[Fishman]

billg
Yes I agree with you that corruption exists, on both sides of the political spectrum, but that alone proves nothing. Nor do any of your statements on this thread. You noted variances in data, not causation. I stick with my comments.

[billg]

Leanan wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'G')enerally, it's because rural and urban areas have different concerns. The biggest city in NH is Manchester, and Hillary won in a big way there. Do well in Manchester, and it's pretty hard to lose the state. Concord is pretty small in comparison.

[Fishman]

You are making huge extrapolations from demographics to voter outcome in a primary, think thats a wise idea? Campaign organization, better ads in certain areas and a million other things could explain the outcome. I'm not sure of the best medication for a conspiracy racked mind, but consider asking your physician for some Celexa and perhaps a few clonazapam. If all else fails perhaps aluminum foil wrapped loosely about the head might help.

[Leanan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('billg', ' ')OK...I just did a demographics search on Manchester vs. Concord. It appears that Manchester has a lower median income than Concord and Manchester has a higher percentage of minorites than Concord. But Manchester went big for Clinton and Concord sided with Obama. It doesn't add up!

[billg]

Here are the 3 largest cities in NH by municipality:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Concord - 10,939 votes

VOTE COUNT METHOD: Diebold Accuvote optical scan ; contractor: LHS Associates/John Silvestro

- Clinton = 3898 votes = 35.63%
- Edwards = 1750 votes = 16.00%
- Gravel = 11 votes = 0.10%
- Kucinich = 158 votes = 1.44%
- Obama = 4367 votes = 39.92%
- Richardson = 639 votes = 5.84%
- Other = 116 votes = 1.06%

[Leanan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')otice that the percentages for the Concord vote match up very well with the overall percentages for the hand count whereas the percentages for Nashua and Manchester are nowhere close to the overall percentages for the hand count.

[billg]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leanan', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')otice that the percentages for the Concord vote match up very well with the overall percentages for the hand count whereas the percentages for Nashua and Manchester are nowhere close to the overall percentages for the hand count.

[Leanan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')ike what kind of different concerns?

[billg]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')lso, areas along the southern border are full of people from Boston, who might have more "big city" concerns than the rest of the state. Concord is in the middle of the state, not along the southern border like Manchester and Nashua.

[Leanan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')assachusetts has a black governor named Deval Patrick. He won in a landslide vote over Kerry Healey (the female Republican candidate) in 2006. Deval Patrick has strongly endorsed Obama. In fact, he has been campaigning for him.

[billg]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Leanan', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'M')assachusetts has a black governor named Deval Patrick. He won in a landslide vote over Kerry Healey (the female Republican candidate) in 2006. Deval Patrick has strongly endorsed Obama. In fact, he has been campaigning for him.

[Tyler_JC]

1. All of your sources are from conspiracy theory websites.

2. Concord is a very different political animal than Manchester or Nashua.

3. The most important issue for NH voters was electability, not the economy or Iraq.

4. Voters believe that Clinton is more electable than Obama.

5. Female voters thought that Clinton's tears made her more human (and thus voted for Clinton) while male voters believed they were fake (and thus voted for Obama).

6. Union voters picked Clinton because they believed she had more experience in dealing with big evil corporations.

7. Clinton has more experience with regards to economic issues and with the recent economic turmoil, voters took notice.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')illary Clinton won the New Hampshire primary despite polls indicating she would lose by double-digit margins because three groups of Democratic voters cast their ballots for her.

Voters concerned about the economy, female voters, and union voters all voted for the New York Democrat by a considerably higher margin than expected.

The economy was the most important issue for Democrats, and Clinton bested Barack Obama by 9 percentage points on the issue. Clinton also did considerably better among women voters — nearly 60 percent of Democratic primary voters — beating Obama there by 13 percentage points. Female voters proved fatal to Clinton in Iowa – she lost among women there to Obama by 5 percentage points.

Finally, Clinton beat Obama among union voters by 10 percentage points. Union voters don’t play a major role in New Hampshire — only 20 percent of primary voters — but are considerably more of a factor in states down the road.

[seldom_seen]

I think the whole thing stinks.

Before the NH primary, I kept reading about how NH is known for all its independent voters and how "40% of the voters are independent" and so on and so forth...

When the results come out, the most oligarchic, establishment, corporate candidates come away with the prize: McCain and Clinton.



I don't buy it.

If you look at the endemic, systemic, deep-rooted corruption in Washington D.C., on Wall Street, the banking system and corporate boardrooms. You have to assume that this whole "election" process is just as corrupt until proven otherwise.

[frankthetank]

I do truly believe that the whole thing is rigged for a devil woman win. You can say hi to more laws, less rights when she takes here chair in the ovum office.

[Tyler_JC]

Tons Of Data On The NH Primary

It looks like my hypothesis was right.

Rural voters were more likely to vote for Obama over Clinton (39 to 34) but city voters picked Clinton (43 to 35).

People in the Concord/CT valley area were Obama fans 42 to 34.

But Industrial Areas (43 to 34) and the South (40 to 36) gave Clinton the edge.

[billg]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', '1'). All of your sources are from conspiracy theory websites.

[billg]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', '[')url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21225995/]Tons Of Data On The NH Primary[/url]

It looks like my hypothesis was right.

Rural voters were more likely to vote for Obama over Clinton (39 to 34) but city voters picked Clinton (43 to 35).

People in the Concord/CT valley area were Obama fans 42 to 34.

But Industrial Areas (43 to 34) and the South (40 to 36) gave Clinton the edge.

[billg]

Here is an article about the National Election Pool (a partnership between Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International) which conducts the exit polls which are cited above. I don't see how this organization could be trusted after what happenend in 2004.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Footprints of Electoral Fraud:

The November 2, 2004 Exit Poll Scam
by Michael Keefer

Republican electoral fraud in the 2004 presidential election was widely anticipated by informed observers--whose warnings about the opportunities for fraud offered by "black box" voting machines supplied and serviced by corporations closely aligned with Republican interests (and used to tally nearly a third of the votes cast on November 2) have been amply borne out by the results.1

One of the clear indicators of massive electoral fraud was the wide divergence, both nationally and in swing states, between exit poll results and the reported vote tallies. The major villains, it would seem, were the suppliers of touch-screen voting machines. There appears to be evidence, however, that the corporations responsible for assembling vote-counting and exit poll information may also have been complicit in the fraud.

Until recently, the major American corporate infomedia networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, and AP) relied on a consortium known as the Voter News Service for vote-counting and exit poll information. But following the scandals and consequent embarrassments of the 2000 and 2002 elections, this consortium was disbanded. It was replaced in 2004 by a partnership of Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International known as the National Election Pool.

The National Election Pool’s own data—as transmitted by CNN on the evening of November 2 and the early morning of November 3—suggest very strongly that the results of the exit polls were themselves fiddled late on November 2 in order to make their numbers conform with the tabulated vote tallies.

It is important to remember how large the discrepancy was between the early vote tallies and the early exit poll figures. By the time polls were closing in the eastern states, the vote-count figures published by CNN showed Bush leading Kerry by a massive 11 percent margin. At 8:50 p.m. EST, Bush was credited with 6,590,476 votes, and Kerry with 5,239,414. This margin gradually shrank. By 9:00 p.m., Bush purportedly had 8,284,599 votes, and Kerry 6,703,874; by 9:06 p.m., Bush had 9,257,135, and Kerry had 7,652,510, giving the incumbent a 9 percent lead, with 54 percent of the vote to Kerry’s 45 percent.

At the same time, embarrassingly enough, the national exit poll figures reported by CNN showed Kerry as holding a narrow but potentially decisive lead over Bush. At 9:06 p.m. EST, the exit polls indicated that women’s votes (54 percent of the total) were going 54 percent to Kerry, 45 percent to Bush, and 1 percent to Nader; men’s votes (46 percent of the total) were breaking 51 percent to Bush, 47 percent to Kerry, and 1 percent to Nader. Kerry, in other words, was leading Bush by nearly 3 percent.

The early exit polls appear to have caused some concern to the good people at the National Election Pool: a gap of 12 or 14 percent between tallied results and exit polls can hardly inspire confidence in the legitimacy of an election.

One can surmise that instructions of two sorts were issued. The election-massagers working for Diebold, ES&S (Election Systems & Software) and the other suppliers of black-box voting machines may have been told to go easy on their manipulations of back-door ‘Democrat-Delete’ software: mere victory was what the Bush campaign wanted, not an implausible landslide. And the number crunchers at the National Election Pool may have been asked to fix up those awkward exit polls.

Fix them they did. When the national exit polls were last updated, at 1:36 a.m. EST on November 3, men’s votes (still 46 percent of the total) had gone 54 percent to Bush, 45 percent to Kerry, and 1 percent to Nader; women’s votes (54 percent of the total) had gone 47 percent to Bush, 52 percent to Kerry, and 1 percent to Nader.

But how do we know the fix was in? Because the exit poll data also included the total number of respondents. At 9:00 p.m. EST, this number was well over 13,000; by 1:36 a.m. EST on November 3 it had risen by less than 3 percent, to a final total of 13, 531 respondents—but with a corresponding swing of 5 percent from Kerry to Bush in voters’ reports of their choices. Given the increase in respondents, a swing of this size is a mathematical impossibility.

The same pattern is evident in the exit polls of two key swing states, Ohio and Florida.

At 7:32 p.m. EST, CNN was reporting the following exit poll data for Ohio. Women voters (53 percent of the total) favoured Kerry over Bush by 53 percent to 47 percent; male voters (47 percent of the total) preferred Kerry over Bush by 51 percent to 49 percent. Kerry was thus leading Bush by a little more than 4 percent. But by 1:41 a.m. EST on November 3, when the exit poll was last updated, a dramatic shift had occurred: women voters had split 50-50 in their preferences for Kerry and Bush, while men had swung to supporting Bush over Kerry by 52 percent to 47 percent. The final exit polls showed Bush leading in Ohio by 2.5 percent.

At 7:32 p.m., there were 1,963 respondents; at 1:41 a.m. on November 3, there was a final total of 2,020 respondents. These fifty-seven additional respondents must all have voted very powerfully for Bush—for while representing only a 2.8 percent increase in the number of respondents, they managed to produce a swing from Kerry to Bush of fully 6.5 percent.

In Florida, the exit polls appear to have been tampered with in a similar manner. At 8:40 p.m. EST, CNN was reporting exit polls that showed Kerry and Bush in a near dead heat. Women voters (54 percent of the total) preferred Kerry over Bush by 52 percent to 48 percent, while men (46 percent of the total) preferred Bush over Kerry by 52 percent to 47 percent, with 1 percent of their votes going to Nader. But the final update of the exit poll, made at 1:01 a.m. EST on November 3, showed a different pattern: women voters now narrowly preferred Bush over Kerry, by 50 percent to 49 percent, while the men preferred Bush by 53 percent to 46 percent, with 1 percent of the vote still going to Nader. These figures gave Bush a 4 percent lead over Kerry.

The number of exit poll respondents in Florida had risen only from 2,846 to 2,862. But once again, a powerful numerical magic was at work. A mere sixteen respondents—0.55 percent of the total number—produced a four percent swing to Bush.

What we are witnessing, the evidence would suggest, is a late-night contribution by the National Elections Pool to the rewriting of history.

It is possible that at some future moment questions about electoral fraud in the 2004 presidential election might become insistent enough to be embarrassing. The pundits, at that point, will be able to point to the NEP’s final exit poll figures in the decisive swing states of Florida and Ohio—and to marvel at how closely they reflect the NEP’s vote tallies.

The Ohio Fifty-Seven (is there a Heinz-Kerry joke embedded in the number?) and the Florida Sixteen will have done their bit in ensuring the democratic legitimacy of the one-party imperial state.

Michael Keefer, an Associate Professor of English at the University of Guelph, is a former president of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English. His writings include Lunar Perspectives: Field Notes from the Culture Wars (Anansi) and the edited collection War Against Iraq: Critical Resources[b]

[psyop101]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Fishman', 'I')'m not sure of the best medication for a conspiracy racked mind, but consider asking your physician for some Celexa and perhaps a few clonazapam. If all else fails perhaps aluminum foil wrapped loosely about the head might help.

[IslandCrow]

I am amazed that the pollsters can give such a firm prediction based on just a few people questioned.

Anyway, if you follow them for a number of years it is clear that often the results are outside the margin of error. This happened in the recent Finnish elections, and when I was growing up in England the polls constantly under reported (election after election) the vote the Liberal party would get.

As a result of this I have lost trust in polls as an effective indicator, and if I would use them I would at least double the margin of error that they report. This means that in a close election the polls are generally worthless.

Is not the conspiracy that of the polling companies and the media in that they continually give value to something that has time and again been discredited?

As one BBC correspondant wrote:$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nd in any case whatever the reason, the media got it wrong and it doesn't hurt us to admit it, and to show a little humility.

One thing we won't do is learn a lesson from it - when primaries and caucuses loom in Michigan, Nevada, South Carolina, Florida and beyond you can be sure we will all be back in business, polling and speculating away.

Still, at least after New Hampshire we will have at the back of our minds the thought we might be wrong, and an awareness of the dangers of taking the electorate for granted.