It makes no sense in this case to define "wrong" as anything other than a wrong count of how people actually voted. Therefore, the official results of an election are just as capable of being wrong as exit poll results.
As for your claim that the margin of discrepancy is "closely comparable between exit polling and phone polling," that is such an improbable sounding claim that you are going to have to provide some pretty convincing documentation to convince me of it. Exit polling is widely understood as much more accurate than phone polling. It is so reliable that in many countries where paper ballots are used, news organizations use exit polls when reporting results of elections and except in very close elections the vote counts that often come much later rarely contradict the exit poll results. But if you have good evidence to support your claim that phone polls are as accurate as exit polls, I'm certainly willing to take a look at it. -Ralph Suter << > At 03:28 PM 8/27/2006, Michael Poole wrote: >>There are well-known cases where exit polls get the margins wrong >>(e.g. Phillipines 2004) or even the results wrong (e.g. USA 2004). > > I'd hardly call USA 2004 a "well-known case" of this. As Mr. Suter > pointed out, serious controversy still exists regarding that > situation. In the absence of some kind of verification, we really > can't know for sure which occurred: error due to faulty polling, error > due to actual deviation between voter actions and voter poll answers, > or error due to vote fraud or other tabulation problems. Since you and Mr. Suter clearly share some confusion over what "wrong" meant, let me clarify it to mean any divergence from the official poll results. Whether the difference is intentional or accidental, or which counting of public preference is less representative, is absolutely irrelevant when it comes to determining what different results other methods might reach: some discrepancy exists between the collected data and the official results, and (ceteris paribus) this "margin of discrepancy" is closely comparable between exit polling and phone polling. By which I meant to point out that, to get results as useful as you are likely to ever get, you do not necessarily need to convince exit pollsters to do things your way. Phone pollsters could work as well. Michael Poole >> ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
