Israeli Red Shift - Did Bibi pull a Bush?

Something unusual happened in the recent elections in Israel. As reported in the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/world/middleeast/israel-election-results-exit-polls-falter.html_r=0?) there was a major discrepancy between the exit polling and the actual election results. Exit polls are generally the most reliable, because when you ask somebody what they intend to do, and they answer you, the possibility always exists that, even if they answered honestly, they will wind up doing something else. However, when you ask somebody what they just DID, the ambiguity of circumstance disappears -they either tell the truth, or they don't, and the tendency in that situation is to be honest.

The Times article bemoans this unusual inaccuracy in the exit polling, and attempts to explain it away by saying that many Israeli Conservatives simply refused to answer the poll-takers, because they feel that the pollsters (like reality) have a "liberal bias". I will posit a different explanation, and I'll back it up with as much proof as the Times did for theirs (i. e., NONE!)

It's been a while since the phenomenon of inaccurate exit polling in a Presidential election has affected us here in the US. The last times I can remember this were in 2000 and 2004, when George W. Bush ran against Al Gore (2000) and John Kerry (2004). On both occasions, we heard news reports to the effect that exit polling was a less reliable barometer than in previous elections. Oddly, though, their accuracy returned, seemingly unblemished, in 2008 and 2012. So, what REALLY happened?

There were numerous stories going around in those years about what a simple matter it was to hack our Diebold voting machines and flip votes. The '04 election, you may recall, came down to Ohio, and somehow, MILLIONS of Ohio votes somehow vanished from that state (where, at that time, results were tabulated by people reporting to a Democratic Secretary of State), and were, instead, tabulated on machines in Tennessee (where SecState was Republican!) Stories about ELECTION FRAUD (which DOES exist, and is very different from the vanishingly-rare VOTER FRAUD that Conservatives like to complain about) were rampant at the time. People were saying that Bush had stolen a SECOND election (SCOTUS handed him the first, you'll recall, with a ruling deemed "not to be used for precedence" - how strange is THAT??!!), except on FOX, who told us all to "get over it!"

So - What happened in Israel last week, when folks went to bed believing that Bibi and Herzog were in a dead heat, only to wake up & find out that it was a a Netanyahu landslide? What kind of voting machines does Israel use? Are they as easily hackable as ours?

Can I sit here and state unequivocally that the Likkud party won this election by cheating? No, I cannot, but here's what I do know ... Bibi Netanyahu is a proud Neocon, and Neocons believe in winning - BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY!