Reply #9: This is a little difficult to explain [View All]

Sometime after 1:00 a.m. on November 3rd, CNN "adjusted" their exit polls to fit the official vote tally. These polls cannot be taken seriously as reflecting the actual vote.

Some people feel that the purpose of the "adjustment" was to defraud the public. That may be so, but I am willing to give it a more benign interpretation until proven otherwise: Adjustments to polls are sometimes made to maintain the relative percentages of all the demographic groups, while changing the final numbers to reflect what are believed to be the "real" numbers. In this case, what are believed to be the "real" numbers are the offical vote tally numbers.

Anyhow, I have never heard anyone contend that the "adjusted" CNN exit poll numbers reflect the actual exit poll depiction of the final presidential results. There is no way anyone can contend that because there are numerous screen shots, many of them posted on the DU, that showed the real exit poll numbers after 1:00 a.m. on November 3rd, and these were radically different than the "adjusted" numbers that were posted minutes later. For example, EOTE posted a screen shot of the Ohio exit poll shortly after 1:00 a.m. on November 3rd showing Kerry up by 6 among women and 2 among men. Yet, the "adjusted" exit poll appeared a minute later, showing Kerry behind among both women and men. The screen shot that EOTE posted included the final sample size number, so there is no way that the results could have changed so radically by the adding of additional data. Rather, they were "adjusted".