Hamas and Exit Polls

Last week, the day after the Palestinian election, the headlines were

Palestinian voters gave Hamas a significant second-place showing Wednesday in the first parliamentary elections in a decade, exit polls showed, propelling the militant group into a new, uncertain political role.

The ruling Fatah party is expected to win the most seats in parliament, according to exit polls, but appeared poised to lose its majority.

In fact, Hamas won the election. The exit polls were wrong.

Except, exit polls can't be wrong. Liberals have been telling us that since November, 2004 when early polls showed Kerry ahead. It's easy to find analyses "proving" election fraud based on exit polls. See here, and here. This one quotes Teresa Heinz Kerry as insisting that the mother voting machines were hacked, again based on exit polls.

So, if exit polls show a different outcome then Hamas must have cheated, right? So where is the outrage? I've scanned Huffington, Kos, and the Democratic Underground. I don't see anyone talking about voter fraud in Palestine.

Granted I didn't read the comments, just the main articles and granted events in Palestine and Israel do not affect us as directly as our own elections. Still, the "plight" of the Palestinians is supposed to be a major motivation in September 11 and the war on global terrorism in general. You would think that someone would look away from the Alito confirmation long enough to notice that a group that promotes terrorism and the destruction of Israel just won an election.

You would think that all of these conspiracy theorists would see something here.

So, where is it?

Two things are likely: The first is that for all their multiculturalism, liberals don't really pay attention to anything outside of the US.

The second is that the only time they argue with election results is when Republicans win.

What do I think? I think that the vote was probably accurate. I think that Hamas won because they have run charities for years, distributing money where Fatah took it. I also think that Hamas never expected to win so they never put together realistic policies. Now that they are in charge they will quickly hit the limits of rhetoric and will have to come to terms with Israel. Hut I'm guessing.