Exit Poll Discrepancies in 2004

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“Nearly all the experts are in agreement that the exit polls could not have been so far off that they gave such distorted results. It’s far more rational to assume that the voting process was compromised.”
~ Rep. John Conyers, Chair, House Judiciary Committee

For decades, exit polls have been used in democracies around the world to predict with a high degree of accuracy the outcomes of important elections. Exit polls are much more precise than pre-election polling in successfully predicting the outcome of elections. This is because they are surveying voters immediately after they have cast their ballots, rather than asking potential voters before an election who they might support.

However, the 2004 presidential race had unprecedented variations between exit poll results and the “reported” vote in almost all battleground states, as well as in other, less contested states. “We’ve relied on the exit polls for many elections now; they have a history of at least 40 years,” contends Jonathan Simon, Co-founder of the Election Defense Alliance. “In 2004, we saw something very different. The discrepancy between the exit polls and the ‘reported’ vote counts was off the charts. And this was a new phenomenon.”

The 2004 exit poll, commissioned by six major news organizations, showed that John Kerry won the popular vote with about 51% of the vote. The final tally of the voting machines showed George W. Bush with about 51% of the votes. In 10 out of 11 battleground states, the reported vote results differed significantly from what people told exit poll interviewers. The differences ranged from 1.6% in Michigan to 9.4% in New Hampshire. In every case, the difference favored George W. Bush. “Statistics can tell you what the chances are ... that you’d be that far off,” said Dr. Bruce O’Dell, a data analyst with the Election Defense Alliance. “It’s between astronomically impossible and ludicrously impossible. So it just didn’t happen by chance.”

Professor Steven Freeman, a statistician at the University of Pennsylvania, did an in-depth study of the 2004 exit polls. His conclusions are presented in his groundbreaking academic report, “The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy.”
http://www.appliedresearch.us/sf/Documents/ExitPoll.pdf (PDF)

Jonathan Simon of the Election Defense Alliance analyzed the 2004 exit polls and vote count data and concluded that John Kerry won the 2004 popular vote: http://freepress.org/images/departments/PopularVotePaper181_1.pdf (PDF)