The nationwide poll conducted by YouGov in 2016 interviewed 64,600 voters, and so has a much smaller margin of error; and they were asked how they actually voted in past elections, not how they expected to vote in an upcoming election. So, I have a great deal of confidence in that poll, which strongly suggests that Sanders would have defeated Trump in 2016.
Official election results should be the most reliable indicator of voter intent, but this is not necessarily the case. Officially, Sanders did receive more votes than Trump in the 2016 primaries and caucuses (13,703,406 to 13,563,244). But the true Sanders vote may have been higher than that.
JB: Why do you say that, Richard? Based on what?
RHP:I have written a professional paper and a court declaration questioning whether Clinton's impressive numbers among early and absentee voters were entirely earned, or whether some of the absentee vote counts were altered to her advantage. For example, in Detroit, Michigan, Clinton won among voters at the polls by 69.1% to 30.0%, and among absentee voters by 86.9% to 11.2%. In St. Louis, Missouri, Clinton won among voters at the polls by 54.2% to 45.2%, and among absentee voters by 71.4% to 25.2%. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where Cleveland is located, Clinton won among voters at the polls by 59.8% to 39.8%, and among absentee voters by 73.0% to 26.2%. These are rather large disparities. All absentee ballots are cast on paper. I wanted them examined, but nobody cared enough to do it. Also, there were large discrepancies between the official results and the unadjusted exit polls for the 2016 presidential primaries in many states.
JB: Before you continue, please explain to us the difference between exit polls and opinion polls and the importance of both.
RHP: Exit polls are taken immediately after voters have exited the polling places. Unlike an opinion poll, which asks for whom the voter plans to vote, an exit poll asks for whom the voter actually voted. Thus, an exit poll should be a very reliable indicator of voter intent if the sample of respondents is representative. Exit polls are routinely adjusted to get them to match the official vote count. The reason is not nefarious. The idea is to be able to analyze the electorate (by age, race, gender, party affiliation, etc.) and find out more about each candidate's coalition of voters. However, if the unadjusted numbers are substantially at variance with the official results, it can be an indication of fraud, which then warrants further investigation. In 2004, an election in Ukraine was overturned on this basis. For this reason, the unadjusted numbers are precious, and are commonly captured by watchdog election integrity advocates. We need to do this because the exit pollsters never release the raw data, calling it proprietary information.
For the 2016 primaries, I have screenshots of unadjusted and final CNN exit polls. In 19 of 22 states, Clinton's official margin of victory was larger, or her official margin of defeat was smaller, than in the unadjusted exit polls. The highest disparity was 14.0% in Alabama. Other Super Tuesday states had significant disparities: Georgia (12.1%), Texas (9.3%), Tennessee (8.2%), Massachusetts (8.0%), Arkansas (4.7%), and Virginia (4.4%). These disparities appeared in South Carolina (10.2%) and in later primaries also, notably New York (11.7%), Mississippi (9.4%), Ohio (9.2%), Indiana (5.8%), and Michigan (4.8%). In three states (Massachusetts, Illinois and Missouri), the winner and loser were reversed: the unadjusted CNN exit poll showed Sanders winning the primary, but the official results showed Clinton winning the primary. In states that had paper ballots, I wanted them examined in the most egregious precincts, but nobody cared enough to do it.
JB: Why is there so much ignorance about exit polls out there? How do we educate ourselves about something that is so important, at least every two or four years, to understand?
RHP: All of this information about the 2016 exit polls circulated widely on the web. What no other researcher seems to have done was to compare the exit poll data for black voters. This is where the alterations appear. Either the black turnout, or Clinton's share of the black vote, or both, were adjusted upward in 15 of 22 states, in order to match the official results. The details are too tedious to explain here. Perhaps I should write a primer so that anyone interested in protecting our elections will know what to look for, where and when to find it, and what it means.
JB: You could be doing our voters a big service with your primer, Richard. I'm calling for conjecture here, but if the data add up to Bernie's actual electability, how much will that electability be affected by Hillary's major dissing of Bernie in her documentary, and in recent interviews? The timing, so close to the Iowa caucuses, is suspicious.
RHP: To use the famously evasive words of Bill Clinton, "I can't answer that question, but I can tell you this." Two things about the Clintons: it's never their fault, and they never tell the whole truth the first time. Hillary blames her defeat on many factors, not just Bernie Sanders (or James Comey). In the National Review article to which you have referred me, Hillary blames her defeat on misogyny, the news media, and conspiracy theories. It couldn't be because she came across as scripted and insincere, or because she never explained why she should be president. After all, it was her turn. She was entitled to it, as a lifetime achievement award.
Consider the timeline. On September 9, Hillary was diagnosed with pneumonia, but she tried to hide it, being unable to tell the truth the first time. Disobeying her doctor's orders, she went out the next night and, looking like death warmed over, she veered off script and called "half" the Trump supporters a "basket of deplorables." Rule number one: never insult the voters. On September 11, Hillary passed out at Ground Zero, after which she was forced to admit she had pneumonia, which was not a shameful thing in the first place. An average of eight national polls taken before and after September 11 showed Hillary's lead reduced from 3.8% to 1.4%.
Full disclosure: I didn't like her the first time I saw her on television. I was offended by her putdown of Tammy Wynette and her disdain for stay-at-home moms. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. I was born in New York State, and I have lived here far longer than she has. We didn't ask her to move here. She wanted a big blue state with an open Senate seat she could easily win, and I, for one, didn't fall for it. I voted for Bill Clinton twice. I have never missed an opportunity not to vote for Hillary Clinton.
But, I did feel sorry for her tearful supporters on Election Night. Whoever wins the nomination will need every one of them to win the next election. If the goal is to defeat Donald Trump, only those who do not live in swing states will have the luxury of voting for a third party candidate. It is not helpful for Hillary Clinton to disparage Bernie Sanders by saying "Nobody likes him." Well, except for the 13 million people who voted for him in the 2016 primaries and caucuses.
JB: As we speak, the Iowa caucus results are beginning to trickle out. However, it's way too soon to know definitively what happened or what it means. I'm looking forward to continuing this conversation as the election season progresses. Any thoughts you'd like to leave us with until we reconvene for our next installment?
RHP: The fiasco in Iowa has drawn me right back into the fray. I have been through election investigations before, so I knew what to do. As soon as the problems arose on the night of the Iowa caucus, I began collecting numbers from the entrance polls as they rolled across the screen. These are opinion polls conducted when the voters arrived, and they should closely match the first round of voting. We were never shown the overall percentages for the candidates, but if you collect one of their data sets in its entirety, you can do the math yourself.
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