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Bush v. Kerry 2004, revisited
October 21, 2005 5:05 PM

Somehow we missed this report (.pdf) back in April, issued by USCountVotes.org, whose mission statement reads:

USCountVotes is a scientific research project whose mission is to objectively investigate the accuracy of elections in America through the creation and analysis of a database containing detailed precinct-level election data for the entire United States.
.

On page 8 of that report, a summary of the problem with the exit polls not matching the actual votes states:

The E/M report, however, explains the WPE with the following statement (p. 31)(where E/M report refers to the Edison/Mitofsky consortium that conducted the exit polls for all the national TV networks, and WPE refers to "within precinct error," which is what they're meauring):

ìWhile we cannot measure the response rate by Kerry and Bush voters, hypothetical response rates of 56% among Kerry voters and 50% among Bush voters overall would account for the entire Within Precinct Error that we observed in 2004.î

This, apparently, is the basis for their statement in the Executive Summary (p. 4), ìIt is difficult to pinpoint precisely the reasons that, in general, Kerry voters were more likely to participate in the exit polls than Bush voters.î

No data in the E/M report supports the hypothesis that Kerry voters were more likely than Bush voters to cooperate with pollsters and, in fact, the data provided by E/M suggests that the opposite may have
been true.

So, to repeat, the Edison/Mitofsky consortium stated in their own study of what went wrong with their exit-poll numbers on election day '04, that, ìWhile we cannot measure the response rate by Kerry and Bush voters, hypothetical response rates of 56% among Kerry voters and 50% among Bush voters overall would account for the entire Within Precinct Error that we observed in 2004

They come up with a reason why the numbers are off, say that that reason would explain why the numbers were off, but it's all hypothetical!!

You really must read this report, which details how these exit poll numbers were wrong. No where does E/M suppose that the actual vote tallies are wrong. Instead, they just shrug their shoulders, say that their numbers must be wrong, since they didn't match the outcome, and don't even attempt to explain the discrepency.

And since the Edison/Mitofsky consortium continues to forbid the release of the raw numbers, the press continues to ignore this important story.

Simply amazing...you must read the entire .pdf. It's about 12 pages long.


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