I Smell a Rat...odor of Republicanus floridius [by a polling expert]

http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.asp?id=321

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

I work with statistics and polling data every day. Something rubbed me the wrong way. I checked the exit polls for Florida--all wrong. CNN's results indicated a Kerry win: turnout matched voter registration, and independents had broken 59% to 41% for Kerry.

Polling is an imprecise science. Yet its very imprecision is itself quantifiable and follows regular patterns. Differences between actual results and those expected from polling data must be explainable by identifiable factors if the polling sample is robust enough. With almost 3.000 respondents in Florida alone, the CNN poll sample was pretty robust.

The first signs of the rat were identified by Kathy Dopp, who conducted a simple analysis of voter registrations by party in Florida and compared them to presidential vote results. Basically she multiplied the total votes cast in a county by the percentage of voters registered Republican: this gave an expected Republican vote. She then compared this to the actual result.

Her analysis is startling. Certain counties voted for Bush far in excess of what one would expect based on the share of Republican registrations in that county. They key phrase is "certain counties"--there is extraordinary variance between individual counties. Most counties fall more or less in line with what one would expect based on the share of Republican registrations, but some differ wildly.

How to explain this incredible variance? Dopp found one over-riding factor: whether the county used electronic touch-screen voting, or paper ballots which were optically scanned into a computer. All of those with touch-screen voting had results relatively in line with her expected results, while all of those with extreme variance were in counties with optical scanning.

The intimation, clearly, is fraud."

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Evoting Fraud Resource Center
http://www.independentmediasource.com/evotingfraud.htm

did it occur to anyone that the people doing the exit polls might be lying. that people just didn't vote for the party, changed parties for the pres vote?

STATISTICS ACCOUNTS FOR ERROR!

participate in a survey right afterword and then lie. THAT MAKES SENSE....

:eyes:

That the Repukes would argue exactly that ... because it's a good way to hide the theft of this election.

Now, go away, please. :puke:

-Laelth

If you're sincere (not a troll) read this to understand it is about much more than the polling data anyway.

Washington Post's Sloppy Analysis
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/111204.html

Dispensing with the "Dixiecrat" thing. It's probably good that they're striking back at us now rather than later, because as more people start paying attention, the nonsense will stick out more.

Nonsense on both parts, naturally, but at least some of their bunking is being de'd.

*************
By TruthIsAll
To believe that Bush won the election, you must also believe:
1- That the exit polls were WRONG...
2- That Zogby's 5pm election day calls for Kerry winning OH, FL were WRONG. He was exactly RIGHT in his 2000 final poll.
3- That Harris last minute polling for Kerry was WRONG. He was exactly RIGHT in his 2000 final poll.
4- The Incumbent Rule I (that undecideds break for the challenger)was WRONG.
5- The 50% Rule was WRONG (that an incumbent doesn't do better than his final polling)
6- The Approval Rating Rule was WRONG (that an incumbent with less than 50% approval will most likely lose the election)
7- That Greg Palast was WRONG when he said that even before the election, 1 million votes were stolen from Kerry. He was the ONLY reporter to break the fact that 90,000 Florida blacks were disnfranchised in 2000.
8- That it was just a COINCIDENCE that the exit polls were CORRECT where there WAS a PAPER TRAIL and INCORRECT (+5% for Bush) where there was NO PAPER TRAIL.
9- That the surge in new young voters had NO positive effect for Kerry.
10- That Bush BEAT 99-1 mathematical odds in winning the election.
11- That Kerry did WORSE than Gore agains an opponent who LOST the support of SCORES of Republican newspapers who were for Bush in 2000.
12- That Bush did better than an 18 national poll average which showed him tied with Kerry at 47. In other words, Bush got 80% of the undecided vote to end up with a 51-48 majority - when ALL professional pollsters agree that the undecided vote ALWAYS goes to the challenger.
13- That Voting machines made by Republicans with no paper trail and with no software publication, which have been proven by thousands of computer scientists to be vulnerable in scores of ways, were NOT tampered with in this election

up in NH and OH? If you feel chimp got all those votes, then no problem, huh?

All these things-a little. The polls acknowledge this and allow for it. In a big enough sample, all these simplistic excuses have already been figured in and included-years ago! "There ain't nothin' new, under the sun" may be a bit lacking on linguistic beauty and accuracy, but has become a cliche because of its universality and truthfulness. Find something a lot more logical and likely-as many have-FRAUD!

The Repubs are using for the exit polls and election not matching is that it (the exit poll)was too long for busy married people and people with children to fill out, so it didn't count their obvious pro Repub vote.

If it was too long for busy people to fill out how could it not be long enough to discourage lying. Someone would have to spend a great amount of time filling out the form then lie about it.

And why would a person do that? Fill out a long form to just lie. Unless they knew there would be questions about the election and the exit polls.

Either way the exit poll and vote count difference suggests manipulation of the vote count or what I like to think of as voter fraud.

Because why would people who spent hours in line waiting to vote respond truthfully, and anonymously, to an exit poll? :eyes: Lying makes it all worthwhile. :crazy: Please.

convince me that there was a plan by * voters to lie on the exit poll ONLY in those counties with huge discrepancies, I see no reason why those counties should be any different statistically. But they are.

the states where Kerry won, just the states he didn't! Good catch!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

that the people who conducted the polls put the wrong information down, favoring Kerry AND "moral values" all at the same time? Gee, they think we're stupid.

Please stop repeating this. We all know about the Florida counties with high democrat registration but high repug votes -- they are all middle of nowhere counties that really do vote that way because there is only one party for their local elections. Since this IS a red herring, it detracts from the real issues, because this is what media & repugs will latch on to.

:headbang:

So fitting, too!

I hope you don't mind mia. I "boxed him in" on my home page. ;~}

http://www.independentmediasource.com/index.html

the media will repeat the accusations endlessly even after the accusations have been proven wrong and absurd, but if you present EVIDENCE that something is strange about exit polls, the media dismisses it as paranoid conspiracy? We are so fucked.
By one MIT analysis of exit poll data, the odds of exit poll data being so far off in favor of one candidate in three battleground states is 250 million to one. Bush didn't win an election, he won the lottery.

Is there anything actually at the moment in Florida as far as a recount is concerned - because it seems all efforts are currently concentrated on New Hampshire and Ohio which would surely be a mistake if there is so much odd evidence about

And welcome to DU! :hi: