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General News    H1'ed 12/9/16

U.S. 2016 Unadjusted Exit Poll Discrepancies Fit Chronic Republican Vote-Count Rigging, not Random Statistical Patterns

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Message Ron Baiman

(This paper includes minor edits of the Dec. 6, 2016 version of the same paper. I am indebted to Michael Green for title change suggestion.)

1) Introduction

As I write this in late November 2016 press reports indicate that Wisconsin has agreed to conduct recounts based on petitions filed by the Stein Green Party, and De La Fuente independent, Presidential campaigns, and the Stein campaign has raised almost $5.7 million for this effort and for additional recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania. If voting irregularities are discovered in these three states sufficient to overturn Trump's exceeding small victory margins (10,700 in Michigan, 27,200 in Wisconsin, and 68,000 in Pennsylvania), Clinton who has an over 2 million popular vote lead over Trump, will win 276 electoral college votes and become the next President of the U.S. Already three Wisconsin precincts have been found to have given Trump more votes than he received. As will be shown below this is consistent with 2016 analysis that shows a pattern of highly significant unexplained increases in Trump's state vote counts relative to unadjusted exit polls in battleground and deep red states. Politically consistent patterns of UEP discrepancy have also been apparent in earlier U.S. elections that are inconsistent with any statistical explanation of random fluctuation.

After a short introduction (Section 1) this paper will include an analysis of Presidential UEPs (Section 2), Senate Race UEPs (Section 3), and a short Conclusion (Section 4). Figures illustrating the analysis, provided courtesy of Greg Kilcup and Peter Peckarsky, will be presented for: Clinton in PA (Figure 3, p. 8), Trump in WI (Figure 5, p. 11), Trump in NC (Figure 6, p. 12), Trump in FL (Figure 7, p. 13), and Dem Senate Candidates: Kander in MO (Figure 11, p. 17), Feingold in WI (Figure 12, p. 18), and McGinty in PA (Figure 13, p. 19).

a) Unadjusted Exit Polls

If you google U.S. Presidential Election exit polls you will find multiple reports and analysis that, unlike pre-election "polls," purport to provide analysis of the demographics and voting preferences of actual voters. However it is important to understand that these "exit polls" are adjusted versions of actual exit poll data that approximate real exit polls only to the extent that official vote counts are accurate and that the adjustments made are good approximations of what would have resulted from unadjusted exit polls that roughly matched the official vote count without adjustment. None of this is "conspiracy theory" but rather has been repeatedly confirmed by executives of the polling company Edison Research that conducts the exit polls for the mainstream media consortium in the U.S. For example, Joe Lenski, CEO of Edison research, is quoted in a Pew Research article as saying:

""We will know shortly after the polls close," Lenski said. "We'll have individual precinct results from all the locations where we conducted interviews, so we'll know how much understatement or overstatement for the candidates we have. Our calls are based on all the information we have at the time -- exit polls, returns from sample precincts and county results from AP -- and we may re-weight the exit poll results later in the evening to match the vote estimates by geographic region."

The rationale for this adjustment is the blanket assumption made by the mainstream media and establishment politicians that U.S. officials returns could not possibly be systemically wrong by anywhere near the magnitude of the unadjusted exit poll deviations that have been occurring in U.S. election at least since 2004. This is the case even though, as will be shown below, attempts to explain these large and systemic deviations as resulting from large-scale and one-sided exit poll error have been repeatedly disproven by the data.

Accordingly, in this paper, will analyze "unadjusted exit poll" (UEP) results that have captured by screen shots of exit polls publicized as soon as possible immediately after the closing of state election polls. These UEP results are the best real exit poll data that we have in the U.S. as Edison does not release UEP results in any other fashion. The 2016 UEP data analyzed below were captured and kindly provided by Jonathan Simon and Theodore de Macedo Soares. Time stamped screen shots are available upon request.

It is important to note, as Jonathan Simon has pointed out, that though as far as we know these are the best UEP data available, in some or all cases they may already have been adjusted to match official results. This is almost certain in states like Florida and Michigan that cross time zones so that first exit poll results are not posted until an hour after polls in a large portion of the state have already closed.

2) 2016 Presidential Election Unadjusted Exit Poll Analysis

a) Red Shift in the Presidential Race

Figure 1 below provides analysis of 2016 Presidential UEP "red shift".

"Red Shift" is generally defined as the increase in Republican candidate official vote count (VC) margin of victory over UEP margin of victory. In Figure 1 in order to preserve consistency with later tables, red shift (column I) is defined as the negative percentage value of (Hillary VC -Trump VC) -- (Hillary UEP -- Trump UEP).

As can be seen in the figure, where states are ordered by red shift magnitude, the 2016 presidential election, like all national elections since 1988, is characterized by an overwhelmingly one-sided shift to the Republican candidate. In this case, in 24 out of the 26 states where UEP data was publicized, the Trump VC margin exceeded the Trump UEP margin.

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Ron Baiman Ph.D., Chicago Political Economy Group an Benedictine University

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U.S. 2016 Unadjusted Exit Poll Discrepancies Fit Chronic Republican Vote-Count Rigging, not Random Statistical Patterns

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