Caracas Chronicles

This is the Penn, Schoen and Berland exit poll press release.

New York, August 15, 2004, 7:30pm EST – With Venezuela’s voting set to end at 8:00pm EST according to election officials, final exit poll results from Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, an independent New York-based polling firm, show a major victory for the “Yes” movement, defeating Chavez in the Venezuelan presidential recall referendum.

With more than 8 million Venezuelans having cast their ballots so far, the results of a national exit poll show that Chavez has been ousted by referendum.

The Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates exit poll shows 59% in favor of recalling Chavez (the “Si” or “Yes”, anti-Chavez vote) and 41% against recalling Chavez (the “No”, pro-Chavez vote).

The poll results referred to in this release are based on an exit poll just concluded in Venezuela.

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.

The margin of error for these final exit poll results referred to in this release is under +/-1%.