The following comes via a friend of GregD's - he only has one post so far – this one…. So I am posting it to a new thread. It deserves it. The following t is in short MIND BLOWINGLY USEFUL. It takes TIA and Faun Otter's initial analysis of the Exit Poll data to another level of sophistication and depth. It is a must read for everybody on this forum.
Please keep this kicked and say hello to new DUer JS. The full version is posted in the Presidential results forum as you people in GD are tough to keep happy :)
Al
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To Those Who Seek Information As A Basis For Action Regarding Bush's "Victory":
I examined the discrepancies between the actual vote tabulations as reported and the Edison/Mitofsky exit poll results in 47 states, incl. D.C. (in 4 states—NJ,NY,NC,VA—I did not have early exit poll results available, and the later results had already been amended to reflect input of actual vote totals, which rendered them corrupt as exit polls and useless for the purpose of checking the veracity of actual vote totals).
I noticed an overall red shift (to Bush) across the spectrum of states, but the shift was significantly nonuniform.Having divided the 47 states examined into two groups, 35 noncritical states and 12 critical or suspect states (Nebraska included because of ES&S control and prior anomalies even though not a battleground state), I calculated that the average discrepancy in the 35 safe states was a +1.4% red shift, that is the average of the vote totals in each state was 1.4% more favorable to Bush than what the exit polls predicted (= total movement of 2.8%).
In the 12 critical states (CO,FL,MI,MN,NE,NV,NH,NM,OH,PA,WI,IA) the average discrepancy was a 2.5% red shift (= total movement of 5.0%), nearly twice that in the safe states. This in spite of the fact that the average sample size in the critical states was nearly twice that in the noncritical states and should have produced significantly more accurate results.Further, assuming a 3% margin of error and 95% confidence interval for each state poll (the standard Mitofksy protocol, but a conservative assumption here, since the sample sizes were significantly increased in critical states), the red shift exceeded the margin of error in 4 of the 12 critical states (and equalled it in a fifth). The chance of this occurring in 4 of the 12 states in the absence of "mistabulation" can be computed using a simple probability equation and is approximately 0.002 or one in five-hundred. It's a relatively crude analysis and better analysis would have to wait on more complete data, but basically what it's telling us is that we can say with 99.8% certainty that "mistabulation" played some significant role in this election.
Full Data and moer discussion here…
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x36314