USA Today, Thursday Nov 7, pg 8A reported the final popular vote as:
On Tuesday, Nov 5, the day of the election, pg 12A under the heading "Election '96' they reported the final poll results as:
| Poll | Clinton | Dole | Perot | Undecided | Clinton margin | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| USA Today/CNN/Gallup | 51% | 35% | 8% | 6% | +16 | |
| ABC News | 51% | 40% | 8% | 1% | +11 | |
| NY Times/CBS | 53% | 35% | 9% | 3% | +18 | |
| Wall St Journal/NBC | 49% | 37% | 9% | 5% | +12 | |
| Reuters/Zogby | 44% | 37% | 7% | 12% | +7 | |
| Pew Research Center | 49% | 36% | 8% | 7% | +13 | |
| Harris | 51% | 39% | 9% | 1% | +12 | |
| Hotline/Battleground | 45% | 36% | 8% | 11% | +9 |
Note that both the Zogby and the Hotline/Battleground polls both came in within 1%, while the older, more liberal polls are farther off.
Interestingly, on pg 8A of the Nov 7 issue, USA Today has "Revised" final poll results, only they don't admit that they are revised. These show an 8 point Zogby/Reuters prediction and they narrow their own "final" poll numbers from the 16% they reported on Nov 5 as "final" to 11%. Magic is wonderful!
They also have an article that day on the same page by Jim Norman titled "At least 1 pollster was right on target" and they discuss how Zogby got it exactly right. Another tidbit, also on pg 12A of the Nov 5 edition: "But aides to President Clinton declined for a fifth day to provide complete details of White House visits by Riady associate John Huang, a Democratic Party fundraiser."
Finally, on November 8, 1996 I made a posting to this board with the following text:
Subject: Polls, Lies, and Final Results
The biggest Lie is the CNN-USA Today-Gallup Poll which in the Tuesday, Nov. 5 edition of USA Today, on page 12A, published their final results as 51% Clinton to 35% Dole. By old fashioned math that most of us learned before the advent of Outcome-Based-Education (OBE), that gives a 16% difference in base 10 arithmetic.
Yet in USA Today, Thursday Nov. 7, after the election, on page 8A, they show their own final poll results as 52% Clinton, Dole 41%, for an 11% difference. The actual final election results were Clinton 49%, Dole 41%, for an 8% difference. The Zogby poll got it exactly right, and they also predicted Perot at 8% which was right on the money.
So what is USA Today's problem with the numbers? Why did they change their results between Tuesday and Thursday?
Was it an attempt to downplay the obvious fraud in their poll numbers? I think they owe us all an explanation on two accounts:
Why did you show a 16 point difference in your poll when the final
result was actually 8%, which John Zogby was able to accurately predict?
Why did you change your "final" poll numbers from 16% in your Nov. 5 edition to 11% in your Nov. 7 edition after the results were already in?