoral fraud committed by manipulating the software of electronic voting machines can be recognized only with difficulty.”
[iii] During the 2007 presidential election, eighty-three municipalities (France has 36,569 municipalities) were allowed to use voting machines. Due to security concerns and the inability of voters to determine if their votes are counted correctly a moratorium, that remains today, prevents additional municipalities from introducing voting machines. In the 2012 elections only 64 municipalities continued their use. The French government desires a total ban on their use.
[iv] In Canada, the results of federal elections are determined exclusively by hand-counted paper ballots. Some provinces have adopted voting machines for local elections. See here, here and here.
[v] The United States’ long ballots–containing federal, state, and local races–are commonly cited as being unwieldy for hand-counting. The use of Sweden’s method of providing different colored paper ballots for federal, state, and local races that are then sorted prior to hand-counting addresses this objection and allows for at least the hand-counting of federal elections with only three races per ballot.
Edited March 31, 2020. Corrected margin of error set at 90% CI instead of 95% CI
***
Download Michigan 2020 Democratic Party Primary Exit Poll. Published by CNN at poll’s closing on election night.
Comments made on this or related pages that may be helpful to the reader (comments made on another page will open a new tab):
Why the exit polls accessible today differ from the exit poll used here.
Do you have a link re: the destruction of ballot images?
My trusted source gave me this information by phone. Meanwhile, as I suggested, call the office of Michigan’s Secretary of State and have them confirm or deny the claim made here and report back on this post!
While you’re at it, call Florida’s office of the Secretary of State to see if they also switched their scanners from automatically saving the images used for the count to destroying it! Report back here.
No one is going to take you seriously because someone “told you on the phone”. You have to do better than that.
then lie this is important
You need to do your homeelwork before throwing shade. There are instances of fraud in six other states and you pick one detail to criticize in one state. We take him seriously because this has happened before and experts on election integrity say Michigan is known to do this. Trustvote.org
sources (who may wish to remain anonymous) phone in tips all the time. i’m not sure why you find a regular occurrence in journalism so incredibe…
As Ted suggested, go to the direct source if you want to verify. I’m curious about Massachusetts, California, Texas, South Carolina, New Hampshire, and Vermont too! Did these states retain the ballot images or not?
We have the proof through our attorneys who were dealing with the MI SOS office. They said that they didn’t have to save the ballot images. That saving then could cause long lines, also the images are not readable. What they’re doing is breaking the law.
Our expert witness Dr. Thomas W. Ryan, who holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and has over 30-years’ experience in digital image creation, processing, and interpretation, said in his affidavit: “Deleting ballot images significantly undermines the integrity of the election system that derives all its tabulation data from those images.”
2.1.10 Data Retention
a. United States Code Title 42, Sections 1974 through 1974e state that election administrators shall preserve for 22 months “all records and paper that came into (their) possession relating to an application, registration, payment of poll tax, or other act requisite to voting.” This retention requirement applies to systems that will be used at any time for voting of candidates for federal offices (e.g., Member of Congress, United States Senator, and/or Presidential Elector).
b. Therefore, all voting systems shall provide for maintaining the integrity of voting and audit data during an election and for a period of at least 22 months thereafter.
Because the purpose of this law is to assist the federal government in discharging its law enforcement responsibilities in connection with civil rights and elections crimes, its scope must be interpreted in keeping with that objective. The appropriate state or local authority must preserve all records that may be relevant to the detection and prosecution of federal civil rights or election crimes for the 22-month federal retention period, if the records were generated in connection with an election that was held in whole or in part to select federal candidates. It is important to note that Section 1974 does not require that election officials generate any specific type or classification of election record. However, if a record is generated, Section 1974 comes into force and the appropriate authority must retain the records for 22 months.
c. For 22-month document retention, the general rule is that all printed copy records produced by the election database and ballot processing systems shall be so labeled and archived.
To add to what John Brakey has stated above, the idea that saving the ballot images would cause “long lines” is beyond ludicrous! It takes less than a second to do so. To claim the ballot images are not readable is also beyond ludicrous… they are an image of the ballot and are used to tabulate the votes rather than the original paper ballot. They ARE readable. There is no legitimate reason for changing the DEFAULT SETTING of the machines which is set to SAVE ballot images — NONE! The fact that they did so in a state where there are many signs of major anomalies is very telling. We need this looked into by the top election integrity experts in the country, like John Brakey and the lawyers he works with, who are the best of the best. They can do a forensic analysis of what has happened in Michigan and in several other states where there is good reason to believe something is not right with the reported votes…. that in fact, the projected “winner” was not actually the winner… that in fact, even where the “winner” wouldn’t change if the vote tallies were correct, the candidate in the second position, almost always Bernie Sanders, would pick up way more delegates. BUT HERE’S THE RUB…. the CANDIDATES that are potentially affected by these anomalies are the ones with the most standing… not us, not the voters, not even the election integrity experts standing by to help and have already been working their hearts out to helo. The affected CANDIDATES are the ones who have the most power to do something about this situation. If the CANDIDATES do not call this out and be prepared to make challenges, record requests, then experts like John Brakey, and the top rated election integrity lawyers he works with, are much more limited in what they can do. Mostly I’m talking about BERNIE SANDERS here. He seems to be the most affected candidate by all the anomalies that we’re seeing, state after state, and if he does not rise to the occasion, call this out, and accept the help from election integrity experts, then we will again have a presidential primary that cannot be trusted in any way! AND — if the Democratic Party and the “establishment” actually think they can install a candidate under these highly suspicious circumstances and actually win in the fall…. they are fooling themselves… this didn’t work in 2016 and from what I’m seeing it’s even less likely to work this time. We need a TRANSPARENT, FAIR, and VERIFIABLE election process for the Democratic nominee to be enthusiastically accepted. We as citizens/voters need to rise up too and DEMAND from the candidates that they defend our votes and our civil right to have our votes counted as cast. They need to defend our right to know that our votes actually get counted for the candidate we marked on our ballot. When there are obvious anomalies in the election, glaring ones even, like we are seeing now, it is the CANDIDATE that has the most power — way more power — to initiate a process to get to the bottom of what happened and correct any “errors” — intentional errors or not. I am a non-partisan election integrity advocate. I want fair, transparent, and VERIFIABLE elections above all. I want everyone’s vote to count as they cast it. I want everyone to be able to vote without the EXTREME VOTER SUPPRESSION we have seen all over the country, particularly in precincts that are Bernie Sanders’ strongholds, such as Latinx communities, Muslim communities, Native American communities, communities with high number so of younger African Americans, and precincts near colleges. Does anyone actually believe all this massive voter suppression we are seeing is unintentional and random? I is obviously NOT random and it IS intentional…. regardless of the psycho babble the colluding corporate media spits out 24/7. Candidates and parties who think they have to actually cheat to win don’t really have their power stem from the people. Instead, they STEAL power from the people — they steal their power from us, the voters, the citizens — candidates that must cheat to win steal their power from every one of you reading this post….. and what kind of leader will that make them? Do you actually think people who cheat to win elections will be working hard for the people? Not no but hell no! Unfortunately, many of us witnessed large scale cheating, state by painful state, in the 2016 Democratic Primary — especially for those of us, like me, who wholeheartedly supported Bernie Sanders. We watched all the cheating and we wept inside, sometimes crying out loud in fact. Many of us spend dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of hours trying to help stop this evil force. I and many others still have something akin to PTSD living through that primary, watching all the obvious irregularities that occurred state after state after state…. and ultimately living through the most painful part when Bernie Sanders refused to call it out, challenge it, take legal action, use the powers a candidate has to do so…. many of us BEGGED BERNIE SANDERS TO CALL IT OUT.. but he did not… and I and many others believe we’d be in a very different country/world right now had he done so…. many of us think he/we actually WON that primary and that he/we would have defeated Trump. Now, here we are again. We’re at that all so important critical time again. Bernie Sanders, the candidate that so many of us love and fully support, was and still is on the cusp of winning the Democratic nomination…. not with power stolen from the people like happens all too often in our broken democracy but with the collective bottom up grassroots power from the millions of people who support him. This election is still Bernie Sanders’ for the taking if, and only if, he stands up to the election anomalies and uses his rights as a candidate to do something about it…. powered by the people…. I’m sure for example that the funding to do a forensic investigation and take the necessary legal action would come pouring in if Bernie Sanders speaks out. I’m quite certain that his millions of supporters will have his back in every possible way in fact. One the other hand, if Bernie Sanders remains silent and doesn’t speak out on the election anomalies we’re seeing in this election process, state after state, then he will lose, and wel will lose, regardless of whether or not the people gave him more votes and he earned more delegates. The election WILL BE STOLEN if he doesn’t speak out and accept the help of election integrity experts and lawyers. If Bernie doesn’t speak out, he and we will have our votes stolen again…. the entire election will be stolen again. Our democracy, which seems to be on it’s last dying breath, will die too. We are in fact well on our way to becoming an OLIGARCHY, not a democracy, and I believe if Bernie and all his supporters allow this election to be stolen, that just may be the final nail in the coffin and our democracy is so destroyed, we pass a point of no return. THAT’S HOW SERIOUS THE SITUATION IS AND PEOPLE NEED TO WAKE UP TO THAT FACT. Don’t be distracted by anything. WE need to be zero focused on saving this election, and in doing so, saving out democracy. So, what do we need to do? Everyone reading this needs to take action themselves…. not just complain… not just whine… not just wallow in misery… this is the time for IMMEDIATE ACTION WITH ALL HANDS ON DECK!!! This is not the time to just sit back and hope there’s someone else out there that will ride in on a white horse and save the day. What we’re fighting against is too damn big to be defeated by one or a few people. It’s going to take an army of people. Every one of us who understands that this election is being stolen from Bernie and from us needs to take action right now and all support the actions each of us take. Here’s the most important task at hand…. the most important action you can take today. If you’re a Bernie Sander’s supporter, we need to DEMAND from our beloved candidate that he do what he’s been doing his entire life….. fighting for civil rights…. we need to DEMAND THAT BERNIE CALLS THESE ELECTION ANOMALIES OUT IMMEDIATELY AND GET THE BALL ROLLING ON PUTTING IN PLACE AN ELECTION INTEGRITY TEAM THAT CAN DO A FORENSIC AUDIT OF WHAT HAS BEEN GOING ON IN THIS ELECTION, ORDER RECORDS, AUDITS, LEGAL ACTION, WHATEVER THESE EXPERTS DEEM NECESARY… we need to insist that Bernie immediately accept help from the election integrity experts who are ready and willing to do what needs to be done and have the expertise and knowledge to do it right and in the most efficient and effective way. We need to demand that Bernie be ready and willing starting right now today to take legal action immediately when and where election integrity lawyers tell him it makes the most sense to do so. We need to DEMAND this of Bernie Sanders and his election team. We also need to DEMAND he does so IMMEDIATELY because we are running out of time. That means taking action yourself and recruiting everyone you know and everyone you are in contact with online to let our collective voice be heard in every conceivable way….email, social media, letters, network, reach out to people Bernie knows, his surrogates, the celebrities supporting him, his trusted inner circle, and yes, I honestly think we need to take to the streets with signs and megaphones in places Bernie can see us….. think outside the box too and be creative too…. someone out there may have the idea that could get Bernie’s attention enough that he/we can save our democracy. We need to let Bernie Sanders know that we CAN win this thing… that we really do believe in “NOT ME US” and that together, with him, we can win this thing if he takes the action of accepting help from the election integrity experts who can do the much needed forensic audit of this election and take the legal action necessary to have a FAIR, TRANSPARENT, and VERIFIABLE election…. or at least one approaching that as much as possible given what’s happened so far. Last night was the final straw for me. A very nice lady from southern California who has been working her heart out trying to document all the ridiculous problems with voter suppression, etc, in southern California…. and working her heart out to call out the election fraud we’re seeing… when she alerted me to the fact that King County Washington had been called for Joe Biden, not Bernie Sanders. WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Does anyone reading this actually believe for one second that Joe Biden actually won King County Washington? If you believe that, then let me tell you that everything you see, hear, taste, touch, and smell is false! This is actually what the colluding corporate media and election officials are reporting…. that Joe Biden, not Bernie Sanders, won King County!!! King County is the home of Seattle! This is where Bernie Sanders got more small dollar donations per capita than anywhere else in the nation. There is no way in holy hell that anyone will ever convince me that Joe Biden beat Bernie Sanders in King County Washington! THAT IS COMPLETELY UNBELIEVABLE BY ANY STANDARD in my experience on this planet. Yes, those of us who are election integrity advocates need to be non-partisan in our qwest for fair, transparent, and verifiable elections….. BUT this does not mean we have to check our common sense at the door when we see with our own eyes a report that is so obviously false it SCREAMS election fraud…. when we also see a PATTERN across the whole country where it looks like a presidential primary race is being systematically STOLEN FROM THE PEOPLE! Being a non-partisan election integrity advocate/activist doesn’t mean that we don’t call out immediately when something looks so outlandishly false that it is like a BRIGHT NEON FLASHING SIGN that seems to be pointing to places like Kings County and saying, “LOOK HERE FOR ELECTION FRAUD…. PLEASE PLEASE AMERICAN FIX THIS BEFORE YOUR DEMOCRACY BECOMES AN OLIGARCHY!” Yes, I used the “F” word on that one because I refuse to abandon my common sense when evaluating these situations… and if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then all odds are it’s a duck. If anyone from the Bernie Sanders team is reading my post….. I BEG YOU TO ACCEPT THE HELP OF THE HIGHLY REPUTABLE ELECTION INTEGRITY EXPERTS WHO ARE REACHING OUT TO YOU AND OFFERING HELP. CANDIDATES HAVE MORE RIGHTS THAN VOTERS TO ASK FOR RECORDS AND CHALLENGE THE RESULTS WHERE THINGS LOOK SUSPICIOUS…. and there are many red flags in this election, state after state. PLEASE DO NOT LET THIS ELECTION BE STOLEN FROM US. You may be thinking that if you call it out, you may hurt the Democratic nominee’s chance to defeat Donald Trump in the fall — I must tell you that in all likelihood, the exact opposite is true!!!! If these election anomalies aren’t called out, investigated by the experts who actually have the ability/knowledge to do it right, and the Democratic nominee ends up being one who did not actually win the most votes/delegates because the process was rigged, there is far less chance, very little chance in my estimation, that the Democratic candidate would win in the fall. Bernie Sanders is the only candidate on the Democratic side that has overwhelming grassroots support from the people. If that energy is stolen and another candidate is installed as the nominee through massive voter suppression, a 24/7 psych op, and a royal multi-state rigging of the machines… that candiate will be extremely weak and have very little chance of actually winning. We’re not dealign with just a FIVE ALARM FIRE… we’re dealign with a FIVE MILLION ALARM FIRE… and we need to treat it that way and do everything we possibly can to reach out to Bernie Sanders (and maybe other candidates) and demand they use their legal standing as a candidate to get to the bottom of what is going on. We need to insist that Bernie Sanders accept the help of election integrity experts who know exactly what to look for and take the recommended legal action where necessary. Bernie Sanders in particular has a lot of power to get this back on track if he will just step forward, call it out, and accept the help he needs to do a forensic analysis…. and it needs to be done immediately! So please, anyone reading this who supports both fair/transparent/verifiable elections AND Bernie Sanders, let’s do everything we can today to make Bernie understand what we want him to do and that we have his back if he does it… and that this is the only way to defeat the most dangerous president in American history…. and to bring about the changes Bernie talks about and we are ready to fight for. To those who might wish I was more diplomatic in this post, perhaps more non-partisan too, I say to you that there are times, urgent times, when the matter at hand is so damn serious, where the consequences of doing too little are too dire, that I feel I ethically have to throw diplomacy out the window and speak from the heart given the knowledge that I have. I remain a NON-PARTISAN election integrity advocate, staunchly so, but I’m also using common sense and my intellectual capacity and I see that it is BERNIE SANDERS, and his MILLIONS of supporters, who are getting the raw end of the deal in these election anomalies. I am also one of those millions of people supporting Bernie and all he stands for and I MUST speak out and try to help save this election from being flat out stolen.
Cindy, I’m just about to have a letter published in a regional cooperative paper here in NW Wisconsin appealing to Bernie to demand an independent recount and/or run as a third party. He said he would support the winner in a fair election, and this was not a fair election, and most of us know it, including people all over the world. This is going to severely damage democracy if he lets this go. I haven’t been able to find a petition for Bernie to do this, so I’m thinking about starting a petition on change.org. It’s not my forte to get eyes on something like that, so I’m looking for any advice I can get.
I think the problem, Deb, is that once the images are destroyed, they can’t do a recount. That’s why we need paper ballots.
Hey Pam – actually Michigan does vote by paper ballot, so if anyone wanted to do a recount they would just recount all the paper ballots each county/precinct saves.
Paper ballot source: https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_state
Paper ballots that are then counted by computers. https://www.verifiedvoting.org/verifier/#year/2020/state/26 Obviously if computers are suspect a recount using the same computers are useless.Try and get a hand-count of these paper ballots. Need to go to court and litigate.
Have you made any progress? This SHOULD DEFINITELY NOT BE DROPPED!
Mr. Brakey thank you. You’re one of the best advocates in the country on this issue. It’s quite a relief to hear you weigh in on this, there’s no one I’d rather have helping with this.
This is terrible news.
https://www.edisonresearch.com/category/election-polling/
Due to the coronavirus outbreak, the National Election Pool will not be conducting in-person Exit Polls for the primaries on Tuesday March 17th. We will still look to report counted vote totals as they are made available by elections officials and explore other options for reporting the views of voters in the states holding primaries. The National Election Pool remains committed to delivering the most comprehensive coverage of elections in the U.S
Yes. This indeed terrible news. The elections can go on, but to have a couple of people at each polling location hand out questionnaires to those who just voted considered a danger to themselves or the public? If concerned the pollsters could just wear gloves and face masks!
This has NOTHING to do with the corona virus!!!!!!!!!!! We are repeating what happened in 2016. They did exactly the same thing, cancelling the exit pols, in 2016 toward the end of the primary when California was about to vote (and several other states on that same day) when Attorney Cliff Arnebeck filed a lawsuit. As part of this lawsuit, he compelled the 6 media giants who paid for those polls (AP, CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, and CNN) to not destroy and provide him the UNadjusted poll data. He also pointed out the fraud that had been going on and let them know he knew they had to know. Their response was to cancel almost immediately and last minute those critical exit polls (especially California where many of us believe they rigged it royally for Hillary Clinton)! There was also a BIG BIG push at that time to anoint Clinton BEFORE the convention. I even heard they took FBI protection away from Bernie and his family or at least threatened to. I’m not certain of this last fact but the lawsuit and the fact they cancelled the exit polls in direct response to it, I’m sure of… I even talked directly to Cliff Arnebeck myself at the time to confirm.
I just wanna say I always enjoy reading your comments! I didn’t know about that lawsuit! I wish with all my heart that Bernie will challenge the results, but it looks like he simply won’t. Why is it so hard to get a simple recount?! Well, I know they made it harder in Michigan by destroying the digital ballots, but the other states shouldn’t be too difficult! Bernie Sanders was the first politician I ever voted for at 21 years old. I waited FOUR YEARS for another chance only to see my passion trampled on, see him humiliated, see everything we dreamed just cheated away. I feel powerless. We need to find a specific way to organize every one of us who believes there was rigging so we can collectively call out this abominable fraud!
Hey Joe, congratulations on voting in your first presidential season. I still remember my first time to vote for president too. 🙂 I want to encourage you to not give up on Bernie calling this out just yet. I think if enough people voice their concerns, he just might do it…. perhaps not with the fanfare some of us would like… but maybe in his own “Bernie way.” He already has lawyers working for his campaign but he doesn’t have the right lawyers for election integrity nor does he have the experts I have in mind… people who could really get in there and figure things out. I’ve thought that maybe we should revert to old fashioned methods and start a letter writing campaign. We send cards and letters with our own personal message to Bernie, Faiz, Nina, and all the rest…. handwritten if possible… and each ask/encourage in our own way for him to do this. Imagine if he could get thousands of handwritten letters in the next few days each asking him to please hold a press conference and state publicly that there are anomalies in the election and that he’s hiring a team of experts in election integrity to get to the bottom of it and fight for every vote and every delegate our campaign has earned. Cards and statements of appreciation, along with the very serious request of speaking out and acting on the anomalies we’re seeing…. each one with a unique way of expressing this. What do you think about this idea?
One of the best things one can learn is not to attribute to malice anything as easily explained by raw human incompetence.
Don’t embarrass yourself by bragging on waiting to do something useful only once every 4 damn years. FYI, in addition to presidential elections, we have plenty of state and local ones in between. Millions in their 60s and older have been passionately engaged for over 40 years. Do the Math and see that’s longer than you’ve drawn breath. Get a little perspective.
If Bernie’s Bros were to man up and SHOW UP AT THE POLLS, they’d all have some bragging rights. They don’t. To date, all they’ve been good for is an online distraction.
I agree, “millions in their 60s and older have been passionately engaged for over 40 years”. We started by protesting the Vietnam War, and have consistently opposed every war and U.S. intervention since. We have struggled for racial justice, for women’s and gender equality, for gay rights, for immigrant rights, for labor rights, and for climate action. We are women and men, gay and straight and trans, black, white, Asian, Latinx, and Native American. And we support Bernie because he’s been there on the front lines with us. Don’t do us a disservice by calling us Bernie bros. Maybe it’s you who needs some perspective.
Who the heck are you telling that guy what he should or should not be embarrassed about and what he should do. Your giveaway is your use of Bernie bro.(Trolling) You should be embarrassed to be repeating stupid labels like that.
I am right here with you… I don’t understand why this is not being talked about. What can we do to further this discussion?!
They can’t do a recount with these machines because they destroy the original image when they change it. There is no way to check it. So there is no proof. The only indicator is the exit polls.
Do over. Paper ballots mailed. Everyone. This would also be useful to those who waited hours and had to leave the line and those who decided not to vote, fearing loss of health, crushing medical bills, and death.
Holding an election during the plague was reckless and certainly not valid.
I was just today thinking about those cancelled exit polls. Thanks for filling in the detail.
I remembered that they were cancelled. Had no idea of what was behind it.
Please read the following critique of Teddy’s methodology. He’s misleading us and it’s quite unfortunate
https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/fj5go3/theres_no_exit_poll_discrepancy_a_deep_dive_into/
Dear Concerned User. The Reddit post claims my exit poll numbers are incorrect because they don’t match the currently published exit polls. The PDF copy of the exit polls I used are placed below every article in a yellow-highlighted box. See for yourself! The currently available exit polls have been matched to the computer count as is normal procedure by Edison Research. This is explained in Table Note 1 and throughout these articles addressing the same issue. READERS please go to that Reddit site and correct the misinformation!
The currently available exit polls have NOT been “matched” to the computer count. That’s not how it works. The adjustments are because the polls do not exactly capture the demographic spread, but the demographic spread is known from preexisting data, so the polls are adjusted to conform to the actual spread of the voter base and the vote totals. This serves the purpose of exit polling and also more accurately reflects the underlying distribution that was actually polled.
You literally have no idea how exit polling works. You’re just using earlier less accurate data to support a narrative and it has been exposed. Give it up already
First off you do not acknowledge that you and the Reddit poster made false accusations. Since the first attempt to discredit this work failed, now you try something else. The executive Vice-President of the polling firm has stated: “After polls close, data is weighted to the official final numbers.” https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/03/politics/what-are-exit-polls/index.html. In other words, they adjust the exit poll data to conform to the official results.
Why do they do that?
Because the Edison Research/CNN exit survey is NOT an integrity poll. It is for demographics. The sample size is far too small, and it is not a normal distribution. Actual election results are used for calibration. THis is academic and well understood.
Nonsense. Almost all the news networks depend on the accuracy of the exit poll in order to be able to call the elections before the counting is completed. The margin of error in the exit polls are primarily determined by the sample size.
Concerned Berner – If that were the case those adjustments would benefit or harm all the candidates randomly. Instead it is always Biden at the expense of Bernie. How gullible are you?
Actually I do think that other earlier candidates were affected as well, but not as much as it seems Senator Sanders was. In 2016 the information that I have is that there were discrepancies on the Dem side but not Republicans. That theirs were very close to the count and the exit polls. Lies are the scourge of our lifetime. They allow for much of what is wrong in this world.
Then refute his mathematical proof with mathematical proof of your own.
Have you looked at absentee ballots? It seems strange to me that Bernie won the in-person vote in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and Washtenaw County as a whole, yet lost by a two-to-one margin in the absentee vote. https://electionresults.ewashtenaw.org/electionreporting/march2020/index.jsp
We saw this same situation in SC I believe. I’m told by election integrity experts with massive experience that the absentee votes are much easier to rig.
um big problem SC rarely allows those and no early voting at all.
Ted, your work is so important. I hope everyone reading this Michigan report shares it widely. We really need to get the word out. The more people who know about this, the more chance we have to fix it now and in the future. Also… the more chance we get the candidates themselves to address it!
No Ted is literally making shit up. He has been thoroughly debunked and won’t respond to it. Perhaps you can?
https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/fj5go3/theres_no_exit_poll_discrepancy_a_deep_dive_into/
Dear Concerned User. The Reddit post claims my exit poll numbers are incorrect because they don’t match the currently published exit polls. The PDF copy of the exit polls I used are placed below every article in a yellow-highlighted box. See for yourself! The currently available exit polls have been matched to the computer count as is normal procedure by Edison Research. This is explained in Table Note 1 and throughout these articles addressing the same issue. READERS please go to that Reddit site and correct the misinformation!
The PDF copy of your exit polls ARE INCOMPLETE AND INACCURATE DATA. The final data is not “matched” to the vote count. That’s misleading and you know it. The adjustments are because the polls do not exactly capture the demographic spread, but the demographic spread is known from preexisting data, so the polls are adjusted to conform to the actual spread of the voter base and the vote totals. This serves the purpose of exit polling and also more accurately reflects the underlying distribution that was actually polled.
The final data IS matched to the vote count actually. The problem is, he didn’t save or archive his sources and just provides the numbers on this site. https://youtu.be/e5Oz-0IhzbA?t=2001 Nevertheless, many experts on exit polls don’t think they are accurate enough to predict elections. The MOE is too high, BUT severe discrepancies could indicate fraud. It’s a tricky situation
This scurrilous post was taken down within hours of my reply: https://web.archive.org/web/20200320171439/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fneoliberal%2Fcomments%2Ffj5go3%2Ftheres_no_exit_poll_discrepancy_a_deep_dive_into%2Ffksbddk%2F
“This post is entirely false. Readers, the first indication that a post is merely a “hatchet job” is when it is long and detailed like this but the author does NOT state that they contacted their target for a comment before doing all this work!
The exit polls have been conducted by Edison Research since 2003. They are not “preliminary” as this author claims but instead represents their final, best and most accurate assessment of who is going to win and by how much. The networks depend on these final estimates in order to call the races before the votes are counted.
Exit polls have been used throughout the world, including by the USAID as a means of checking the veracity of elections results. Once Edison starts incorporating the vote counts into their exit polls (what you can see now closely match the vote tabulations) they cease to be an exit poll and becomes an entirely different animal–a confirmation of the unobservable computerized vote counts.”
What percentage of our country uses electronic voting machines? Only a tiny fraction of the population right? Is that enough to create these differences?
most states do
WRONG. Most states (33) use paper ballots, and most of the rest use VVPAT (7) or Mail (3)
That leaves (7) “bad” states: KY TX TN NJ IN MS LA which still have some paperless DRE machines, though all but LA do have paper trails on some to many of them.
Massachusetts uses paper ballots ONLY. Wisconsin, California, Vermont, Virginia, New Hampshire, Missouri, Michigan, Florida, Alaska, Alabama, Wyoming
THESE ALL USE PAPER BALLOTS. NOT DRE MACHINES.
Washington, Utah, Colorado all also use paper ballots because they are 100% mail in voting. LOL.
Not sure what your point is. almost all paper ballots are counted by computer/scanners. The counting is absolutely non-transparent and performed by machines supplied across the US by three vendors who won’t release the computerized code for other to analyse.
It should be noted that paper ballots are often not hand read but machine read, like a scantron. Once in the computer, it gets tabulated through the machine software. Upon, studying the issue, according to blackboxvoting.org, they fractionalize votes so that the system administration, if they want to, can input the desire percentage for a particular candidate. The software will then recalculate the vote totals for each district and hiding the decimal value in the “official” results.
So let’s say Bernie got twice as many votes but the admin wants it to look like Biden got twice as many. The admin can input the desire percent outcome and it will effectively make every Bernie vote 1/4 of the original value to make it appear as Biden has twice as many votes.
Is anyone with legal expertise following this? I’d like an expert to weigh in on whether Bernie’s campaign has any recourse to demand paper recounts. Are there any laws or DNC-rules that would enable this?
There are definitely election integrity lawyers and other experts following this and wanting to help. However, they would have a lot more ability to do something about this if Bernie himself, his campaign, actually gets on board. Candidates have more legal standing, can get records more easily, and of course have a megaphone like no other to move things along. There are so many red flags in Michigan I don’t see how Bernie’s Team cannot speak out on this and put together the best election integrity team in the business to help investigate and file legal action where it makes sense to do so. Same in Massachusetts, Texas, and California at minimum from my perspective, although there’s major red flags in other states as well. If you’re a Bernie supporter, or just someone who wants elections to be fair and transparent, please consider contacting Bernie in every way you can… repeatedly… and contact his surrogates… repeatedly… and contact his inner circle…. repeatedly… we must impress upon Bernie that “Not Me Us” wants him to do this, that there’s real reason to do this, and that we have his back if he does. Bernie preaches “bottom up” not “top down.” I think we need to take to the streets if necessary to get the attention of Bernie and his team. He should understand why we’re doing it since that’s what he preaches. Might even make him proud. I also think it would be most effective if Bernie announced during the debate tomorrow that anomalies in the election results have been seen across several states and he’s taking that seriously and looking into it… that he’s putting together an election integrity team and they will be pursuing an investigation and legal action where appropriate. That might deter at least some of the rigging in future states…. possibly change the narrative in a big way… and we could maybe get back at least some of the delegates that we should have gotten in the first place.
Hi Jude, why don’t you reach out to her yourself and give her the URL of this website. Ask her to contact Ted. Do you have a website or social media page?
They can’t it was all brought up last election. The DNC was ruled private so they can count the votes anyway they want even if its fake.
I knew this was going to happen before they started voting. I’ve been waiting to see this post. Michigan was very important so they had to make sure Biden stole it. This makes me sick to my stomach.
Hi Joe, have you contacted Bernie to express your feelings on this mater? I suggest you do so… we need to convince him to speak out and investigate… and accept the help of election integrity lawyers and experts who know exactly what to look for… basically forensic audit 🙂 and they will need Bernie because the candidate has more rights to these records than do individuals/voters. Also, you may want to try contacting Bernie’s surrogates and inner circle/staff like his 4 co-chairs, his manager, etc…. plus maybe anyone who has endorsed him. If anyone reading this knows Michael Moore…. please get him this info!
What can be done to recount? This is a pivotal state for Bernie. Please help us make this right.
There’s still the paper ballots but as Ted was referring to in his report, it’s extremely expensive and very difficult to gain access to those… usually it takes the candidate filing a formal recount request I believe and copies have to be made and the candidate ends up paying for a lot of staff time. Ballot images are MUCH cheaper and faster to reproduce and recount. Plus, you have major chain of custody issues with the original paper ballots that you would not have with the ballot images.
What can be done? This state is/was pivotal!
Such a large Discrepancy really sounds suspicious. We all get screwed.
Can someone please explain what “vote-count-adjusted exit polls” means? Why would you adjust the exit polls to equal the vote count? doesn’t that defeat the entire purpose of an exit poll? Can someone explain what the purpose of this practice is?
Thank you
There is a documentary called Stealing America, One Vote at a Time that explains how exit polling works and how it’s been tainted.
Teddy, your methodology has been thoroughly critiqued in this write up. Please respond to us and them directly if you don’t mind. I trusted you and I’m very disappointed
https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/fj5go3/theres_no_exit_poll_discrepancy_a_deep_dive_into/
This write-up shows that all exit polling data was in the margin of error. Here is an exert that shows how you got such inflated numbers:
“To illustrate how much this affects the numbers TDMS reports, imagine a candidate who polls at 1% in the exit poll and gets 1.5% in the actual results. This is only a 0.5% polling miss and is likely well within the margin of error for the poll, but TDMS would report that as +0.5/1 = 50%, claiming the poll was a massive 50% off. This is how all of the numbers in the image are calculated, making all of them multiple times higher than the actual values.”
One deep dive deserves another, don’t you think? This subreddit labels itself as “Woke Capitalism,” is overtly pro-Biden, anti-Sanders, puts forward outright falsehoods about the DSA (ie: they don’t organize in minority communities and don’t vote), and is full of memes about big tents, as though that Overton window shift hasn’t been the exact recipe that has baked us a big, beautiful Trump cake. if such a webspace did not have a takedown piece about of one of the most widely visited and cited election integrity blogs on the web, there would be a need to create one.
Obviously we should have questions for a subreddit called “/r/NeoLibearal” but you’re not taking on the content of the critique. You’re simply rejecting it because of the cover of the book. That is not a deep dive AT ALL. That’s intellectually lazy and you know it. Please, do a deep dive and tell me exactly what is wrong with this debunk. The critiquer didn’t simply say “oh TDMS is a Bernie supporter, we can’t trust him. No, the critiquer actually went through the flaw in methodology one by one. This is how peer review works. Time for respond. So far, Ted hasn’t been able to do it. Will you?
See my comment above: https://tdmsresearch.com/2020/03/14/michigan-2020-democratic-party-primary/#comment-2626
You are spamming this site with the same false accusation that is addressed in https://tdmsresearch.com/2020/03/14/michigan-2020-democratic-party-primary/#comment-2625 Once more and you will be banned from this website!
Neoliberalism is a mental illness. We can therefore completely dismiss anything its adherents say as a dangerous communicable disease and quarantine these people until they have proven themselves absolutely free of their predatory tendencies.
Concerned user. I don’t know how you can argue that a 50% increase in a candidate’s vote count can only equal a 1/2% error. It’s easy to prove the accuracy of Ted’s methodology. Simply run the hypothetical numbers up to 10% and 15%. At that level, it becomes clear that your argument fails the test of logic.
You are making the argument that the “error” should be measured against the full universe of voters. That’s simply wrong by any standard.
The discrepancy must be viewed for each candidate individually. Any other framework for arriving at a supportable conclusion hides the discrepancy.
Hello TDMS,
As you may have noticed, the “vettting” gears are in motion, and doubts are being cast on who you are and your credentials. In the vacuum left by your admittedly in-progress ‘About’ section, Twitter comments are appearing characterizing you as “a guy in vermont with a blog and some speeding tickets,” which though perhaps true, comes across as an attempt to discredit. Point being, it will probably be important for the world to know more about you, or for you to be vouched for by election integrity figures and/or institutions we can trust*. Have you reached out to any notable people or organizations, or have they reached out to you, to affirm the factual accuracy of what’s presented here and generally bolster TDMS Research’s bonafides?
Side note: is there a plan in place for data redundancy to ensure that all the relevant evidence is backed up in multiple locations? Are you in possession of evidence that might disappear if you or your site does?
Thanks,
-Danny
* = for the record, I personally do not put the OAS in that category. I wonder if M.I.T.’s Election Data and Science Lab is a good alternative given the work they did to refute OAS’ claims about the recent Bolivian elections.
Hi Danny. Thank you for concerns and advice. Yes the “‘vetting’ gears are in motion” and the attempts to discredit this work are mounting. They range from misleading to utterly false and ludicrous. Examples of each litter the comments section.
Yes, I unwisely delayed updating the “About” section. Overwhelmed by the totally unexpected attention these posts have generated. It began with the MA post when this site received over 30,000 visitors on March 5—not even two weeks ago! It was updated today. As my credential include work on other social justice type issues I might as well cite them as well—so this sub-section will take a bit longer.
No secret stash of work! A few more states to do that’s all. My work is completely transparent with data used attached to every post, all references linked, real questions and criticisms answered. Although all my work and data is backed up in multiple places, you and hundreds or thousands of others downloading these posts to your computers is also good backup.
The only bit of statistics used, in the posts on the 2020 elections, is in the calculation of the margin of error related to the exit polls—that’s it. The remainder of the math is just simple addition and subtraction, division and multiplication, and percentages—learned by all in elementary school. Most people could, if they tried, duplicate this work.
Other reviewers. The coronavirus pandemic is seriously hampering this effort. No reputable person would just publicly lend their names to these posts without due diligence careful examination of what is presented. I would not want it any other way. I spoke to one professor, for example, this past Sunday and after extensive discussion, and previous related email correspondence. He agreed that my methods are sound (including on the 2016 work) and he would like to help but he has to first convert all the courses he’s teaching to online format—he’s jammed with work.
Thank you for the comprehensive reply and your tireless efforts. I pray that this culminates in the justice we so desperately need in these trying, contemptuous times. Please let me/us know how we can support you in your efforts moving forward. I should add that if the progressive movement is forced to pivot following a much-feared scenario in which Sanders drops out/is “eliminated” from the running, this work could form a crucial part of whatever path forward we take. I would encourage you to get in touch with Justice Democrats, Brand New Congress, Our Revolution, The Sunrise Movement, The Democratic Socialists of America, and other progressive organizations/individuals, to the extent that you are not in communication with them already.
Danny, these posts are my work. Cannot do it all. It’s up to you to make those contacts. It’s up to all of us to spread our concern. Only a mass movement will force the change to hand-counted ballots. The purpose of my posts can be seen in the “About” section.
Thank you again, Ted, for the detailed comparisons and astute analysis. That the scans are gone tell the tale for Michigan. The DNC is stealing the Primaries for a sure loser so that Trump will be re-selected, I think. We have to move outside national electoral politics with actions that empower communities–but your work, the exposure and discussion that you’ve brought to us, is invaluable. Again, thanks to all who are earnest in this series of threads!
[…] The DNC rigged the voting machines 2020 primary- just like the 2016 primary and presidential elections in which Sanders and Trump were cheated. https://tdmsresearch.com/2020/03/14/michigan-2020-democratic-party-primary/ […]
Richard Charnin. As you know, I disagree 100% with your thesis that Trump won the popular vote in 2016. I have analyzed your “True Vote Model” and found it lacking. Perhaps if you’re willing we can have a in-depth discussion at some later point.
For casual readers wondering about the veracity of Theodore’s claim about exit polls being updated after the closing bell, I reproduced his results. I followed his process while the Michigan exit polls and ballots were coming in, and I can vouch that CNN updated their exit poll figures to add a very small number of respondents after the initial results were published, and that roughly none of these late respondents were apparently Sanders fans. Theodore’s initial and final figures match mine.
But as both Theodore and the “Concerned ______” commenters have mentioned, it’s no secret that exit polls are adjusted after their responses are tallied. The real question seems to be: are these updates legit? Why does accounting for demographic spread appear to always result in votes being “taken” from Sanders, or “given” to the most popular alternative candidate(s)?
Theodore points out what the exit pollsters themselves appear to admit: the exit polls are weighted to fit the results. The Reddit missive linked in the comments mentions, but resolutely misses this point, crowing over the accuracy of the “real” results. I’d like to ask the Concerned Redditors: given that the exit polls received their marching orders from the election results, do you actually think it was possible for the exit polls to be “wrong”? If their outcome is determined by the votes themselves, then what purpose do they serve? They certainly don’t seem to be useful for verifying the votes.
The fact that Edison Research does both the exit polling and vote tabulation seems to constitute a conflict of interest… https://www.edisonresearch.com/election-polling/?fbclid=IwAR3S5fwQSO81keQgUbKtKyh3bkYqW2YJpyBPVcEMEKmpV6qBTF4Z-X5sFTQ#one
Edison does NOT tabulate the votes.
This is a quote from Edison’s website: “In an effort to improve quality, streamline data collection, and expand election coverage in 2018, ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News ended their arrangement with the Associated Press for vote tabulation and now partner with Edison Research for these data.”
That’s the tabulation for exit polls.
Hi Susan you’re correct. You’re quote can be seen at: https://www.edisonresearch.com/election-polling/?fbclid=IwAR3S5fwQSO81keQgUbKtKyh3bkYqW2YJpyBPVcEMEKmpV6qBTF4Z-X5sFTQ#one This is how AP did the tabulation: https://www.ap.org/en-us/topics/politics/elections/counting-the-vote
“A: Shortly before the polls close, over 4,000 stringers report to county election centers. When the first polls close, they’ll be ready to start phoning in the raw vote as it is reported by the counties. They’ll place their calls to AP election centers around the country.
At the centers, a total of over 800 vote entry clerks will answer those calls, and walk each stringer through a dialogue as they enter the number of precincts reporting and the candidates’ votes into our election night system. Since many states and counties display their election night results on websites, teams at the election centers also monitor those sites and enter results into the same system. This system tabulates the results and disseminates them in a number of formats to our member news organizations and customers.”
Yes. You’re correct. “A proven source for accurate and timely
nationwide vote tabulation – In an effort to improve quality, streamline data collection, and expand election coverage in 2018, ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News ended their arrangement with the Associated Press for vote tabulation and now partner with Edison Research for these data”.: This is how AP did it. https://www.ap.org/en-us/topics/politics/elections/counting-the-vote
This is the same primary where screenshots showed Bernie suddenly dropping by 300,000 votes within the space of 2 minutes and 4 more precincts reporting in.
Just saw this petition (and signed it) calling for the UN to monitor our elections, giving Ted’s exit poll research as a reason: https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/u-n-is-needed-to-oversee-democratic-primaries-due-to-election-fraud
❤️ I signed last week. Everyone on here needs to sign it. Ask friends to sign it!
There were 800k+ absentee voters that were not part of the Election Day exit polling. How does your analysis account for that? It was clear from the earlier released votes that Election Day voters were younger and more favorable to Bernie, while absentee votes went much more to Biden (expected since absentee votes skew old).
The absentee vote, according to observers, were counted on Tuesday morning of the election.
Regardless of when they were counted or the count was released, those voters were not surveyed for this exit poll. Because of this, Nate Silver called the Michigan exit poll “unusable.” Yet you chose to analyze it as if it didn’t even matter that nearly half of voters weren’t part of it. Can you comment on why you didn’t reveal this in your analysis? Why would you expect an exit poll that didn’t capture half that elections voting block to be anywhere close to the actual results?
Edison Research conducts reputable exit polls. They do, as a matter of course, poll early voters. Cite the link to Nate Silver’s article
“ Michigan exit poll results did not include interviews with early voters, who were a significant share of the state’s Democratic primary voters, but the results give a snapshot of which day-of voting blocs backed each candidate.”
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/exit-polls-2020-michigan-march-10-primary/
“ Apparently the exit polls from Michigan tonight only include in-person voters, not absentee voters. With absentee voting way up in Michigan this year (perhaps around half the vote?) that basically makes them unusable.”
Source: https://twitter.com/natesilver538/status/1237485136150659072?s=21
Edison ALWAYS polls early voters particularly in states with a high proportion of these voters. Please notice that Washington Post’s article did NOT cite any sources for their information. Please notice that Nate Silver begins his tweet with the word “Apparently” and no sources.
Not only Edison polls early voters, in Michigan the early votes WERE counted in the morning of the election with most probable access by Edison to these votes (my sources WITNESSED this counting). Here is Edison stating they, as a matter of course, poll early voters particularly in states with a significant proportion of these voters:
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/03/politics/what-are-exit-polls/index.html
What do you mean Washington Post didn’t cite sources for their info? They ARE the source, they fund the exit polls.
Why did you delete JE2727 response that Washington Post is the source itself as they find the polls? Why didn’t you respond to this comment and instead delete it?
Thank you for bringing this our attention. You must be referring to “Tim’s” above. This post was “unapproved” by mistake and it now has been placed back in the comments section. A thorough review confirms that not a single other comment has been removed from the comments section—by mistake or otherwise.
As is readily apparent to any reader, critical comments are welcomed here. Indeed, the utter transparency of this website is extremely valuable in reinforcing its credibility.
As “Tim” and “JE2727” share the same IP address located in Chattanooga, TN, they may be the same person. Your slip in referring to Tim’ post as from JE2727 is too much of a coincidence and indicates that you know this to be fact. Are you coordinating with Tim/JE2727 in a futile attempt to discredit the articles posted here?
You deleted JE2727’s comment about the washington post being the source of this poll. I screen shotted in and will be sharing it to show that you’re a fraud who censors facts. Un-delete his comment and respond to is or no one will take you seriously
See answer just above: https://tdmsresearch.com/2020/03/14/michigan-2020-democratic-party-primary/#comment-2836
Wait, the Michigan exit polls most definitely did NOT include absentee voters. They talked about it a bunch on CNN during that night’s election coverage.
BigFun, I watched CNN all night and recorded their coverage. Tell me where, approximately, they make this preposterous accusation. Edison Research are experts and highly experienced at conducting exit polls. They have conducted exit polls for the major networks since 2003. The accusation that they did not poll early voters in Michigan as is their stated and usual custom is beyond ludicrous particularly in the case of Michigan.
In 2016 just about every media outlet called Sanders’ victory over Clinton a “stunning upset.” Pre-election polling had him 21 points behind. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/08/bernie-sanders-wins-michigan-primary-hillary-clinton
Given this history and Michigan’s importance in the primary race, there is zero probability that in Michigan they would not maintain their high professional standards.
Theodore, I love the work and effort you put into this but you are dead wrong about the Michigan polls – they reported an issue or error with the collection of the early voter numbers. Your readers are counting on you to provide accurate data, and it’s really dangerous if misinformation is spread if people don’t know the full story. I’d strongly encourage you to remove your Michigan analysis in it’s entirety or completely rewrite it to make clear that given the exit poll issues with early voters there can be no expectation that they would be a reliable predictor of the actual votes/outcome.
Please let’s stop this nonsense. No one cites Edison Research—the firm that actually conducted the exit polls—as the source for this apparent deliberate attempt to misinform people. As mentioned above Edison is too experienced and professional to not include early voters in their polling. If they had problems in their polling they certainly, as professionals, would state so in their articles published at their site on the MI exit polls. Additionally, as these ballots were counted during the day, they certainly used their actual count in their exit polls.
Because Edison used the actual count of the early ballots as well as the incoming count from over 90% of the state that had their polls closing an hour before the polls were released their exit poll assuredly understated Sanders exit poll numbers and Sanders may have even won this state with the unaltered exit polls.
No correction/update on this yet? Michigan exit poll data that was released absolutely, 100% did not include early voters which made up nearly half of voters. There are two sources provided to support this earlier in the comment thread and there are additional sources to confirm it as well.
See my answers above
If you want to send a card or letter to Bernie Sanders, Faiz Shakir , or Nina Turner and the other co-chairs, asking them to please call out the anomalies we’re seeing in this election and to hire election integrity experts to help, here’s a good address for where to send them:
Bernie Sanders
Bernie 2020 Vermont Headquarters
131 Church Street, 2nd Floor
Burlington, VT 05401
I’m hoping he gets a mountain of them and they all collectively help “move the mountain” when it comes to addressing this issue publicly and getting the professional help he needs to take back this election that I think is being stolen state by state.
The truth is always simple.
Who the Fuque is this grandiose, delusional, long-winded No Name crank?
the truth is always simple… you must not understand how governments work yet.
Theodore, have you thought about accompanying these posts with some graphs of distributions before? Specifically normal/t-distributions of projected exit poll proportions, and where the final results lay on them. Statistics dealing with proportions can be pretty hard for people to wrap their heads around, but a visual can really help clarify how improbable some of these official results are compared to predictions.
Hi Jimbo. Yes you’re correct. These are exactly the types of graphs needed. I asked someone to do them for me–can’t do everything–last week. I can always use people with quantifiable background in statistics to help out. If you’re one of them or know others who may be willing to help, please contact me via the contact page. Thanks!
I’m taking a closer look now as I attempt to produce some simple figures for Michigan results, and I have to confess I’m a little confused on where you obtained your margins of error. You derived these from reported 95% CIs, right? Where can I find the rest of these?
The margin of error was derived using formula 6.2 in the article cited in Table Note 5.
The “n” was accidentally carried over from CA’s sample size (2,350).
https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/tv-station-broadcasts-biden-sanders-results-day-before-election/
Exactly. An investigation is underway for the sake of election integrity. And regardless of who wins, election fraud is serious and needs to be purged from our election process. Thanks for sharing! Cindy, Theo, Nikki, did you folks read this???
https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/tv-station-broadcasts-biden-sanders-results-day-before-election/
Lee Camp certainly has a way of driving the point home! This one is so well done, maybe we put part of it in a commercial!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk6iTd18lPI
Lee Camp certainly has a way of driving the point home! This one is so well done, maybe we put part of it in a commercial!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk6iTd18lPI
Hey All you wonderful people backing Bernie – a person of genuine integrity in his efforts to save America’s failed democracy. My country Australia has the same problem as yours. Representative democracy has become a slush fund for greedy corporate interests. I watch with dismay people being conned and their votes being stolen! Time to learn from Blockchain. It is now possible for every person on earth to have their own blockchain ID and transact or vote on a public verifiable ledger. Voter fraud can become a thing of the past as people don’t need to have a corruptible representative to help formulate policy or vote on new laws. We can vote on the issues and laws we care about directly. Elections are only empowering for special interest groups. Why should we have to choose a flawed candidate dished up to us, someone we hope will represent our best interests when we can have our say directly and within seconds securely from any digital device. Our elections are a sham circus that wastes billions of dollars trying to con us into believing we need someone to “represent” us! We don’t. I can engage with debates on issues I care about directly. I can help formulate and vote on laws that govern how we interact and transact. Technology like Loomio to aid collective decision-making already exists so we don’t need to invent much to transition to direct grassroots democracy. Blockchain doesn’t need a centralized authority to verify voting/transaction integrity. The revolution we all know we need can begin now and this Pandemic demands that digital voting must be implemented to save lives. And while we are at it, it is unfair that I don’t get to have a say in how other countries behave in the world because climate change pollution, extinction, and nuclear fallout don’t care about national boundaries! if it affects me I want a say in it!
Where can i see your full methodology
Please read the Table Notes. Also see the links provided below every article.
[…] Michigan 2020 Dem Primary: Exit Poll Versus Reported Vote Count […]
Ted. Can you respond to this fact-check.org article that ranked your claims to be false? This isn’t just some reddit article. This is a reputable website that I think deserves a response from you.
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/03/no-huge-red-flag-that-fraud-occurred-in-mass-primary/
Hi Jimbo. Thanks for citing this article by FactCheck.org. Their article provided the motivation to create the heading “Debunking Misinformation” above. Take a look. It addresses their reprehensible article with more to come. The scurrilous reddit post is also addressed. This section is still in formation.
Thank for making a “debunking misinformation” section of your website. That’s a really good idea, and I imagine that section will be getting a lot of traction as the “debunks” emerge.
However, your rebuttal didn’t address the the main argument being levied at you, which is the fact that the “early” exit poll results that you are using are ALSO heavily weighted. You mentioned that you take these earlier exit poll results because they are the last accurate dataset before the exit polls are fitted to the end results. That’s reasonable. However, the claim from this article is that even these “early” exit poll results are being heavily weighted as well due to the vote count as it’s coming in. Therefore, the earlier results you are using should be thrown out as well based on the same logic that you’re using to throw out the final results. Essentually, you would need the raw vote count in order to actually test election integrity, which Edison hasn’t released.
I would like to hear your response to that point. And you should add your response to this in your “debunking misinformation” page as well, because that is, in my opinion, the strongest argument against your methods
Thanks you
Jimbo you write: “the claim from this article is that even these ‘early’ exit poll results are being heavily weighted as well due to the vote count as it’s coming in.”
Yes, Factcheck.org’s reprehensible journalism does seem to state that the exit polls are being altered all day long with the vote counts. Unfortunately, just about every sentence they wrote is misleading or untrue.
It is illegal, indeed, a felony for election board members of any state to release any vote counts to anyone before the polls close in a state. See, for example:
“Election results are not public information until the polls close, even if the county’s absentee ballots are tabulated well before the polls close. County election board members and staff must not release results before the polls close to any person since a violation of that law is a Level 6 felony. (3-14-4-10)” http://www.state.in.us/sos/elections/files/2019%20Election%20Administrator%27s%20Manual.Final.pdf Page 149.
This is how Edison gets their vote counts (they took over from AP last year) AFTER polls close in a state:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200324153343/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ap.org%2Fen-us%2Ftopics%2Fpolitics%2Felections%2Fcounting-the-vote
Can you share the exit poll data from the other states that had exit polls? Will be interesting to see if they were as biased against Bernie as these.
Hi Tim. I will publish all. If you want the overall score here it is:
Primary State elections with exit polls: 17
States with exit poll/ vote count discrepancies in favor of Biden: 13
States with discrepancies favoring Biden beyond the margin of error: 11
States with discrepancies in favor of Sanders: 4
States with discrepancies in favor of Sanders beyond the margin of error: 1 (Tennessee)
I count 23 states with exit polls, not 17?
Only 17 states with usable exit polls:
Nevada and Iowa- No exit polls (they were entrance polls)
Washington – all mail-in-ballots – No exit polls
Florida, Illinois, and Arizona – After announcing they were not going to poll these states, Edison Research only polled them for part of the election day. Their polling for these states ended at 1:27 PM, 2:10 PM, and 1:26 PM respectively.
Colorado- This exit poll cannot be used to compare to the vote totals as Colorado did not report the votes received by Klobuchar or Buttigieg (they had withdrawn from the race). The CO exit poll had them receiving 21% of the vote.
TDMS – if you believe in the quality of the research you’re doing, you should open-source this data so others can replicate your analysis. We’ll need exit poll breakdowns by state including sampling and weighting information.
All data used is given. All methodology detailed. anyone can duplicate the analysis presented.
Hey Theodore. I saw your response in the comments about the fact check article and your discrepancy numbers – basically saying percent change is a common way to measure things. That’s true in situations where there is no cap – i.e. a salary increase from 50K to 60K is a 20% increase. However, that is definitely not how percent change is examined in a max 100% system. These four academics were all quoted saying essentially the same thing why are you correct and all four of these academics are wrong?
“Calculating gain/loss as the author does has the potential of making relatively small discrepancies seem much larger, I don’t know of anybody who analyzes poll numbers this way.” – William Mayer, political science professor, Northeastern University
“Not informative in any way, unless you want to show a bigger number. This is needlessly inflammatory.” – James McCann, political science professor, Purdue University.
“Misleading at best and corrosive at worst.” – Daron Shaw, professor, University of Texas
“Exit polls are not designed to be a check on the vote outcome. Period.” – Patrick Murray, director of Monmouth University Polling
A full response to FactCheck.org’s reprehensible journalism is still to come.
Briefly FactCheck.org, in classic “strawman” fashion, attacks someone else’s tweet and then in classic “red herring” fashion unloads both barrels on a minor statistic not emphasized in the articles to avoid the main theme that is emphasized:
As in the 2016 Democratic Party primaries, almost all states in 2020 primaries have significant discrepancies between the exit poll projected vote share and the vote share determined by unobservable computer counts. These discrepancies all go in one direction—against Sanders. The 2016 Republican Party primaries’ computer vote tabulations in all states but two, matched the exit polls projections within the margin of error associated with the exit polls.
FactCheck’s reprehensible journalism did not include the explanation that the statistic is used for the practical purpose of showing how many more votes, according to the exit polls, the candidate would have gained or lost. In MA, for example the article states Biden’s “vote totals represented a 16.2% increase of his projected exit poll share…he gained approximately 65,200 more votes than projected by the exit poll.” The converse, of course, is true for Sanders. What is presented is neither “misleading” or “inflammatory” just a plain and accurate statement that brings meaning to otherwise very dry numbers. (Do notice they do not dispute its accuracy)
Instead of including this explanation they “cherry-pick” and quote only one of the examples given demonstrating how percentage gain or loss is commonly used in everyday life as well as in every field of science.
Your last quote “Exit polls are not designed to be a check on the vote outcome. Period,” would be news to USAID and the US government who support and finance exit polls just for this purpose.
I wish you could do interviews with news outlets to explain your work. It would be nice if at least one mainstream media publication picked this up, but I suppose that will never happen.
I’m worried TDMS won’t do interviews because his math doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. :/
Have not been asked!
I would think if you reached out to Lee Camp or Jimmy Dore they would have you on their shows for an interview. Lee Camp has sited your work before and Jimmy is highly skeptical of the establishment and I have little doubt would lend an ear and a voice.
Hi there. I’m really interested in seeing a screenshot of the CNN polls the night of the election, or an archive link or something to show that the CNN pages are different now. Thanks for putting this information out so clearly.
Seriously. I’d like to see a reference for your numbers besides just the table and the link to the current stats on the page. Please
I personally recalculated the totals. Nobody had the straight results so, as you did, I used the CNN exit poll by gender to get the “total” results. At https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/entrance-and-exit-polls/michigan/democratic under “gender” 46% of respondents were male and 54% of respondents were female. 47% of male respondents said Biden and 41% said Bernie. 58% of female respondents said Biden and 34% said Bernie. To find the total, I multiplied the demographics by their proportion supporting Biden or Bernie then added the genders together.
(total, candidate) = (%male respondents) * (%male support) + (%female respondents) * (%female support)
Biden = (0.46 * 0.47) + (0.54 * 0.58) = 0.2162 + 0.3132 = 0.5264 = 52.64%
Bernie = (0.46 * 0.41) + (0.54 * 0.34) = 0.1886 + 0.1836 = 0.3722 = 37.22%
Which is actually really close to the official results: 52.9% for Biden and 36.4% for Bernie
I have no idea how you got 43% support for Bernie from those poll numbers. Neither male nor female support was even at 43%.
What were your exact equations to get those results? I’m upset that all exit poll data I found is clouded by double statistics (support by gender, support by race, never total support), which is a known method to lie by statistics. However, even after I follow appropriate methods to untangle the numbers, your numbers are completely off the mark. Without knowing your exact methodology to derive “total” results, your results are unverifiable. By my count they are wrong.
Hi Thomas. That’s great that you took the time to verify the results I published! As I noted in note [1] under the table, the first published exit poll results are subsequently altered to match the unverified and unobservable computer counts. You need to use the exit polls downloaded soon after the closing of polls that is supplied and highlighted just below the article.
This issue has been addressed in comments such as: https://tdmsresearch.com/2020/03/04/massachusetts-2020-democratic-party-primary/#comment-2115
[…] easy. All it takes to disprove election fraud is to do what every actual democracy — Germany[ii], Norway, Netherlands, France[iii], Canada[iv], United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, […]
[…] dropped out because former president Barack Obama told them to, Michigan spit out results miles off the exit polls and we were all on our way to President Joe Biden. Did I mention 2020 remains a frustrating memory […]