At 01:16 AM 11/8/2004 +0000 Robert J. Chassell wrote: >Robert J. Chassell wrote: > > >For example, I have heard it said that in areas in which electronic > >voting occurred without a paper trail, Bush gained an advantage of > >around +5% when comparing exit polls to actual results, but that in > >areas in which electronic voting included a paper trail, exit polls > >and actual results were similar within a percent or so. > >"John D. Giorgis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> responded > > This is very suspicious. Exit polls were only conducted in @1200 > precincts. So far as I know, exit poll results were not released by > precincts. > >This does not answer the question: of those exit polls which can be >matched to actual results, what is the comparison?
Again, "So far as I know, exit poll results were not released by precincts." Heck, so far as I know, exit poll results were not released by county. Thus, it is very difficult to correlate exit polls to actual results. > Secondly, it should be pointed out that the exit polls have been wrong > before. Indeed, the exit polls were wrong in 2000. > >I have heard it said that exit polls were right before 2000 and only >became wrong after audit-less voting became widespread. I do not know >whether this is true or not. But this is the issue. I don't know the answer to that, other the anecdotally. Certainlly, exit polls have been wrong for lower-level races in the past, Sen Bob Smith of NH's re-election in 1996 or 98 being a recent example. There may have been other errors that were simply not noticed due to the fact that the Presidential election wasn't close. (i.e. being off by 4% or so still leads you to the right conclusion, so you never think too much of the error.) The second part about being correlated with audit-less voting is simply not true. One of the biggest errors of the exit polls in 2000 was in Arizona, which did not use electronic voting at the time. > Thirdly, it should be pointed out that those "early exit polls" > are akin to a halftime football score or 4th-inning baseball score > ... > >Yes, I have also heard that Democrats tend to vote later in the day, >so that "early exit polls" will tend to favor Republicans. Again, I >do not know. Nor do I know how accurate exit polls are (although >obviously, voting is far more predictable than games, which are >designed to be somewhat unpredicatable). There is no real evidence on tendency to vote during the time of day. An equally plausible theory is that angry voters tend to vote early in the day, which could cause evening turnout to be Republican-heavy. And of course, hundreds of millions of dollars were spent by both sides this election with the intent of changing turnout patterns. >As a rhetorical strategy, your response fails. I would expect you to >want me and others to decide the election is legitimate. By offering >a response that does not answer the question, you exacerbate the >problem. My general attitude is that people who are willing to believe conspiracy theories of this scale are generally unpersuadeable. I generally want the American people to believe that the United States doesn't have a UFO in Area 51, but I don't engage in detailed arguments with everyone who believes in that conspiracy either. >Let me re-ask the question: of those exit polls that can be matched >to actual results, what is the comparison between auditable results >and exit polls on the one hand and un-auditable results and exit polls >on the other? > >And let me re-ask my other question, too: is it true or false that in >areas with paper ballots, which are always auditable, voting results >matched voter registrations more closely than in areas with electronic >ballots (which may or may not have included a paper audit trail)? If you want to look at it on the basis of State data - ie. statewide exit polls results vs. state voting tabulations, *all* of the exit polls were basically wrong this year. Just look at the link from my last message. There is no correlation. For example, information on voting method can be found here: http://americanhistory.si.edu/vote/patchwork.html Colorado is basically an opti-scan State and was dead wrong in the exit polls. New York is a lever-machine state, has been for decades, and was dead wrong in the exit polls. Slate did not release exit polls Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia - but I have heard that those states were spectacularly wrong in Kerry's favor as well. Pennsylvania is a mixed method state, and was wrong in the exit polls. On the other hand, Mason-Dixon's poll of battleground states conducted the week before the election was almost spot-on. What is more likely, that one of the nation's most respected polling firms would get the election *wrong* almost exactly as the vast-right-wing-conspiracy was going to manufacture, whereas a polling consortium that was founded just two years ago would manage to get its exit polls exactly right - revealing a vast-right-wing conspiracy? Also consider the following data from RealClearPolitics: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry.html Compare the above results, to the national exit poll result of Kerry 51% Bush 48% (almost precisely the reverse of the actual result.) What is more likely: that most of the nation's major polls would get this election exactly right (take note of Pew's results) and a two-year-old polling consortium would get it wrong? Or that the exit polls got it right and revealed a vast-right-wing conspiracy that happened to match the results of all the nation's most-respected pollsters? JDG _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
