2004 Exit Polls

Mark Crispin Miller Live Online Tonight Taking Your Questions

davidswanson — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 08:08:30 -0400

Tonight from 8 - 9 p.m. ET I'll be interviewing Mark Crispin Miller and he'll be taking your questions at http://www.thepeoplespeakradio.net

Mark Crispin Miller is professor of media studies at New York University and the author of the book: Fooled Again, How the Right Stole the 2004 Elections. He is known for his writing on American media and for his activism on behalf of democratic media reform. His books include Boxed In: The Culture of TV, Seeing Through Movies, and Mad Scientists, a study of war propaganda.

Miller writes in his book, Fooled Again, that the 2000 U.S. Presidential election and 2004 U.S. Presidential election were “stolen”. Miller presents extensive documentation, backed by 56 pages of notes, supporting his contention that the outcome of both elections was altered and controlled by a small minority. He states that the American voting populace can no longer assume that their votes will be accurately assessed, and that the installation of electronic voting machines in state after state is a fundamental flaw in the U.S. electoral system. He appeared in the 2004 documentary Orwell Rolls in His Grave, which focuses on the hidden mechanics of the media, its role as it should be and what it actually is, and how it shapes (to the point of almost controlling) U.S. politics.

Mark’s new book is: Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008.

Did Kerry actually win over 360 Electoral Votes?

Gore4US — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 19:56:17 -0400

Did Kerry actually win more than 360 Electoral votes?
This analysis shows why he very well may have.

In 2004 Bush officially won by 286-251 electoral votes. But who still
believes that reflected the True Vote?

http://us.share.geocities.com/electionmodel/TruthIsAllFAQResponse.htm#Kerry367

Assumptions:
1- 110.8m Census 2000 votes cast (105.4m recorded)
2- 125.7m Census 2004 votes cast (122.3m recorded)
3- Uncounted votes: Gore 75%
4- 2000 voter mortality prior to 2004: 5% Gore; 4.8% Bush
5- 2000 voter turnout in 2004: 95%
6- Kerry won 71% of Nader voters (12:22am NEP)
7- Kerry won 57% of DNV2k (did not vote in 2000)
8- Kerry won 10% of Bush 2000 voters; Bush won 8% of Gore voters
9- Mortality and uncounted vote rates were uniform in all states

Key Results
-----------
Popular vote:
Kerry Bush
67.3m 57.5m
53.5% 45.7%

Electoral votes:
367 171

Kerry won the following 11 states which were recorded for Bush:
AZ, AR, CO, FL, IA, MO, NV, NM, OH, TN, WV

The 2004 Election Simulation Model

Gore4US — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:42:21 -0400

The following contains a link to the 2004 Election Simulation Model: http://www.geocities.com/electionmodel/2004ElectionSimulationModel.htm The model is based on four sets of polls:
(1) Pre-election State polls , (2) Pre-election National Polls (18), (3) Post-election State exit polls, (4) National Exit poll.
The model can be used to run simulations, calculate probabilities and perform "sensitivity analysis" to see the
effects of changes in assumptions on the electoral and popular vote.

The model provides a strong circumstantial case for those who believe the election was stolen.
Kerry wins all state and national pre and post-election simulations.

There are only two possible explanations: either the pre-election AND exit polls were wrong - or massive fraud occurred.

1988-2004: The Submerging Democratic Majority

Gore4US — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 22:24:26 -0400

1988-2004 Election Analysis: The Submerging Democratic Majority http://www.geocities.com/electionmodel/TruthIsAllFAQResponse.htm#HistoricalElections

The Democrats actually won all FIVE elections by an average 8.9 MILLION vote margin. That’s the True Emerging Democratic Majority. Don't believe it? Run the numbers yourself.

This analysis is based on the 1988-2004 Election Calculator model. The model first estimates the number of returning voters by adjusting prior election recorded vote totals for uncounted votes and mortality. An estimated turnout percentage is applied to this value. As preliminary NEP vote shares were not available for 1988-2000, Final National Exit Poll shares (which were matched to the recorded vote) were assumed for the base case. In 2004, however, preliminary 12:22am "pristine" vote shares were available, so these were used instead.

The model used Census-reported total votes cast as the base case assumption. The pool of potential returning voters was assumed to include all who cast votes, rather than just those whose votes were recorded. Uncounted vote rates based on the Census are much higher than the assumed 3.0% rate in prior models. Another assumption change is the mortality rate. Annual voter mortality, estimated as 1.22-1.30%, is more accurate than prior models which assumed the total US 0.87% mortality rate.

The new base case assumptions had the effect of increasing Democratic vote shares compared to prior models. For example, the Election Calculator indicates that Kerry won by 53.0- 45.9%, a 9 million vote margin. The prior True Vote Model had Kerry winning by 52.6-46.4%.

Following are the key results based on AVERAGE CALCULATED 1988-2004 Vote shares:

- The Dem share was 3.8% HIGHER than the RECORDED share.

- The GOP share was 3.2% LOWER than the RECORDED share.

- The Dem share was 1.4% HIGHER than the PRELIMINARY Exit Poll.

- The GOP share was 0.1% HIGHER than the PRELIMINARY Exit Poll.

Voter turnout of prior election Dem, GOP and Other voters is calculated as:

Turnout = prior election (recorded vote + uncounted votes - voter deaths)* voter turnout percentage

The True vote for the Dem, GOP and Other candidate is calculated as:

True Vote = shares of returning (Dem + GOP + Other + New voters)

Summary Statistics (1988-2004)


	Calculated
	TRUE Vote			Exit Poll		Recorded			Calculated Dem
	Dem	Rep		Dem	Rep	Dem	Rep		Margin (mil)
Average	50.9%	43.0%		49.5%	42.9%	47.1%	46.2%		8.86

2004	53.0%	45.9%		50.8%	48.2%	48.3%	50.7%		8.96
2000	51.1%	46.0%		48.5%	46.2%	48.4%	47.9%		5.66
1996	52.0%	39.3%		52.2%	37.5%	49.9%	41.4%		13.36
1992	47.9%	35.0%		46.0%	33.1%	43.3%	37.7%		14.71
1988	50.2%	48.7%		49.8%	49.3%	45.6%	53.4%		1.61


1988-2004 Avg	Total	Dem	Rep	Other	Margin	Dem	Rep	Other	Margin
Calculated	111.5	56.76	47.90	6.86	8.86	50.9%	43.0%	6.2%	7.9%
Recorded	102.9	48.47	47.66	6.74	0.81	47.1%	46.2%	6.7%	0.9%
Prelim Exit poll	102.9	50.84	44.28	7.93	6.56	49.5%	42.9%	7.9%	6.6%
Discrepancies
Calc - Recorded	8.7	8.29	0.24	0.12	8.05	3.8%	-3.2%	-0.5%	7.0%
Calc - Exit poll		5.92	3.62	-1.07	2.30	1.4%	0.1%	-1.7%	1.3%
Exit - Recorded		2.38	-3.38	1.19	5.76	2.4%	-3.4%	1.2%	5.7%

1988-2004 Election Calculator

Gore4US — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 00:10:46 -0400

The Election Calculator created by TruthIsAll, is a small, yet powerful Excel model. The workbook contains worksheets for analyzing all presidential elections since 1988.

http://www.geocities.com/electionmodel/ElectionCalculator.htm

The model uses historic recorded vote data in conjunction with user input assumptions. Select the "2004" tab at the bottom of the screen to calculate the Kerry/Bush vote. Enter your assumptions for uncounted vote rates, mortality rates and Kerry/Bush share of returning 2000 voters. The uncounted vote rate is the percentage difference between total votes cast and the recorded vote.

In 2004, the default uncounted vote rate is set to 2.74% based on the 2004 Census; the default is set to 3% for all other elections. Other inputs include the Democratic share of uncounted votes, voter mortality rate, preliminary and Exit Poll vote shares. All default assumptions can be overridden. The calculated national vote share is displayed immediately after each data entry.

Since users enter their own input assumptions, they are contrained only by the Calculalor's logic - which is nothing more than simple arithmetic. It’s just an unbiased number cruncher which automatically calculates vote shares over a range of scenarios ("sensitivity analysis").

Some argue that the pre-election and early exit polls are not convincing evidence of fraud. But they should consider this fact: the Final National Exit Poll is always matched to an incorrect vote count. That's because millions of votes are cast but never counted in every election; approximately 70-80% are Democratic. Those who believe Bush won by 3 million votes are challenged to come up with a plausible Bush win scenario by entering their own data assumptions. The Calculator requires real numbers, not talking points.

It's Statistically Impossible That Bush Beat Kerry

davidswanson — Thu, 10 May 2007 15:18:31 -0400

The Use of Statistics in Elections
By Andrew First

On the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November, every four years, Americans elect a new president. More often than not, the outcome of the election is unknown beforehand. Polls are taken in the weeks and months prior to an election, but those are merely a snapshot in time, reflecting the electorate’s opinion at that particular moment. The candidate that an undecided voter supports can change many times before the election, and some people are completely undecided until they step into the voting booth. In addition, slim margins can not be predicted beforehand due to sampling variability. While samples give a good idea of what voters are thinking, there is a margin of error in each poll that must be taken into account while analyzing the poll results.

After millions of dollars are spent on advertising, and candidates are on the campaign trail for many months, people are anxious to see the results of the elections. To get an accurate reflection of the way the populace cast their votes, one need not count every single vote right away. By taking exit polls, news organizations are able to predict the outcome of elections with remarkable accuracy. These results are available much faster than the official vote counts that are used to certify elections. These polls also tell us how different demographic groups voted for each specific candidate.

A presidential election is unique among elections in the world in how the winner is determined. Every state is allotted a specific number of electoral votes, corresponding to the number of Senators a state has plus the number of Congressmen the state sends to the U.S. House of Representatives. With the exception of Maine and Nebraska, these votes are awarded on a winner take all basis. When one casts a vote for the presidential race, it is actually a vote for a slate of electors chosen by the candidate, who will then cast the electoral vote for the candidate. In Maine and Nebraska, the winners of each congressional district receive one vote, while the winner of the state at-large is awarded two votes. In both of these states, however, the vote has never been split between two candidates. It is interesting to note that the electors are not bound by law to cast their vote for the candidate who they represent. In 1988, one elector from West Virginia cast his presidential vote for Lloyd Bentsen, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, while the rest of the West Virginia electors cast theirs for Michael Dukakis. In 2004 a Minnesota elector cast his vote for John Edwards.

After these votes are tabulated, a candidate must have more than half of the total electoral votes cast in order to be named president-elect. A lot of the individual state results are known months ahead of time. California for example, was known far ahead of time that it would go Democratic in the 2004 election. By the same token Texas was known to be voting to reelect George Bush. Neither of these states disappointed, with Kerry receiving 54% of the vote in California, but only 38% in Texas.

Other states are too close to call. In polls taken before the election, if the numbers are within the margin of error, there is no way to predict who will win each state. These are known as battleground states. In the last few election cycles, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania have been the battleground states that represented the most electoral votes, so they in turn were the biggest prizes in the electoral race. The general consensus before November 2, 2004, was that whoever won two of the aforementioned states would also win the White House.

The procedure for electing a president leads to some interesting campaign strategies. Because Kerry had no reason to believe he could win in Texas, and Bush had no reason to believe he could lose in Texas, the both Kerry and Bush stayed out of these states almost completely, as winning a state with 70% of the vote has the same net effect on the electoral college as winning the state by one vote. Instead both candidates focused their time and money on campaigning in the battleground states such as Pennsylvania and Florida. Analyzing and predicting the election also shifts back to a statewide basis. The exit polls conducted on Election Day in 2004 can help show who voted for whom and why.

In 2004, Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International conducted exit polls that the six major news organizations used. In these, 250 precincts were randomly chosen throughout the country. The pollsters then asked voters leaving the polling place a series of questions. The important question was “Whom did you vote for?” They then asked questions such as the voters political affiliation, religious affiliation, income level, and if they were for or against the war in Iraq. The interval between respondents was determined by the population of the precinct, with the goal of interviewing approximately 100 voters per precinct.

The data collected by exit pollsters has raised some questions, because according to the polls John Kerry should have won the popular vote by well over two percent, however, the official results indicated that George Bush won by the same margin. In eleven key battleground states, Kerry was predicted to win nine of them based on the exit poll data. Bush ended up winning six of these (Freeman, 2004). Even in the states that Kerry won, the margin of victory was much smaller than what one may have predicted. In Pennsylvania, Kerry was predicted to win by a margin of 8.7%, while the official vote count was only 2.2%. In Ohio, exit polls indicated a 4.2% Kerry victory, while Bush ended up carrying the decisive state by 2.5%.

There was also a question about the timing of the release of exit poll numbers. The poll results cited above were released by CNN on election night. These numbers were the actual counts taken in the poll. If one were to look up these exit poll results today, the numbers would be different. The numbers are adjusted based on the assumption that the official results are correct (Freeman, 2005).

By breaking it down to individual precincts, the results are even more disturbing. In January 2006, a team of statisticians looked at the forty nine precincts polled in Ohio, and compared the uncalibrated results with the official vote count. Twenty of those forty nine had a discrepancy in favor of Bush that was outside of the margin of error, including “precinct 27”, in which official results showed Bush to carry the precinct with 62% of the vote, while exit poll data, received from 100 respondants, suggested that Kerry would win with 67%, a difference of 29% (Kennedy, 2006). To illustrate the improbability of these numbers, one would set up a null hypothesis that K=.38. The alternative hypothesis is K>.38. The sample size in precinct 27 was 100, and the sample K was .67. as n gets large, the distribution of sample K will asymptotically approach a normal distribution, and we can standardize this distribution thusly:

Z=(.67-.38)/sqrt(.38x.62/100)=5.97. Plugging this into a standard normal calculator, a p-value of 1.15x10-9 is obtained. Assuming a valid sampling technique, if Bush actually received 62% of the votes, these exit poll results would be obtained one time out of almost a billion samples.

Kerry supporters look at this data as evidence of fraud in the election. The chances of achieving the exit poll results if the official results are entirely accurate are very slim. That coupled with the fact that all of the software used to count votes is proprietary, and there is no actual paper record of whom each voter selected, makes it appear that something is amiss. Bush supporters point to alleged flaws in the polling methodology or random error to explain the discrepancy. There is also the possibility that Bush voters would be more reluctant to talk to pollsters. This, however, is merely a hypothesis. If this were indeed true, one would expect that to be the case nationally. John Zogby, a renowned pollster went so far as to call this hypothesis “preposterous”. The data collected actually suggested that Kerry supporters were more reluctant to complete the survey than Bush supporters. In areas where Bush won a substantial amount of the vote, 56% of the voters targeted completed the survey. In Kerry strongholds, only 53% of the voters answered the pollsters’ questions (Kennedy, 2006). Based on this, it would appear that the votes in the 2004 election were not counted correctly.

Less than three weeks after the United States election, on November 22, 2004, there was a runoff election in Ukraine for president. Viktor Yanukovych, the prime minister, was running against Viktor Yushchenko, a former prime minister himself, having served from 1999 until 2001. According to an exit poll conducted by Ukraine’s Social Monitoring Center, Yushchenko enjoyed a lead of 49.5% to 45.9%. Other exit polls, some of which were commissioned by the Bush administration indicated a larger lead for Yushchenko, some by 11%. When all of the results were officially counted, however, Yanukovych emerged with a victory of just less than 3%.

This discrepancy between official results and exit poll results caused world leaders to claim that the election results were invalid, including the Bush administration that only days earlier declared the methodology of exit polling to be flawed when it was Bush’s reelection that was the subject of debate. John Tefft, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, testified before the House Committee on International Relations on December 19, 2004, and stated that exit polls are one of the best ways to expose large scale fraud in elections. On election night, the city council of Kiev refused to accept the official results, and urged the Ukrainian parliament to do likewise. After a lawsuit filed by Yushchenko supporters reached the Ukrainian supreme court, the election held on November 22 was declared invalid, and another election was scheduled for December 26, which Yushchenko went on to win by a margin of 8%. An appeal by Yanukovych was rejected on January 20, 2005, and three days later, Yushchenko was inaugurated as Ukraine’s third president.

In 1990, Carlos Salinas de Gortari was elected to the Mexican presidency. After his election there were widespread allegations of fraud regarding the election. Between 1990 and 1994 Mexico instituted several reforms to their electoral process. Despite the reforms, a 1993 poll by Market Opinion Research Institute showed that 47% of Mexicans expected corruption in the upcoming national election, while only 28% expected them to be clean (Carter Center, 1994). With such widespread doubt on the validity of elections, there must be a way to instill confidence in the Mexican electorate as to the accuracy and fairness about its elections.

In 1994, on the eve of the election, The Chamber of Radio an TV, a Mexican media company, hired Warren Mitofsky to conduct exit polls on the presidential election. These exit polls were accurate to within a tenth of a percent, as to what the official results were. This accuracy has made Mexicans more confident in their electoral process, and in 2000, Vicente Fox won the presidency. This marked the first time in the history of the Institution Revolutionary Party that their candidate did not win. Fox’s victory was also the first time in Mexico’s history that a president followed a precedent that Americans take for granted. Outgoing president Ernesto Zedillo peacefully ceded power to a president-elect from an opposition party.

For over two hundred years, the United States of America has been seen throughout the world as the ideal example of what Democracy should be. In the last several decades, more and more countries have abandoned their old systems of aristocratic rule, and have adopted democratically elected governments. In the case of Ukraine, for over seventy years, they were under the control of the Soviet Union, and for the citizens there, memories of a totalitarian rule are all too fresh. For these fledgling Democracies, the people who fought to bring that Democracy there appreciate it and have a firmer grasp on what the alternative to that is. As Americans, it is easy to forget the hardships endured, and we take it for granted that our elections will be free of any corruption. In Ukraine, they went to great lengths to ensure that the man inaugurated was the one that the people chose. The statistical methods used in the 2004 presidential election could easily be applied to the United States. In Mexico, because there was widespread belief that the elections were fixed, statistics were used to mitigate citizens’ fears that the election reforms would not eliminate corruption. In both of these cases, statistics provided a check on the elections, and in turn instilled more confidence that the popularly chosen man ascended to the presidency, which is critical in a Democracy. In the United States, however, we have chosen to ignore these issues which would be huge red flags in any other country, thinking that it could not happen here. We Americans need to take a long hard look at our electoral process and make changes to ensure that all votes are counted correctly.

References:

Green, J., “Do Polls Still Work?”, Atlantic Monthly, 298, 4, 33, 2006.

Konner, J, “The Case for Caution”, Public Opinion Quarterly, 67, 1, 5-18, 2003.

“The Third Time Around”, Current Digest of the Post Soviet Press, 56, 52, 1, 2005.

Lipper, T, “Votes of Confidence”, Newsweek, 140, 20, 10, 2002.

Scheufele, D, “Recent Articles in the Field of Public Opinion Research”, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 14, 1, 115-118, 2002.

Sudman, S, “Do Exit Polls Influence Voting Behavior?”, Public Opinion Quarterly, 50, 3, 331-339, 1986.

Freeman, S, The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy, 2004

Kennedy, R, “Was the 2004 Election Stolen?”, Rolling Stone, 2006

The Carter Center, “Elections in Mexico: Third Report”, 1994

2004-2006 Election Fraud Analytics

Gore4US — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 00:29:04 -0400

http://www.geocities.com/electionmodel/TruthIsAllFAQResponse.htm

2004/2006 Election Fraud Analytics

Dec.12, 2000 is a day that will live in infamy. Bush needed the help of five right-wing Republicans on the Supreme Court to stop the recount in Florida and enable him to steal the election. There has been an ongoing controversy regarding the 2004 election. State and national pre-election and exit polls pointed to a Kerry victory. Those who claim that Bush won fair and square are relentless in their attempts to thrash polling analyses which suggest that fraud occurred. Since the media will not release tell-tale precinct-level data, analysts must rely on publicly available polling data. And they have determined that the polls provide powerful statistical evidence of fraud. “Voter fraud” has been shown to be a non-existent distraction from the evidence of massive “election fraud”. Voters don’t fix elections, election officials do. The corporate media was quick to dismiss claims of election fraud as a left-wing “conspiracy theory” and the statistical polling analyses of “spreadsheet-wielding Internet bloggers”, The said that Bush won again, just like he did in 2000. Get over it. Move on. He won by three million votes. You can’t steal that many.

This is what Richard Morin, a Washington Post Staff Writer, wrote on Thursday, November 4, 2004. The article encapsulates the canard that the early exit polls were wrong because they did not match the final vote count, and therefore had to be adjusted accordingly. This is a clear implication that the election was fraud-free.

“An Election Day filled with unexpected twists ended with a familiar question: What went wrong with the network exit polls?... In two previous national elections, the exit polls had behaved badly. Premature calls by the networks in Florida led to a congressional investigation in 2000. Two years later, a computer meltdown resulted in no release of data on Election Day... Results based on the first few rounds of interviewing are usually only approximations of the final vote. Printouts warn that estimates of each candidate's support are unreliable and not for on-air use...That is why the early leaks anger Joe Lenski of Edison Media Research, which conducted Tuesday's exit poll with Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool, a consortium of the major television networks and the Associated Press…. After the survey is completed and the votes are counted, the exit poll results are adjusted to reflect the actual vote, which in theory improves the accuracy of all the exit poll results, including the breakdown of the vote by age, gender and other characteristics”.

They continue to maintain that pre-election and exit polls which indicated a Kerry win were biased, but have yet to provide plausible statistical evidence to back up their claim. Instead, they have resorted to tortured explanations: Kerry voters were more likely to respond to exit pollsters; exit poll interviewers sought out Kerry voters; Gore 2000 voters must have lied or forgot when they told the exit pollsters that they voted for Bush 2000; polls are not pure random samples; U.S. exit polls are not designed to detect fraud; early exit poll data was inaccurate because women voted early and Republicans voted late; Gore 2000 voters defected to Bush at twice the rate that Bush voters defected to Kerry; the GOTV campaign headed by Karl Rove mobilized millions of Christian fundamentalists for Bush, etc. None of these explanations are supported by factual data and have been thoroughly debunked.

They cited a post-election retrospective NES 600-sample survey as evidence that 7% of former Gore voters lied or forgot that hey voted for him when they told the exit pollsters they voted for Bush in 2000. They say it was due to a long-term Bush “bandwagon effect”: former Gore voters wanted to associate with the “winner” of the prior election. But Bush had a 48.5% approval rating on Election Day and Gore won by 540,000 votes. Why would Gore voters lie or forget more than Bush voters? Why would they claim to have voted for Bush when they knew he stole the election? Why would they forgive Bush? Was it because of his job performance?

They noted a built-in Democratic bias in the exit polls. But they dismiss the fact that in every election approximately 3% of total votes cast are uncounted, mostly in heavily Democratic minority districts. Although Bush “won” Florida in 2000 by an “official” 537 votes, there were 180,000 spoiled ballots (3% of the total cast) and thousands of other provisional and absentees which were never counted. Since more than 65% of the spoiled ballots were intended for Gore, he clearly won the state by at least 60,000 votes. Gore’s nationwide margin was two million if all the votes cast had been counted. But we know that in 2004 over 90% of reported electronic vote switching incidents were from Kerry to Bush and that an exhaustive statistical study indicated that 6.15% of Kerry votes were switched to Bush in Ohio’s Cuyahoga County. So it’s reasonable to assume that in addition to the uncounted votes, a certain percentage of Gore votes were switched to Bush. The 2000 election was not even close, although the 5-4 Supreme Court decision was.

They claimed that the vaunted 2004 Republican GOTV campaign brought Bush millions of new Christian fundamentalist votes. But they fail to note that according to the National Exit Poll, the Democrats have won first-time voters in the last four elections by an average 14% margin. Ruy Teixeira wrote about it in The Emerging Democratic Majority.

They rejected the assumption that late undecided voters would break for Kerry. But pollsters Zogby and Harris, who have a combined 60 years of polling experience, indicated they voted 67-75% for Kerry. The National Exit poll also reported that Kerry won a clear majority of undecided voters. But this was not unusual; historical evidence indicates that undecided voters break for the challenger over 80% of the time, especially when the incumbent is unpopular. Bush had a 48.5% average approval rating on Election Day.

They dismissed the significance of the Bush 48.5% approval rating on Election Day. But all presidential incumbents with approval below 50% lost re-election (Ford, Carter, Bush I) while all incumbents over 50% won (Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and Clinton). The near-perfect 0.87 correlation between Bush’s monthly approval rating and national poll average share is further evidence. The correlation was confirmed by the 12:22am National Exit Poll which Kerry won by 51-48%.

They insisted that Bush led the pre-election polls. But they failed to consider undecided voters. Final Zogby polls had Kerry leading by 50-45% in nine battleground states. Assuming that he would capture 75% of the undecided vote, Kerry was projected to win all 9 states by 53-46%. He won just 5 and his average margin was only 50-49%. The margin of error was exceeded in six states - a 1 in 52 million probability.

They also failed to use weighted averages in calculating national vote share based on state polling, claiming that Bush led the weekly state poll (unweighted) average. But except for the first two weeks in September, Kerry led the national weighted average based on state voting population from July to Election Day. Kerry also led the monthly unweighted national pre-election polls all year. The final weighted average of 51 state polls (Kerry 47.88-46.89%) was confirmed by the unweighted average of 18 national polls (Kerry 47.17- Bush 46.89%).

They refused to accept the fact that both state and national projections in the Nov.1, 2004 Election Model had Kerry winning the popular vote by 51-48%. But the projections were confirmed by the 12:22am National Exit Poll which Kerry won by 51-48%. A Monte Carlo Simulation (5000 election trials) forecast that Kerry would win 320-337 electoral votes with 60-75% of the undecided vote - which he did if you believe the National Exit Poll and pollsters Zogby and Harris. The pre-election projections were confirmed in the Interactive Election Simulation Model by the state and national exit polls.

They overlooked the fact that 41 states favored Bush from the final pre-election polls to the recorded vote. But none of the 10 states which favored Kerry was a battleground state. Forty-three state red-shifted to Bush from the 12:22am exit polls. Oregon was the only battleground state which blue-shifted to Kerry – by less than one percent. It was also the only state in which all voting is done by mail. Was this all just a coincidence, a case of bad polling or a powerful indication that fraud occurred? You decide.

They cited “false recall” and non-response bias as explanations for the exit poll discrepancies. But they failed to account for the deviations between final pre-election state and national polls and the recorded vote. Exit poll non-response and false recall are not applicable to pre-election polls – and yet the pre-election polls matched the exits. The best evidence indicates that the “pristine” state and national exit polls were close to the true vote, unlike the final exit polls which were forced to match a corrupt vote count. All they can say is that the polls were wrong.

They hypothesized that the Final NEP 43 Bush / 37 Gore weights were due to “false recall” on the part of Gore 2000 voters who claimed to have voted for Bush 4 years earlier. But the weights were irrelevant and misleading since they were mathematically impossible. What is relevant is who the 2004 exit poll respondents said they voted for just minutes before.

They claimed that exit poll non-responders were Bush voters. But they cannot logically explain why a linear regression analysis showed that exit poll non-response increased going from the strongest Bush states to the strongest Kerry states, indicating that non-responders were most likely Kerry voters.

They said that the margin of error used in calculating probabilities of the exit poll discrepancies was too low. But even assuming a 50% “cluster effect”, the probabilities were still near zero. The exit poll discrepancy exceeded the margin of error in 16 states - all in favor of Bush. The probability: 1 in 19 trillion. Not a single state deviated beyond the MoE for Kerry.

They ridiculed the near 100% probability of a Kerry popular vote victory, claiming that the exit poll “cluster effect” and response bias invalidates the theoretical 1.0% margin of error. But a probability sensitivity analysis showed that even assuming a 50% increase in MoE, Kerry still had a 98% probability of winning a majority of the popular vote.

They maintained that exit polls are not accurate indicators since they are not perfect random samples. But pollsters Edison-Mitofsky state in the noted to the National Exit Poll that respondents were randomly-selected and that the margin of error was 1%. The MoE was confirmed for various exit poll samples in their NEP Methods Statement.

They claimed that the early exit polls were off and imply that the Final National Exit Poll was accurate. But the Final was forced to match the recorded vote with impossible weights and implausible vote shares. This implies that the recorded vote was fraud-free – not exactly a reality-based assumption.

They failed to appreciate the Law of Large Numbers and find nothing unusual about the fact that Kerry led the National Exit Poll by 51-48% at 4pm (8649 respondents), 7:30pm (11027) and 12:22am (13047). But Bush won the 2pm Final NEP (13660) by 51-48% through the use of impossible weights and implausible vote shares which were required in order to match the recorded vote.

They ignored the astounding fact that all 22 Eastern Time Zone states red-shifted from the exit poll to Bush and 12 deviated beyond the exit poll margin of error! But the probability of this occurrence is 1 in 32 trillion. The East is a vote-rich Democratic region and the most fertile ground for fraud. Of the 28 states outside the Eastern Time Zone, “only” 20 deviated to Bush while the margin of error was exceeded in “just” 4 states.

They dismissed the 12:22am NEP timeline (13047 respondents) which indicated that 8% of Gore voters defected to Bush in 2004 while 10% of Bush 2000 voters defected to Kerry and claimed that twice as many Gore voters (14.6%) defected to Bush than Bush voters (7.2%) defected to Kerry. But this is not plausible if you believe that the Bush 48.5% Election Day approval rating means anything. This is just a last-ditch feeble attempt to justify the Bush recorded margin. And it means that they have no case.

They failed to explain how Bush found 16mm new voters (DNV2k) to reach 62mm in 2004. He had 50.5mm votes in 2000. But only about 46mm returned to vote in 2004. The decrease was due to two factors: 1) approximately 1.7mm Bush voters died (0.87% annual mortality rate) and 2) an estimated 2.5mm did not vote (95% turnout). According to the 12:22am National Exit Poll, Bush won 41% or 10.8 of 26.3mm new voters. He needed 60% or 15.8mm to reach 62. The 19% discrepancy was 11 times the 1.72% margin of error. The probability of the discrepancy is ZERO. It’s important to note that a solid majority of new voters were Democrats and Independents who gave Bush an approval rating much lower than his total 48.5% average on Election Day 2004. His approval rating has declined almost 1% monthly since Sept. 11, 2001 and is currently at 32%.

They need to explain how Kerry lost the popular vote in 2004, yet won a solid 57-41% share of new voters. Kerry won first-timer voters by 55-43% as well as others by 61-37%. Compare this to 2000: Gore won the popular vote, yet lost new voters by 52-44%. Gore won first-time voters by 52-43%, but Bush won others by a whopping 71-26%.

They claimed that 7% of returning Gore voters told the exit pollsters that they voted for Bush in 2000 because of a long-term “bandwagon effect”; they wanted to “associate with the winner”. But this was just a last-ditch attempt to explain the mathematically impossible “Voted in 2000” weights. Even if Gore voters they lied, it was irrelevant. What is relevant is who they said they voted for just a few minutes earlier. And 91% said they voted for Kerry.

They argued against the conclusion that the NEP “Voted in 2000” weights (Bush 43/Gore 37%) were impossible and claimed that it was standard operating procedure to re-weight demographics based on incoming votes. But how can 43% (52.6mm) of the 122.3mm who voted in 2004 have been Bush 2000 voters when he only had 50.5mm votes in 2000? Furthermore, since approximately 1.8mm Bush 2000 voters died prior to the 2004 election, the maximum number of Bush 2000 voters who could have voted in 2004 was 48.7 million, assuming an impossible 100% turnout. This physical, incontrovertible fact drove the naysayers wild. The longer they tried to refute the logic, the sillier they looked.

They had to accept an inconvenient truth: the Final National Exit Poll inflated the Bush vote by at least 4 million. The weights were contrived to force the exit poll to match the corrupted recorded vote. Even though the weights were mathematically impossible, the exit-pollsters had no choice but to use them. And they hoped no one would notice.

They finally agreed that the Final 2pm NEP “How Voted in 2000” weights were impossible and derived a set of feasible weights. But they had to compensate for the weights by inflating the Final NEP Bush vote shares in order to match the recorded count. This was necessary despite the fact that Final NEP Bush vote shares were already inflated in order to match the recorded vote. With feasible weights applied to the “pristine” 12:22am NEP vote shares, Kerry won by 52.6-46.4% – a 7.7 million vote margin! Using feasible weights applied to the Final NEP vote shares, Kerry won by 51.2-48.4%. The 3.4 million vote margin more than reversed the Bush 3mm “mandate”!

They were forced to suggest this implausible Bush win scenario in the Democratic Underground Game thread:
1) 14.6% of Gore 2000 voters defected to Bush. But the 12:22am NEP reported 8%; it was increased to 10% in the Final in order match the vote.
2) Kerry won 52.9% of voters who did not vote in 2000. But the 12:22am NEP reported he won by 57-41%; it was reduced to 54-45% in the Final.
3) 7.2% of Bush 2000 voters defected to Kerry. But the 12:22am NEP reported 10%; it was reduced to 9% in the Final.

They belittled a comprehensive sensitivity analysis which indicated that Kerry won all plausible scenarios of voter turnout and new voter share. But assuming 12:22am NEP vote shares and 100% Bush 2000 voter turnout, Gore voter turnout had to be 73% for Bush to tie Kerry and 64% to match the recorded 62-59mm vote.

They need to explain these implausible changes in Bush NEP vote shares from 2000 to 2004:
-The Bush share of male voters decreased by 0.2% while his female share increased by 4.2%
-His share of white females increased by 5.0% while his share of white males decreased by 0.9%
-His share of non-white females increased by 4.0%
-His share of female independents increased by 1.8% while his share of male independents decreased by 5.6%
Didn’t females vote 54-45% for Kerry? Didn’t over 90% of blacks vote for him? Weren’t independents for Kerry by 52-44? Why would independent males defect to Kerry at triple the rate that independent females defected to Bush? Didn’t Nader voters break 3-1 for Kerry?

They neglected to ask why six of the eight states which deviated to Kerry from the exit polls were strong Bush states: TN (1.63), TX (1.65), SD (1.67), ND (2.51), KS (2.37) and MT (0.22). The exit poll discrepancies (shown in parenthesis) were all within the exit poll margin of error. But only two competitive states deviated to Kerry: OR (0.75) and HI (1.25). Is it just a coincidence that Oregon is the only state which votes exclusively by mail (100% paper ballots), and that any discrepancy in that state would be small and could favor either Bush or Kerry? And is it just a coincidence that Hawaii was not exactly a critical state?

They agreed that the vote-rich battleground states would decide the election. But was it just a coincidence that six deep-red states deviated to Kerry and not a single blue state? Was it because Bushco did not want to explain the 50-state red-shift? Did they disregard the six states knowing that Kerry would not come close to winning them? Is that why they focused on thwarting a nationwide blue-shift in competitive states? The beast was in the East, the rest were in the West.

They claimed that the raw exit poll data which have not been made public indicates that there was no tendency for Bush to do better in 2004 relative to 2000 (“swing”) than he did in the 2004 exit poll (“red-shift”). They presented their analysis in a swing vs. red-shift scatter chart and concluded from the flat regression line that the exit poll discrepancies had little effect and therefore fraud was unlikely. But they did not considering the following factors: According to the 2004 National Exit Poll, Kerry won 71% of returning Nader voters compared to 21% for Bush. A similar split would have increased Gore’s margin by 1.4mm. Assuming that 75% of approximately 3 million uncounted votes were for Gore, his margin increases by another 1.5mm. When added to his recorded 540,000 vote majority, Gore’s adjusted margin becomes 3.4mm. And that does not consider the effects of vote-switching. Thanks to Ohio, we know a lot more about vote-switching than we did in 2000. It’s very likely that Gore votes were switched to Bush. If 3% (1.5 million) were switched, then his final adjusted margin is 6.4 million: 3mm switched + 1.5mm uncounted + 1.4mm Nader + 0.54mm recorded.

They never normalized the 2-party state votes in calculating “swing”. But adjusted state swing (before vote switching) exceeded red-shift in 24 of the 43 states which deviated to Bush. Adjusted national swing was 3.0 (51.24-48.24). Based on the NEP How Voted in 2000 demographic, red-shift was 3.15 (51.24-48.09); based on Gender, it was 2.53 (51.24-48.71). But red-shift was just 1.75 (51.24-49.49) based on the weighted average state poll. This clearly indicates that the naysayer swing vs. red-shift argument is just another ruse meant to divert, confuse and mislead. With 3% vote-switching, Bush’s adjusted vote swing exceeded red-shift in 34 of the 43 red-shift states. A realistic linear regression analysis of swing vs. redshift shows that for every 1% increase in adjusted swing, red-shift increased by 0.6%.

They still maintain that the Ohio exit poll does not indicate fraud. But they ignored the massive documented evidence of uncounted and switched votes, voter disenfranchisement. Not to mention that two election workers were convicted of rigging the recount. They criticized the 12:22am Ohio exit poll (1963 respondents) which Kerry won by 52-48%, yet believe the 2:06pm Final (2020 respondents) in which demographic category vote shares were changed in favor of Bush to match the miscounted recorded vote. This was just like the final NEP in which vote shares were also changed to match a miscounted national vote. If the original weights were used, it would have been necessary to inflate the Bush vote shares to implausible levels. How can they explain these Ohio exit poll anomalies?

-When Decided: Of the 14% who were first-time voters, 55% were for Kerry. Are we to believe that he won just 47% of the other 86%? Of the 21% who decided in the month prior to the election, 62% voted for Kerry. Are we to believe that he won just 45% of the other 79%? Were there any Ohio pre-election polls which showed Bush leading by 10% at the end of September?

-Party ID: Democrat/ Republican weights changed from 38/35 to 35/40, a 7.9% shift. With the original 38/35 weights, Bush needed 17% of Democrats to match the recorded vote, as opposed to his 8% at 12:22am.

-Ideology: Liberal/Conservative weights changed from 21/34 to 19/21, a 9.5% shift. With the original weights, Bush needed 23% of Liberals to match the recorded vote, as opposed to his 13% at 12:22am.

-Voted for Senate: Democratic/Republican weights changed from 43/57 to 36/64, a 16.3% shift. With the original weights, Bush needed 14% of those who voted for the Democratic candidate, as opposed to his 7% at 12:22am.

They ignored Florida’s implausible vote count by machine type and party registration. Bush supposedly “won” Florida by 52-47%, a 368,000 vote margin. But there was a 41- 37% Democratic registration advantage in Touch Screen (TS) machine counties and a 42-39% edge in Optical Scan (OS) counties. In 2000, Bush “won” Florida by 547 votes, but Kerry must have won by at least 60,000, given his 70% share of 180,000 uncounted under/over votes. Kerry won TS counties (3.86mm votes) by 51-47%, but Bush won OS counties (3.43mm votes) by a whopping 57-42%. Florida voter registration by party is consistent across TS and OS counties, so it’s not comparing apples and oranges. The total TS county vote share matched the 12:22am NEP to within 0.43% for Bush (17,000 votes) and 0.31% for Kerry (12,000). But the Bush OS county share deviated by 9.0% (307,000) while Kerry’s discrepancy was 8.1% (278,000). The final Zogby pre-election poll had Kerry winning by 50-47%.

Why was there such a large vote share discrepancy in OS counties? Party ID weights for OS and TS counties were virtually the same. There was massive fraud in OS counties, but TS counties were hardly fraud-free. Assuming a 1.0% margin of error, the probability is 1 in 12.7 trillion that Kerry's total TS county vote share would exceed his total Florida share by 4.2%. Three distinct models indicate that Kerry won Florida by 221,000 votes. Two were based on voting machine type (optical scanners and touch screens). The models assume 2004 NEP “How Voted in 2000” vote shares with weights set to party registration percentage. Kerry won both scenarios by a total of … 221,000 votes. The third model was based on uncounted and switched votes applied to the 2004 recorded vote. Kerry wins by…. 221,000 votes. Considering that Kerry probably won 70,000 of 96,000 Nader 2000 votes (based on his 71% NEP share), he had a built-in 100,000 advantage on Election Day …assuming that all the votes were going to be counted.

They cited the final NY pre-election poll which Kerry won by 59-40 (matching the recorded vote) to support their argument that the pre-election polls did not match the exits (the NY exit poll was 64-35). But they failed to mention that the typical pre-election state poll has a 4% margin of error (600 respondents) while the corresponding exit poll has a 2-3% MoE, depending on the number of respondents so a 5% discrepancy between a given state pre-election and the corresponding exit poll is not unusual. In fact, the weighted average vote share of 51 state pre-election polls, adjusted for undecided voters, matched the weighted average exit poll vote share to within 1%.

They implied that the NY pre-election poll was accurate since it matched the recorded vote. But this is not plausible since the 2000 recorded vote was Gore 60-Bush 35-Nader 5 and the 2004 NEP reported that 10% of Bush2000 voters defected to Kerry while just 8% of Gore voters defected to Bush. Assuming conservatively that the Bush/Gore defection rates were equal, the 59-40 recorded vote implies that 100% of returning Nader 2000 voters defected to Bush - an absolute impossibility. The NEP indicated that Kerry won Nader voters by 71-21. Allocating Nader 2000 votes and assuming equal defection rates, the 2004 recorded vote is Kerry 63-Bush 36. Allocating the 3% uncounted votes (75% Kerry/ 25% Bush) widens the vote split to 64-35, matching the exit poll. The True Vote Model determined that 7% of Kerry’s national votes were switched to Bush while a comprehensive analysis of total votes cast in Cuyahoga County (Ohio) showed that 6.15% were switched. Assuming that 4% of Kerry’s NY votes were switched, he won the state by 66-33%.

They have never explained why the Exit Poll Response Optimizer confirmed the USCV simulation. Both models analyzed summary exit poll data for 1250 precincts supplied by Edison-Mitofsky and independently debunked the reluctant Bush responder (rBr) hypothesis. The Optimizer employed the Excel Solver algorithm to obtain a feasible 2-party vote share solution (Kerry 52.15-Bush 47.85%). The constraints included the actual recorded vote (Bush 51.24-Kerry 48.76%), along with response rates and within precinct error (WPE) categorized into five partisanship groupings: Strong Bush, Bush, Even, Kerry, Strong Kerry. The robust solution exactly matched the 12:22am National Exit Poll “Voted in 2000” demographic. Two independent mathematical methods applied to two distinct sets of national and precinct summary exit poll data produced the identical result.

They can try to refute the True Vote Model. The base case scenario determined that Kerry won by 66.1-58.4mm. The model was based on the 12:22am NEP vote shares, with feasible weights adjusted for 1) the 2000 recorded vote, 2) 3.5% mortality, 3) 95% turnout of 2000 voters in 2004. It assumed that 2.74% of total votes cast were uncounted, based on the 2004 Election Census which reported that 125.7mm votes were cast. Only 122.3mm were recorded, therefore 3.4mm were uncounted. Assuming that Kerry won 2.6mm of the uncounted votes (a 75% share), then 4.5mm (6.8%) of total votes cast for Kerry must have been switched to Bush to match his 66.1-58.4mm margin. By allocating the 3.4mm uncounted votes to each state based on its racial mix, the model also determined that Kerry won 336 electoral votes. This matched the Election Model Monte Carlo Simulation which was based on final state polling and 5000 election trials.

Except for the notorious 2006 FL-13 congressional race in which 18,000 mostly Democratic votes were mysteriously missing, the evidence of massive fraud in the midterm elections is hardly mentioned in the corporate media. But a Pew 2006 Election Analysis describes voting “anomalies” and computer “glitches” that occurred in virtually every state. The fraud probably cost the Democrats 10-20 congressional seats.

The 2006 National Exit Poll “How Voted in 2004” weights were changed from 47 Bush / 45 Kerry at 7pm on Election Day to 49/43 in the Final NEP at 1pm on the following day. Once again, just like in 2004, the exit pollsters had to match the vote count by expanding the weight spread from 2% to 6%! This had a major effect in cutting the Democratic margin in half - from 55-43% to 52-46%. As noted earlier, the 2004 12:22am NEP “How Voted in 2000” Bush/Gore weights (41/39) were changed to 43/37 in the Final at 2pm the next day, turning a 51-48% Kerry victory into a 51-48% loss.

If plausible 49 Kerry/ 46 Bush weights based on the 2004 NEP were used, the TRUE Democratic margin becomes 56.7-42.1%, exactly matching the 120 pre-election Generic Poll trend line. Was this just a coincidence or another confirmation that the pre-election polls matched the 7pm National Exit Poll? You decide.

Scientific Analysis Suggests Presidential Vote Counts May Have Been Altered

Ted Kahl — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 20:10:16 -0500

Group of University Professors Urges Investigation of 2004 Election

From US Count Votes:

WASHINGTON -- March 31 -- Officially, President Bush won November's election by 2.5%, yet exit polls showed Kerry winning by 3%[1]. According to a report to be released today by a group of university statisticians, the odds of a discrepancy this large between the national exit poll and election results happening by accident are close to 1 in a million.

In other words, by random chance alone, it could not have happened. But it did.

Two alternatives remain. Either something was wrong with the exit polling, or something was wrong with the vote count.

Exit polls have been used to verify the integrity of elections in the Ukraine, in Latin America, in Germany, and elsewhere. Yet in November 2004, the U.S. exit poll discrepancy was much more than normal exit poll error (and similar to that of the invalid Ukraine election.

Exit Pollsters LIE About Kerry's Victory

Bob Fertik — Wed, 19 Jan 2005 22:50:38 -0500

Since Election Night, I've been angry over the refusal of the NEP and the networks to explain the Exit Polls that proved Kerry won Ohio, Florida, and the Presidency.

After all, the Ukrainian election was overturned because exit polls showed Yuschenko won, even though the government-controlled tabulations showed he lost.

Well, we finally got an "explanation" - and it's utterly bogus. Here's the CNN version:

Report suggests changes in exit poll methodology
Wednesday, January 19, 2005 Posted: 12:17 PM EST

Exit polls overstated John Kerry's share of the vote on November 2, both nationally and in many states, because more Kerry supporters participated in the survey than Bush voters, according to an internal review of the exit-polling process released Wednesday.

This is a complicated sentence, so let's make it simpler.

What if more Kerry supporters participated in the survey because there were more Kerry supporters?

In other words, what if Kerry actually got more votes - just as Gore did?

If that statement isn't true, then the only other explanation is that Bush voters refused to take the exit poll.

That sounds nutty. What serious explanation can they offer?

Well, they can't offer one.

The report said it is difficult to pinpoint precisely why, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit poll than were Bush voters. "There were certainly motivational factors that are impossible to quantify," the report said.

Why should we believe this media-spun "conspiracy theory" about mysterious "motivatational factors" - rather than believe the exit poll was accurate, and Kerry won?

Here are the possible explanations, all of which are ludicrous. I'll add BradBlog's brilliant translations in bold.

The report identified several factors that may have contributed to the discrepancy, including:

Distance restrictions from polling places imposed upon the interviewers by election officials at the state and local level. {ed. note: Bush voters shot straight up out of the polling place and down into their car, unlike Kerry voters who walked by the pollsters as they crossed the long distance from the poll to their cars}

Weather conditions, which lowered completion rates at certain polling locations. {ed. note: It rained more on the top of Bush voters heads than on the top of Kerry voters at the same polling locations.}

Multiple precincts voting at the same location as the precinct in the exit poll sample. {ed. note: We have no clue what this would have to do with anything, and can't come up with a joke to make it more absurd than it already sounds.}

Interviewer characteristics, such as age, which were more often related to the errors last year than in past elections. {ed. note: Bush voters don't like talking to younger people. Or, they don't like talking to older people. Whereas Kerry voters, not that there were more of them, will talk to anybody. Or they're making all this bullshit up outta whole cloth.}

The bottom line is simple: they are lying to us.

Clearly the exit polls proved John Kerry won.

George Bush stole a second term with the help of the TV networks, who will use the inauguration to proclaim Bush legitimate.

Bullshit.

Impeach Bush Now!

Updates:

Here is the full 77-page report from Edison-Mitofsky (the pollsters) for the National Election Pool (the networks who paid them).

Rep. John Conyers didn't buy the bullshit either. In a letter to exit pollsters Warren Mitofsky and Larry Rosin, he wrote:

To be frank, blaming such factors as distant restrictions on polling places, weather conditions, the age of exit poll workers, and the fact that multiple precincts were contained at the same polling place, as your report does, does not come close to explaining why the exit polls overstated support for the Kerry/Edwards ticket in 26 states and support for the Bush/Cheney ticket in only 4 states. Many of the factors you point to appear to merely be random characteristics of the election and your exit polling, rather than quantifiable and justifiable explanations. Nor can I believe that the massive discrepancies can credibly be written off to eagerness of Kerry voters to participate in the exit polls.

As a result, I would like to reiterate my request to receive the actual raw exit poll data that you obtained. I would also like to obtain copies of all internal deliberations, memos and other materials of your employees and consultants concerning or seeking to explain the discrepancies.

You GO, Conyers!

The AP version by Seth Sutel has a simple conspiracy theory: blame the children.

Younger interviewers often get lower response rates from exit polls, Lenski said, but what was different this time around was that that factor resulted in data overstating the results for one candidate.

"You look at the factors out there, and young voters in this election were the strongest supporters of Kerry by age group," he said. "Older voters seeing a younger interviewer may have been less likely to participate because they might believe that interviewer might not agree with them politically."

Edison/Mitofsky used a far greater proportion of younger interviewers than VNS [its failed predecessor, which was run by the same people] did, despite considerable research from past elections documenting "age-of-interviewer effects."

So were the interviewers too young in Ukraine? Why should we believe any exit poll if such bizarre and minor factors can produce results that are statistically impossible - 250 million to one!

Here is Nightline's promo for their 1/19/05 show:

In this very partisan atmosphere, it may not surprise you to hear that there are some people out there who believe the winner of the 2004 U.S. presidential race was John Kerry — that he should be the focus of the extravagant inaugural parade that will make its way up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House tomorrow. These very vocal critics believe that because of voting irregularities in Ohio on Election Day, George Bush actually lost the election. Some go even further to say that the Republicans conspired to steal it.

Yup!

Here is Ohio activist Paddy Schaffer's report. Nightline has officially labeled us the "Diehards." I'd call us the "Truthtellers."

Warren Mitofsky went on ABC's Nightline show tonight to claim that Bush won because he made errors in his exit polls. He felt honored that the group Ted Koppel referred to as "The Diehards" thought his work was so correct that we would base our court suits on his polls. He said he makes errors. Well, gee, I hope he has trouble getting paying work in the future. Who would want to pay for his polls when he admits he botched the job on the Ohio exit polls.

The show also had lots of coverage of the Freedom Winter bus riders, attorneys, and others that were present in DC for the Press Conference at the National Press Club... Finally the footage comes out, and we make a lot of sense. The conclusion of the show is that we are The Diehards, they want us to go away and go back to sleep, and they even talked about lots of other stolen elections and that we should just be sad and nearly cry like Hubert Humphrey. It is so good to know that I for one will not do that. And neither will so many of you.

Instead, on Wednesday I spoke about our election issues to two National Public Radio Hosts at the Fawcett Center, their staffs, and a large audience. After the live NPR radio show they hosted a banquet room question and answer session with Neal Conan and Fred Anderly. Although they did not call on the several people in the audience that showed up with elections issues to address during the live show, I did get to speak then.

I addressed the need of the people to have the media cover the truth of what is happening, to cover the lies of the politicians, and to cover the brave politicians that speak the truth. I told them and the audience that this applies not only to the war, the economy, many areas of our lives, but that I was very interested in how it effected our elections. I told them about the first public hearing at the church, the preplanning, and how we didn't know if no one would show up, or thousands would show up. I lead them through several public hearings, tons of evidence to show there are problems, the fact that this research and legal work has been volunteer work by people of Ohio.... how the branches of government that should do this work has done nothing...., and went to the scene in the Senate Gallery where after working so hard, with so many, on these issues.... I watched as our Senators DeWine and Voinovich stood up and told the nation that Ohio did not have even one problem, not one. I asked that they, lead the media in showcasing and honoring those that tell the truth, broadcast it, and when they do not tell the truth, play it, hold them responsible. The audience cheered and clapped, more than half of them I'd say. Neil Conan made an excuse for the liars.... that they believe what they are saying. Alas............ the media doesn't get it, half of the people do. Yet they all know, they all heard it, they can't say they don't know about it. Karen Holbrook (president of OSU) was in the audience, as were most of the speakers from the live show. I had many come up to me during and after the event to thank me, to want to know more.... So I handed out copies of the Freepress after talking with them. A few more know what happened, the hosts know what happened in Ohio... now what do they choose to do with the knowledge? We shall see.

To hold the government and media accountable, to embrace and demand the truth, sounds great to me. To have speakers show up at meetings all over the city, state, and country, to expose what has happened, and what is currently happening seems like one more area to focus on. So many in that room, didn't understand before I spoke, and now they do, or are beginning to understand. The truth is so powerful. Keep finding it and telling it. What would Jesus do...? He'd tell the truth!

Speaking of truthtellers, Prof. Steven Freeman answered Russ Baker's libelous attack on Freeman's incredible work on the "unexplained exit poll discrepancy."

Baker dismisses my work based on an unnamed source (why does he not name his source here?) who told him "that it is 'all wrong.'" But the single shortcoming identified – that my analysis is based on "'screen shots' of raw numbers provided by CNN" – betrays a complete ignorance of my analysis, of basic survey research, and of the issues at hand. I did not use "raw numbers," but rather the exit poll projections provided by the National Election Pool (NEP) to its media clients so that they could prepare their coverage and write their articles. I used these data, which were publicly available on election night, to document the obvious fact of an unexplained discrepancy between the exit poll projections and the official count – a discrepancy still unexplained more than two months later. I collected screen shots because the National Election Pool (NEP) "corrected" its numbers later on election night to conform to the official count, leaving no public record of the original projections.

Baker's work is normally excellent. But he blew this one big time. Baker owes Freeman - and his readers - an explanation and an apology. E-mail russ@russbaker.com

Fl Statistician Debunks the Berkeley Study Debunkers

CactusPat — Fri, 10 Dec 2004 05:30:07 -0500

Kim Zetter over at Wired.com published a report on a new analysis supposedly debuking UC Berkeley's Quantitative Methods Research Team statistical study, which calls for investigation of the Florida results. "...But Bruce McCullough, a decisions science professor at Drexel University and Binghamton University economics professor Florenz Plassmann released an analysis of the Berkeley report criticizing the results. According to the Berkeley study, the number of votes granted to Bush in touch-screen counties far exceeded expectation, given a number of variables - including the number of votes those counties gave Bush in 2000 - while counties using other types of voting equipment gave Bush a predictable number of votes." A reply to this supposed debunking comes from a statistician in Tallahassee, who has done his own analysis' of the Florida and Ohio results. He has also confirmed the work Richard Hayes Phillips has done in Ohio -

Berkeley Florida E-Vote Study Supposedly Debunked (Not)

The study you quote isn't a very serious effort to evaluate the Florida election. Neither of these studies are as detailed as mine is; and its highly unlikely anyone can debunk mine since its very simplistic but has clear results that indicate unusual patterns occurred in big touch screen counties. The Univ. of Calif. study results was consistent with my study, and the new study doesn't debunk them.

New study says "wrongly" that: He pointed out that only two of the 15 counties using touch-screen machines in Florida exhibited anomalous results. My study shows that many of the touchscreen counties had ununusual results :
www.flcv.com/fla04EAS.html

B.W.

Go Bernie!

Kim, I'll see your analysis and raise you one...

We also get a head's up on his Ohio analysis -

Strong indications of major electronic glitches or fraud in Ohio in several counties (rural and suburban counties)

(documentation) www.flcv.com/fraudioh.html

In analyzing the still-unofficial results, the totals reveal that C. Ellen Connally, an African-American Democratic candidate from Cleveland running for Ohio Chief Justice, received more than votes than Kerry in many counties. For example in Butler County, Connally received 5347 more votes than Kerry. The list of the counties where Connally actually outpolled Kerry include Auglaize, Brown, Butler, Clermont, Darke, Highland, Mercer, Miami, Putnam, Shelby, Van Wert, and Warren.

The reason the Kerry vote counts are suspect is because Connelly, a retired African-American judge, was vastly outspent in her race, and did not have the visibility of the presidential race. Thus for a more obscure Democratic candidate, farther down on the ticket, to get many more votes statewide than Kerry, suggests something happened to suggest there may have been a transfer of Kerry votes to Bush. ""Statistically, Kerry, as the Democratic presidential candidate, should have more votes than Connally. In a presidential election, most voters have the priority of casting a vote for president and the votes for president are almost always much higher than those of candidates farther down the ticket. As of election night, 5,481,804 votes were counted for Bush and Kerry. 4,327,270 votes were counted for Moyer and Connally.

"This looks like a computer glitch or a computer fix," said Bob Fitrakis, a lawyer, political scientist and Editor of the Columbus Free Press (http://freepres.org) who has written about election irregularities since Bush was declared the winner. Fitrakis is among the team of lawyers who announced they would soon file an election challenge in the state’’s Supreme Court.

************************************

Southwest Ohio: most successful voter registration drive in American political history, or stuffing the ballot box

http://web.northnet.org/minstrel/warren.htm

www.flcv.com/swohio.html

Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D. 4 Fisher Street Canton, NY 13617 (315) 379-0820

Other counties and likely Kerry win in recount with fair rules:

http://web.northnet.org/minstrel/alpage.htm

http://www.opednews.com/shurberg_112004_election.htm

Lastly, it appears Phillips work has been under hack attack -

Richard Hayes Phillips documentation/ web page has been being hacked

Richard says both his web page and computer have been under attack by hackers today and some of his files currently aren't up. Some are. He's revising some.

The latest summary page which is going to the Ohio Supreme Court tommorrow is currently down but will be up again later:

it's at -

Documentation that Kerry won Ohio http://web.northnet.org/minstrel/supreme.htm

For now use the rather old version http://web.northnet.org/minstrel/uncounted.htm

and the rest of his documentation which is at : http://web.northnet.org/minstrel/alpage.htm

This is the best information available documenting irregularities and apparent fraud in Ohio counties and is the core of the case Arnebeck is filing tomorrow. He has detailed analysis by precinct , ward, and county. People might want to mirror his info, since its important.