I've never had to support and actively oppose my candidate at the same time. I feel like a pair of Levis in a tug of war between two horses.

I'm not going to lie. I hate this.

Screw you, super delegates, I'm still for Bernie Sanders!

Trump is virtually guaranteed to win and it has nothing to do with "smugness".
It is DISGUST that the DNC and the corporate media blatantly stole the nomination and inserted a damn criminal NEOCON in place of the real winner then expect us to vote for this criminal.
I would honestly vote for Vermin Supreme before I would Clinton.
Independents are 43% and rising, in fact after July 29th I would say odds are they will be about 50% of the voting population as democrats flee the party in droves.
70% of Independents will not vote for Clinton, 30+% of democrats will not vote for Clinton.
So maybe somebody can explain to me how she could possibly win?

The DNC has handed this election to Trump on a gold platter.

"When in question or in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout."

The above seems to be the new meme among progressives.

Of course complacency is always the enemy in any election. And GOTV is always of immense importance.

But to say that Trump is "likely" to win or that "The DNC has handed this election to Trump on a gold platter" is a bit over the top, no?

The reality of the Electoral College, the demographics of purple states, US demographics in general, and the fact that what Trump calls "new voters" are not really new but already committed Republican voters means that he's got a very difficult road ahead to win the November election. It's certainly not impossible for him to win, and between now and then anything can happen, but it's not at all likely he will win.

Again, complacency and smugness is always the enemy in any election, and GOTV is vitally important. But a defeatist attitude and the statement that Trump will win (as though any person can predict the future) is not only hyperbole but rather silly, IMO.

Right Wing media has been after the Clintons for 25 years. Though Clinton had the best jobs records in years he is constantly lambasted. Republicans gave us recession after recession and started 4 wars you still vote them in office. What we need is another Thomas, Alito, Scalia, Roberts. Watch all your rights go down the tube. Please be honest, what has the republican party done for the middle class??? Vietnam war started in 1954, Iraq 1 started in 1991, Afgan in 2001, Iraq 2 in 2003. They get us into war without a plan to get out.

The last thing I want is Trump in the white house, but do we really have an idea of what kind of judge Clinton will appoint? She ain't all that progressive.

I don't like everything Obama has done, but I do like Kagan and Sotomayer. I don't think they lean left or right, I think they are honest jurors, and perfect for the job.

I'll be voting for Clinton unless the super delegates wake up, but I won't be that happy about it.

We don't always get the perfect candidate but can you imagine what kind of supreme court Trump would try to get. If Trump wins the house and senate will probably stay the same. If any person had 77 million dollars spent investigating them I'm sure they would find some flaws. I'm waiting for someone to tell me what the R's have done for the middle class. They want to do away with EPA which helps control what is put in drinking water. They want to privatize social security, Veterans Administration, do away with the ACA, keep the minimum wage low where both parents have to work with no help with child care. The Republican party is for the rich and will go to any means to gain it for them even if they lie through teeth. Every recession has been while you had a republican president.

""But to say that Trump is "likely" to win or that "The DNC has handed this election to Trump on a gold platter" is a bit over the top, no?""
===========================================

Umm no, it's as close to a provable fact as you can get concerning elections.
There is zero doubt that Clinton STOLE the nomination and did so blatantly, obviously.
There are at LEAST 30% of democrats and 60+% of Independents that will not under any circumstances vote for Clinton.
Explain please how that translates to her having a snowballs chance in hell of winning the general election?
I am honestly not sure if she would even come in 2nd.

The only possible answer to how the DNC is acting is that they plan to steal the general the way they did the primaries.

I am hoping that several million show up on the 24th for Bernie in Philly and convince him to run 3rd party with Jill Stein as VP for the Green Party.

Imagine watching presidential debates with Clinton Trump and Stein.
Stein would completely destroy those two lying buffoons.

Then pit Bernie vs whatever lunatics Trump and Clinton will appoint and the same conclusion.

Stein/Sanders for the win

Nunyabiz1 said @8:

There is zero doubt that Clinton STOLE the nomination and did so blatantly, obviously.

Actually, there is much more than "zero doubt". I have seen no evidence to prove, or really even suggest, that "Clinton STOLE the nomination", blatantly or otherwise.

Nunyabiz1: Respectfully, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." It's mighty easy to spin conspiracy theories, but mighty hard to back them up with facts.

Believe what you want to believe. But beliefs, no matter how fervent, don't necessarily equal reality.

Brad, You can't be serious?
So all the exit polls are simply dead wrong then correct?
I find this unbelievable from you

So to both of you then there were no irregularities, nothing wrong at all.
You don't care about the exit polls not even being remotely close.
So to you Clinton clearly WON Nevada, Arizona, California with zero doubt?
So all the lawsuits are just delusional Sanders supporters with zero proof of any wrong doing at all?

Who are you and what have you done with Brad Freidman?

https://richardcharnin.w.../category/2016-election/

Yep nothing to see here, move along

Nunyabiz1 said @ 12, 13 and 14:

Brad, You can't be serious?

Serious as a heart attack.

So all the exit polls are simply dead wrong then correct?
I find this unbelievable from you

The exit poll reporting, almost all generated originally from Richard Charnin, has been extraordinarily bad and misleading. For a start, he has absolutely no RAW DATA. The numbers he claims to be "unadjusted" are all already adjusted from the time they were released by the media outlets and he scraped them from their website to report them as something they are not.

Also, the numbers he (and others) have used, have been misrepresented entirely at various times. For example, using limited Congressional District data (that has already been adjusted) to extrapolate to entire states and to numbers that don't include Vote-By-Mail and Provisional, etc.

That said, even if one wished to take his reports at face value, they still tell us little about whether the election results were wrong due to fraud or due to error or if the Exit Polls themselves were off (they are not the same type of Exit Polls used to guard against fraud in other countries.) As one analyst --- who knows this stuff cold, and was one of the loudest voices of concern about Ohio 2004 results recently told me --- results are not determined by guessing at Exit Poll stats, they are determined by counting ballots. That is made difficult and/or impossible in every American election, thanks to the secret vote tallies that occur on both touch-screen voting machines and computer op-scan readers. My concern about the accuracy of results (and, as usual, I have them) are the same no matter what the Exit Polls say or do not.

So to both of you then there were no irregularities, nothing wrong at all.

Never said anything of the sort. I've been covering ALL of the irregularities this cycle, in great detail, and covering them regularly on The BradCast. Most recently (or, at least, most recently in the most detail) here: About That 'Stolen' Democratic Primary: 'BradCast' 6/20/2016

You don't care about the exit polls not even being remotely close.

It's a red or yellow flag at best, it is not proof of fraud and when you describe them as "not even being remotely close", that comes from the terrible reporting on them from that same, unreliable source that is NOT the RAW DATA (which I'd LOVE to see released, but the media outlets refuse to do so, as they have for years.)

So to you Clinton clearly WON Nevada, Arizona, California with zero doubt?

No. I'm always suspicious/skeptical of every election result, particularly those tabulated by computers that human beings are not allowed to oversee. That said, NV was a caucus with transparent counting (no computers involved). At the NV convention, as I covered in great detail, the Dem Party acted outrageously in disallowing motions from Sanders supporters and then blatantly lying to the media about the behavior of Sanders supports. It was outrageous. And, had that not happened and the Sanders supporters had their way on 100% of what they had wanted, they might have ended up with 2 more state delegates for the national convention --- which certainly wouldn't have been enough to change what will be the likely outcome there.

In AZ, the Republican County Clerk of Maricopa (Phoenix) shut down hundreds of polling place while moving from a precinct based election to a "Vote Center" based election (where anyone is allowed to vote at any polling location). I hate Vote Centers. And we've seen the same problems that occurred in AZ occur elsewhere, such as in Denver, when they first moved to Vote Centers. Moreover, had SCOTUS not gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Maricopa's plan to reduce polling place specifically in Latino areas (which leaned towards Clinton) likely would have been blocked. In any event, however, it's fairly straightforward to make the case that the poll closures may have hurt Clinton more than Sanders. But, even if you reject that evidence, and even if you believe the election was "STOLE[N]" by someone. Where is the evidence that Clinton had anything to do with it??

As to CA, since you mentioned that as well (and, yes, I have been tracking every single frickin' election in every single frickin' primary state this year!) there are a number of questions that remain in various counties, and tens of thousands of votes that have been saved by Bernie Sanders supporters in Los Angeles alone. (See this recent BradCast, including my interview with the Sanders supporter who helped save them!) But that had nothing to do with an attempt by Clinton or anyone else to "steal" the election for anybody. It has to do with the absurdly ridiculous scheme for Primary voting that has been in place for years here in California, at the insistence of the political parties.

So all the lawsuits are just delusional Sanders supporters with zero proof of any wrong doing at all?

Which ones? Some have merit, some have been tossed out for lack thereof, and some have not been filed at all yet, even as folks have been raising a lot of money by telling people that they have been filed. I'm open to any claims and will investigate wherever I can, as I have all cycle. So, if you have specific concerns, please feel free to ask.

Who are you and what have you done with Brad Freidman?

Well, that guy spells his name different than me, so no comment. But Brad Friedman has been skeptical of elections all along, has always reported on problems and concerns with them, no matter whose ox, candidate or party gets gored (pun intended), and I continue to do so. I am sorry that there has been so much shitty and misleading reporting out there this season. VERY sorry. But it hasn't come from me. I've been trying to correct that bad info when I see it. Even when I see it coming from folks who I otherwise like and/or have worked with in various capacity for years.

Hope that helps. If not, my feet are ready for the fire as ever. But, I am hoping that the fact that this is ME and, even Steve Heller telling you this stuff (hopefully you know who he is, but, in short, he's the guy who caught Diebold and their attorneys lying about uncertified hardware and software, so he stole documents from them to prove it, turned them over to journalists, and the result was that Diebold was decertified across the entire state of CA) and that our records about having no fear on these issues might lead you to pay attention to what he and I have been trying to tell ya.

Brad:

I've always understood that "adjusted" exit polls are exit polls adjusted to match the voting machines results.

If Richard Charnin's exit poll data has already been adjusted, why don't they match the machine results more closely or exactly?

Other then filing a lawsuit to force the media corporations to release the raw exit poll data, what possible avenue do we have to put a stop to this nonsense?

You said:

...they are not the same type of Exit Polls used to guard against fraud in other countries.

What the hell kind of exit polls do we have here? Are we using disappearing ink that reappears with different numbers?

Larry Bergen asked @16:

I've always understood that "adjusted" exit polls are exit polls adjusted to match the voting machines results.

If Richard Charnin's exit poll data has already been adjusted, why don't they match the machine results more closely or exactly?

Because what he is calling the "unadjusted" exit polls, is just the first release of exit poll data. That data is already adjusted to what the pollsters think will be the make up of the electorate. They can't know. They are only taking a sampling of a very few polling sites, and then only a sampling of those voters. Then, they take those results and weight them to what they think the electoral make up is.

At the end of the night, after the results are in (in many cases, that does not include VBM and provisionals that are tallied after Election Day), they re-weight (adjust) their samples so that it matches up with the results as reported (either correctly or not) by the computer tabulators.

Make sense?

Other then filing a lawsuit to force the media corporations to release the raw exit poll data, what possible avenue do we have to put a stop to this nonsense?

One can file a lawsuit (and, as I understand tonight, Fitrakis and Arnebeck now have) to try and force the Exit Pollsters to release their raw data. But it's owned by the media who paid for the polls. So if they don't want to release it, I'm not sure what legal weight can be brought to bear on that. But, it's not necessarily "nonsense", as much as the way the media companies want to do exit polls, so that they can report on race, sex, economic data, opinions ("what issues are most important to you?" kind of stuff) that they think their viewers and readers want. They are paying for those polls, I guess they can do what they want with them.

You could also pay for an exit poll and do them however you like.

You said:

...they are not the same type of Exit Polls used to guard against fraud in other countries.

What the hell kind of exit polls do we have here? Are we using disappearing ink that reappears with different numbers?

:-) Well, no. But we're asking all of those really long survey questions, whereas in other countries, if they are running Exit Polls as a hedge against fraud, they will ask a much shorter question (for example, only "Who did you vote for?") and they will ask it of many more respondents at many more locations. When used to determine potential fraud, it would be the RAW DATA that is compared to an individual precinct, as opposed to the adjusted/weighted numbers that are extrapolated across entire states in order to understand "why people voted the way they did", as is the case in the U.S.

Now, if one could get access to RAW DATA in the U.S., and compare them to the reported results from a specific polling location and those numbers didn't sync up (let's say 300 people said they voted for Candidate X, but only 50 votes for Candidate X was reported at that location), then you'd know you have a problem.

Of course, even then, the question would be: Was it fraud or tabulation error? And, if fraud, who was behind it?

That's all shit that is being completed ignored and/or obfuscated by the folks claiming "EXIT POLL DISPARITY PROVES HILLARY STOLE THE PRIMARY!"

Facts matter. BTW, none of this to say the primary wasn't stolen. Given the un-overseeable election systems we use, as I've been trying to SHOUT TO THE HIGH FUCKING HEAVENS FOR MORE THAN 10 YEARS, anything could happen. But I've not seen any more probs than in most elections of this size, this year, and to suggest, as Nunya did, that "There is zero doubt that Clinton STOLE the nomination". Well, that is just not the case...as much as many Sanders supporters may like to believe otherwise.

So then American exit polls are just like everything else here: too complex for a reason and have nothing to do with assuring a democratic election.

I give up. Next time just tell us who's going to be president and save us all the time.

Like I said a little while ago; until we have a better system then this, I claim anybody I want to as the winner, and obviously it won't count for shit.

Thanks for the reply Brad.

Maybe Fitrakis and Arnebeck and get Edison polling to put a disclaimer on their worthless polls. I don't believe any of their "data" anyway since Mitofsky , (before he died), explained away the flip in 2004, saying that sometimes one group or the other will decline to participate.

I have to get to bed so I can see Sanders and Hillary making up tomorrow, and handing our country over to the TPP. Yeah, I know, Hillary said she's against it.

Larry Bergan said @18 & 19:

So then American exit polls are just like everything else here: too complex for a reason and have nothing to do with assuring a democratic election.

That's true. They are private polls, paid for by media who have a different interest than simply who won or lost (for good or ill.) They, and Exit Pollsters who you talk to (and I've talked to many over the years) will tell you that they believe the only thing that counts is reported results, which they regard as "the gold standard". Yes, they almost always go out of their way to explain how their own work should not be relied upon for much of anything!

I give up. Next time just tell us who's going to be president and save us all the time.

Well, actually, that would be the case if we relied on POLLS for the results, instead of, ya know, votes! That's also why I have been calling for so many years to actually COUNT the ballots that are cast, publicly, instead of running them through an e-tabulator which can be accurate or not. (Option not available in parts of the country where DREs are used!)

But the reliance on Exit Polls in U.S. elections, rather than votes/ballots, is one of the reasons I'm not all that interested in Exit Poll disparities (whether they exist for a good or bad reason or not.) Let's just publicly count the votes and we'd avoid all of this guessing bullshit.

Of course, you live in Utah, where there are no actual ballots. Only 100% unverifiable touch-screens by and large. So, yeah. You're pretty screwed there.

Maybe Fitrakis and Arnebeck and get Edison polling to put a disclaimer on their worthless polls. I don't believe any of their "data" anyway since Mitofsky , (before he died), explained away the flip in 2004, saying that sometimes one group or the other will decline to participate.

Polls are random surveys. They are not elections. If they were, we needn't to bother to vote at all. Just let the pollsters tell us who America likes best!

Thanks Brad,

Not only do we have 100% unverifiable touch-screens in Utah, the guy who made sure we got them as Lt. governor, and has been governor since 2009, called Karl Rove in to make Utah "a model for elections" this year.

I have a feeling he's going to win again this year.

I got this though.

Governor Gary fell down and went boom yesterday.

Brad #15

Thank you for the detailed response.
YOU are the only person I can think of that could possibly change my mind about what appears to be a stolen nomination.
You are coming close as I do fully respect your opinion on this.
BUT, the absolute facts and data be damned.
You know sometimes you just have to go with your gut and my gut tells me that no way in hell did Clinton win all those primaries legally.

I just do not see the support for her at all.
in one full year, she had ONE rally crowd that may have approached 5000 at the very most.
Sanders would pull 5000 with just a 24-hour notice in a little town in Nebraska that doesn't even have 5000 population LOL.
That is not an actual example but it's also not far off either.

Sanders has massive support, very enthusiastic, he has a real platform, he is telling the truth and has been doing it for 50 years non-stop.
As far as I can tell he is the ONLY "Statesman" left in the entire US government.
His favorability ratings are quite good whereas Clintons is basically tied with Trump.

Now outright bald faced lies in the MSM can account for "some" of this insanity of people that claim to be democrats actually preferring Clinton and will to vote for Clinton over Sanders.
But I can not believe that the majority are THAT flat out stupid.

Even if what you say is true, I STILL do not believe that Clinton legally won Arizona and California.
It just doesn't add up.

But again I do respect your opinion on matters of election fraud and thank you for the response.
I am just not ready to swallow the Red Pill yet.