The Associated Press has not, so far as I can discern, paid any attention at all to the suspicious circumstances surrounding Hugo Chavez’s “victory” in last Sunday’s referendum (discussed here). Instead, it today runs an attack on the principal exit poll that predicted a Chavez defeat, “U.S. Poll Firm in Hot Water in Venezuela”. The story is awash in dubious statements and outright falsehoods. For instance, it flatly states that the opposition “claims electronic voting machines were rigged, but has provided no evidence”. No mention of the impromptu audit in Valle de la Pascua, reported in the International Herald Tribune, that showed that the number of anti-Chavez votes officially tallied was less than 25 percent of the number actually cast. Nor does the AP admit being aware of the signs that many voting machines were rigged to count “Si” (anti-Chavez) votes as “No” after reaching a predetermined ceiling. There may not yet be conclusive proof of fraud, but evidence is abundant.
Readers are also informed that the endorsement of the official results by OAS official César Gaviria and former President Jimmy Carter was based on “their own independent samplings”, which even Gaviria and Carter don’t claim. They have so far reviewed only tallies furnished to them by the government, without checking them against the actual ballots.
Then there is this paragraph, either astonishingly careless or incredibly dishonest:
Roberto Abdul, a Sumate official [Sumate is a pro-democracy group that the Chavez government has regularly denounced], acknowledged in a telephone interview that the firm [Penn, Schoen & Berland] “supervised” an exit poll carried out by Sumate. Abdul added that at least five exit polls were completed for the opposition, with all pointing to a Chavez victory.
The exit polls to which Mr. Abdul refers all pointed to a Chavez defeat.
The remainder of the piece insinuates that the Penn, Schoen & Berland poll must have been erroneous, because the firm used members of Sumate for fieldwork.
Venezuelan Minister of Communications Jesse Chacon said it was a mistake for Sumate to be involved in the exit poll because it might have skewed the results.“If you use an activist as a pollster, he will eventually begin to act like an activist,” Chacon told The Associated Press.
For balance, it might have been worth the AP’s while to describe the procedure used to conduct the poll. According to the polling firm,
This is a national exit poll conducted in 267 voting centers throughout the country. The centers were selected to be broadly representative of the national electorate in regional and demographic terms.
In these centers, 20,382 voters were interviewed. Voters were selected at random but according to a strict demographic breakdown by age and gender to ensure a representative mix reflective of the national electorate. Those voters who were randomly selected to participate in this exit poll were asked to indicate only their vote (“Si” – for “Yes” – or “No”) on a small ballot which they could then personally drop into a large envelope in order to maintain secrecy and anonymity. Data was sent by exit poll workers to a central facility in Caracas, Venezuela for processing and verification.
There isn’t a lot of room there for “activists” to distort the results. The AP somehow wasn’t able to obtain anything more than a vague statement from the firm. Today’s Wall Street Journal did better:
The polling company, which has counted former President Clinton among its clients, stood by its results. “We are perfectly willing to believe the exit poll could be slightly off. But what we're looking at here is a 34-point difference between our poll and the official results,” said Raj Kumar, a principal at Penn Schoen. “And, frankly, we cannot explain what biases there could have been in the exit poll to create such a disparate result.”
There are two sides to this dispute. The Associated Press seems determined to keep one of them out of sight.
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