'Unknown' by Unknown - Page 75 of 102

On December 3, 2004, Rep. created requested the raw with demo data from Mitofsky

International.349 Mr. Mitofsky version "The data are proprietary information gathered and held

for the benefit of those news organizations, and I am not at liberty to release them."350 On

December 21, 2004, as a follow-up, Rep. Conyers requested the data directly from the news wire

and television companies that contracted with Mr. Mitofsky and Mr. Edison for the data.351

Though the Congressman has not received a response to his letter, Edie Emery, a spokesperson

for the NEP and a CNN employee, said the exit poll data was still being analyzed and that the

NEP's board would decide how to release a full report in early 2005.352 "To release any

information now would be incomplete," she said.353 Furthermore, Jack Stokes, a spokesperson

for the Associated Press said, "like Congressman Conyers, we believe the American people

deserve answers. We want exit polling information to be made public as soon as it is available,

as we intended. At this time, the data is still being evaluated for a final report to the National

Election Pool."354

Analysis

Clearly something unusual is indicated by the differential between the exit poll

information we have obtained and the final vote tallies in Ohio. It is rare, if not

unprecedented, for election results to swing so dramatically from the exit poll predictions to

the official results. Kerry was predicted to win Ohio by a differential of 4.2 percentage points.

The official results showed Bush winning by 2.5 percentage points. The differential between the

prediction for Kerry and the winning results for Bush represent a swing of 6.7 percentage points.

According to University of Pennsylvania Professor Steven Freeman, this "exit poll discrepancy

could not have been due to chance or random error."355 Professor Freeman has further

concluded that statistical analysis shows a probability of 1 in 1,000 that the difference between

349

Letter from the Honorable John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member, U.S. House Comm. on

the Judiciary, to Warren Mitofsky, Mitofsky International (Dec. 3, 2004).

350

Letter from Warren Mitofsky to the Honorable John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member,

U.S. House Comm. on the Judiciary (Dec. 7, 2004).

351

Letters from the Honorable John Conyers, Jr., to Gail Berman, President, Fox; Anne

Sweeny, President Disney-ABC Television Group; Jim Walton, President, CNN; Bob Wright,

President, NBC; Thomas Curley, President, Associated Press; and Andrew Heyward, President,

CBS (Dec. 21, 2004).

352

Michigan Congressman Seeks Poll Data, AS S O C. PR E S S, Dec. 22, 2004, available at

http://news.bostonherald.com/politics and on the web sites of many other Associated Press

subscribers.

353

Id.

354

Id.

355

See Freeman, supra at 2.