Hand selected stats don't mean much

First, let me say there IS something suspicious about the polling numbers versus the results. But you pick the oddest cases, then ask how likely it is that so many odd cases should be found among those you picked because they were odd. Why 4 of 8? Pure whimsey. Why then again multiply by the odds of all 4 going R when that is the reason you picked them in the first place?

Don't get me wrong, I think this kind of analysis can be very revealing, but not when you hand pick a few. What are the odds of me being a specific age, gender, occupation, height, hair color, etc. Gee, I'm just not very likely to be real given the odds against such a combination.

To do this right you must look at the whole set of available data, and then show that these few cases are marked by the data itself as being way off scale. It's a bit more work, but the result is that the oddball cases will be generated by the numbers rather than the numbers being a result of selective sampling.

The appropriate methodology involves beginning with ALL senate races and ALL polls conducted within a specific number of days before the election. Or even better analyzing the numbers from several elections. Anything less and you're using a fixed deck.

Again, if you do this I would expect to see these 4 elections way out there in terms of the normal ranges established by the rest of the results, but until this is done I'd just be guessing.

You may recall that the odds of 3 identical margins of victory in a single county was analyzed by Pobeka under the guidance of a statistician and determined to be not improbable. The 18181 number is interesting, as are many other numbers, but the triple match was not as odd as it first seemed.

bumbler is a smart person.

In case anyone is wondering, bumbler seems to be responding to this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=85732&mesg_id=85732&page=

I wish you luck but really don't think you will have any. No matter what you say your opinion is. No matter how many times you back up what you are saying with mathematical theory no one will be swayed. Again I wish you luck and hope you will prove me wrong but I have been here and done that and am now an armchair math guy on this.

have polling data and the vote %'s for all 50 states?

Do you have any polling data (preferably identical polls from the same org) from both before and after Kahn's speech?

I just never know what to do with the info I learn from you math wizards.

bumbler hits on something that is lost in the midst of throwing polling numbers and surveys back and forth as evidence: Methodology means everything. The sad fact is most polls and surveys are, to be diplomatic, CRAP. They are so shoddily constructed or constructed in such a manner as to find support the research question that you cannot place a whole lot of faith in most of the polls that you read.

Be particularly suspicious of polls and surveys where those doing the polling and surveying will not share their methodology with you. That is a dead giveaway that something stinks.