First was the debacle during the 2004 elections and the exit polls that were seriously flawed - giving Democrats false hope that they won the 2004 Presidential election into the early evening. That gave way to a sense of disenfranchisement as the fact that the actual tally of votes didn't match up with the erroneous exit polls.
These folks believed that the flawed exit polls were somehow more accurate than the actual vote. Some still believe that the exit polls reflected the correct vote and agitate that the current Administration is somehow illegitimate because the exit polls say so.
Now, we're witnessing the results of flawed polling in Gaza and the West Bank. These exit polls and data suggested that Fatah would manage to hold onto power by a slim margin. The reality was something quite different.
Hamas blew out Fatah - literally. Hamas won 76 seats and Fatah won 43 seats. Fatah supporters haven't taken too kindly to the outcome. They can't believe how badly their leadership did, and have taken to the streets. With rocks. With guns. And firebombing cars.
At this moment, Fatah's leaders have more to fear from their own minions than they do Hamas or Israel. They've got an insurrection among their own and there's no one who wants or can stop the car-nage. There's gunbattles, rock throwing, and all sorts of mayhem. And this is only the second day of the new era under Hamas. Ace has more on the Fatah/Hamas skirmishes.
So how did we get to this point? Why are people so convinced that they were somehow wronged? Flawed polling has something to do with it. If you've got flawed data and analysis, there's no way you can accurately predict the outcome. If you oversample one group, you're going to get flawed results. We keep seeing the problems with flawed sampling in poll after poll in the US, trotted out to determine that the US is in bad shape, the economy sucks, the Administration is in trouble over wiretapping (among any number of issues that spring to pollsters minds), flawed exit polling or predictive political polling, or polls that are ignored because of inconvenient results.
In the US, flawed polling isn't that big a deal since there are several major polling companies and pollsters who routinely provide flawed data can find themselves out of business. People who rely on exit polls to extrapolate results in the US don't have to fear insurrections and violence resulting from results in the actual elections differing from the predictions.
The same can't be said overseas in the territories where the notion of voting is a new concept and exit polls are overweighted by the public - they simply don't realize that the exit polls can be badly flawed and not reflect reality. Over there, some work on the assumption that if the exit polls differ from the actual polling, the actual voting results are wrong and violence ensues.
Technorati: hamas, terrorists, palestinian authority, hamas, fatah, israel.
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