Chanelling TruthIsAll: An Open Letter to Nate Silver

[althecat]

Dear DU,

Here is Richard Charnin's follow up post to the 25 Questions post made yesterday. It is high time that the guardians of the Democratic process woke up to some of the facts. Truthisall does a great job in this post. For those who don't know Truthisall aka TIA and Richard Charnin is a longtime DU legend and author of "Proving Election Fraud".


regards
Althecat
Scoop Independent News

An Open Letter to Nate Silver

by Richard Charnin (TruthIsAll)
July 12, 2010
link:richardcharnin.com/OpenLettertoNateSilver.htm[/center>

Nate, since your recent hiring by the NY Times, the R2K flap and your exchanges with Zogby you have been getting lots of publicity from blogs such as vanity fair and motherjones.com. Your characterization of Zogby’s expertise says more about you then it does about him. Zogby correctly projected the True Vote in 2000 (yes, Gore won Florida, despite what the NY Times said), 2004 and 2008 elections, yet you fail to give him credit. In fact, you rank him at the bottom. Why? Because you go along with the media-perpetuated myth that the recorded vote is sacrosanct. In other words, you discount the fraud factor and fail to distinguish between the True Vote and the recorded vote.

Below, you will see why Gore won by perhaps three million more than his recorded 540,000 vote margin; why Kerry won the True Vote by 10 million; why the Democratic Tsunami was denied in the 2006 midterms; and why Obama won by nearly 22 million votes in 2008, not the 9.5 million recorded.

I hereby challenge you to try and debunk the data, logic and mathematics used in True Vote Model. If you cannot do so, then the underlying premise of your pollster ranking system (that the recorded vote is an appropriate baseline to measure performance) is invalid.

As an Internet blogger who has been posting pre-election and exit poll analyses to prove election fraud since 2004, I have occasionally looked at your postings on fivethirtyeight.com. I will say right here that unlike the bloggers and mainstream media (MSNBC, the NY Times, etc.) who extol your forecasting “expertise”, I do not believe you are quite the polling guru that they claim you are.

I say this as one who has been building quantitative models since 1965 for defense/aerospace manufacturers, Wall Street investment banks and has consulted for many financial and corporate enterprises. I have three degrees in Mathematics, including an MS in Applied Mathematics and an MS in Operations Research.

Your 2008 simulation model win probabilities did not sync with the projected vote shares. The major flaw in your model was to conflate it with your pollster rankings, an ill-conceived methodology. The first rule of model building is KISS (keep it simple stupid). You not only introduced an extraneous variable into your model, but the rankings were incorrect – a double whammy. Now, what do I mean by this, you ask?

You fail to distinguish the True Vote from the Recorded vote by ignoring vote miscounts. The premise on which your models are based (that fraud does not exist) is incorrect from the get-go. In your ranking system, pollsters who come close to the recorded vote (i.e. Rasmussen in 2004) are ranked high, but pollsters who come close to the True Vote (i.e. Zogby) are ranked low. The fact that Zogby is ranked at the bottom is a clear indictment of your approach. Ranking pollsters based on their performance against the recorded vote is a waste of time. Fortunately for you, your fans are unaware of the distinction between the recorded vote and the True Vote. In fact, most are unaware of the extent in which their votes have been compromised by fraud. In your models, election fraud is never a factor.
This is the simple, yet fundamental equation that you seem to be blissfully unaware of: Recorded Vote = True Vote + Fraud.

Since you rank pollsters based on how close their polls match the recorded vote, I assume that exit pollsters Edison-Mitofsky are ranked at the top, since their final state and national exit polls always seem to match the recorded vote. So why don’t they release the unadjusted exit polls as well? These may actually reflect the True Vote. As a Polling Quant, you should be interested in the statistical rationale for the matching.

Check with your new employer, the Grey Lady. The NYT is an important part of the National Exit Pool, the consortium that sponsors the exit polls. The NEP also includes the Washington Post, ABC, CNN, AP and Fox News. That’s plenty of MSM polling power. Ask why they expect transparency from R2K but won’t release the raw, unadjusted precinct exit polls from 2000, 2004 or 2008. That information would be very useful. It might indicate which exit poll precincts show discrepancies to the recorded vote that are virtually impossible mathematically.

What are your thoughts about the 2010 primaries in MA, AR, SC and AL? Does the fact that Coakley won the hand-counts in MA indicate something to you? Does the fact that 40 of 42 SC precincts that favored Halter were closed down indicate something? Or how about the unknown, non-campaigner Greene winning in SC by 59-41% but losing the absentees by 84-16%? The DINOS on the state election commission refused to consider the recommendations of computer scientists to investigate the voting machines that were obviously rigged. In AL on June 8, the attorney general issued an opinion that an automatic recount does not apply in a primary election. Knowing all of this, will you be factoring fraud into your 2010 projections – along with turnout and final polling?

Do you want further confirmation that Kerry won in a landslide? As an “expert” analyst, you should have taken a close look at the 2004 National Exit Poll. If you had, you would have seen that the Final NEP, as is always the case, was forced to match the recorded vote by adjusting the number of returning 2000 voters to an impossible level– as well as the vote shares. According to the NEP, 43% (52.6 million) of 2004 voters were returning Bush 2000 voters. But this was impossible. Bush only had 50.46 million recorded votes. Based on voter mortality tables, 2.5 million Bush 2000 voters died prior to the 2004 election. Therefore at most only 48 million returning Bush voters could have voted in 2004. But if an estimated 98% turned out, 47 million voted. Therefore, the number of returning Bush voters was inflated by at least 5 million. Kerry won the election by 10 million votes. You are welcome to try and refute the True Vote Model.

Do you want to see a proof that Obama won by nearly 22 million votes and not by the recorded 9.5 million? As an “expert” analyst, you should have taken a close look at the 2008 National Exit Poll. If you had, you would have seen that the Final NEP, as is always the case, was forced to match the recorded vote by adjusting the number of returning 2004 voters to an impossible level. According to the NEP, 46% (60 million) of 2008 voters were returning Bush 2004 voters and 37% were returning Kerry voters. That means there were 12 million more returning Bush voters than Kerry voters – and that’s assuming the myth perpetuated by the mainstream media (who you are now going to work for) that Bush won by 3 million votes in 2004. Do you believe it? How could that be?

But it’s much worse than that. If Kerry won by 10 million votes as the True Vote Model indicates (you are welcome to try and refute it) then there were approximately 10 million more returning Kerry voters than Bush voters. Assuming the same NEP vote shares that were used to match the recorded vote, Obama wins by 22 million votes, not the 9.5 million recorded.

The 2008 NEP indicated that 4% (5 million) of the electorate consisted of returning third-party voters. That was clearly impossible; only 1.2 million third-party votes were recorded in 2004. In their zeal to match the recorded vote, the exit pollsters had to create millions of phantom Bush and third-party voters.

In the eleven presidential elections from 1968 to 2008, the Republicans won the popular vote by 49-45%, (6% went to third parties). But the Democrats won the True Vote by 49-45%.

It’s all in my book: Proving Election Fraud: Phantom Voters, Uncounted Votes, and the National Exit Poll.

I was the first election analyst to use Monte Carlo simulation in the 2004 Election Model followed by the 2008 Election Model. I applied extensive exit poll analysis in developing corresponding the post-election True Vote Model. It proves that not only were the 2000 and 2004 elections stolen, it is very likely that 1968 and 1988 were as well. There were at least 6 million uncounted votes in 1968 and 11 million in 1988 – and the majority were Democratic (minority) votes.

The Edison Mitofsky 2004 Evaluation Report provides the exit poll discrepancies (WPE) of 238 state presidential election exit polls from 1988-2004. Of the 66 that exceeded the 3% margin of error, 65 favored the Republican. Was it due to reluctant Bush responders and/or exuberant Democratic responders? No, it was the result of millions of uncounted votes (mostly Democratic) and millions of phantom Bush voters.

The Final 2004 Election Model Projection (Monte Carlo simulation) projected a Kerry win: a 51.3% share and 337 electoral votes. This closely matched the unadjusted aggregate state exit polls (52%) and the 12:22am National Exit Poll (51.2%). The True Vote Model indicated that Kerry had a 53.2% share. Of course Bush won by a bogus 50.7-48.3% recorded vote margin. How did your projections pan out?

In the 2006 midterms, the pre-election Trend Model (based on 120 Generic polls) projected a 56.43% share for the Democrats. The unadjusted National Exit Poll indicated a nearly identical 56.37%. The Final National Exit Poll was forced to match the 52% recorded vote. Nate, which one do you believe was correct? You are aware of documented miscounts in 15 –20 congressional elections, virtually all favoring the GOP (see FL–13, FL-24, OH-1, etc.). How did your projections pan out?

The Final 2008 Election Model Projection (Monte Carlo simulation) exactly matched Obama’s 365 electoral votes and was within 0.2%(53.1%) of his 52.9% share. But it was wrong. Obama did much better than that. The final state pre-election likely voter (LV) polls did not fully capture the late shift to Obama. Had they been registered voter (RV) polls, adjusted for undecided voters, Obama would have had a 57% share. He had 57% and 420 EV in the True Vote Model. As shown below, the final Gallup RV tracking poll gave Obama a 53-40% margin. After allocating undecided voters, he had 57% - matching the True Vote Model. How did your projections pan out?

So what does it all mean?

It means that any and all polling analysis that fails to consider voter mortality, uncounted votes and a feasible voter turnout is doomed to produce the wrong result. The correct result is the True Vote based on total votes cast. The wrong result is the recorded vote that ignores uncounted votes but includes phantom voters.

It means that the recorded vote, the basis for your rankings, never reflects the True Vote!

It exposes your ranking system, which places John Zogby (the only pollster to predict the True Vote in the last three presidential elections) at the bottom of a list of scores of obscure pollsters, as being fatally flawed.

It means that your comments disparaging exit polls, along with your failure to do post-election True Vote analyses, indicate that you are in sync with a moribund mainstream media that perpetuates endemic Election Fraud by withholding raw exit poll data. They accept the recorded vote as Gospel - just as you do in your rankings. You will fit in very well at the NY Times.

When will you incorporate the True Vote into your analysis? Why do you ignore the fact that the mainstream media (i.e. the National Election Pool, which includes the NY Times) is responsible for the impossible adjustments (made by the exit pollsters they employ) to the final 2004, 2006, 2008 state and national exit polls? They had to match the polls to corrupted recorded vote counts, come hell or high water - and will surely do so again in 2010.

You have questioned the R2K Democratic share of the 18-29 age group exceeding the 30-44 group in 20 of 20 races.

Table 1 shows the probabilities for all the age groups.
There was a 33% probability that the Dems would do better in the 18-29 group than the 30-44 group in all 20 races given the average two-party shares. The comparable probabilities were 77% for 45-59 and nearly 100% for 60+.

You have also questioned the apparent lack of volatility in the 2008 R2K tracking polls.

Table 2 displays R2K daily statistics.
The margin of error is 1.96 times the standard deviation (a measure of volatility) at the 95% confidence level.
The standard deviation of Obama’s daily poll shares was 1.83%. It was 1.59% for the 3-day moving average.

Table 3 is a comparison of Gallup vs. R2K.
Gallup was a registered voter (RV) poll. R2K was a likely voter (LV) poll.
The average shares and volatilities (standard deviation) closely match.

There was a strong 0.70 correlation between Obama’s Gallup and R2K shares.
There was a good 0.50 correlation between McCain’s Gallup and R2K shares.

Gallup Change Change R2K Change Change
Obama McCain Obama McCain Obama McCain Obama McCain
Avg 49.65 42.90 0.15 -0.15 50.29 42.21 0.06 -0.02
Stdev 2.02 1.74 0.94 0.89 1.59 1.86 0.70 0.73

Table 4 compares the R2K tracking poll and other polls (including standard, non-tracking polls)
Projections are based on the allocation of undecided voters (UVA).

Assumptions
1) 75% of the undecided vote is allocated to Obama, the de-facto challenger.
2) third parties have 1.5% (the actual recorded share).

The final Gallup projection (57.1%) for Obama is a close match to the True Vote Model (57.5%).
Obamal projected shares:
Gallup: 53 + .75 * 5.5 = 53 + 4.13 = 57.1%
R2K: 51 + .75 * 3.5 = 51 + 2.63 = 53.6%

TO VIEW TABULATED DATA (and updated version of this letter) SEE… richardcharnin.com/OpenLettertoNateSilver.htm

[BzaDem]

1. Zogby doesn't even pretend to be accurate. He weights by party ID in PREVIOUS election.

That means he weighted his 2008 polls to the party ID reported in exit polls of the 2004 election.

To the extent that his polls matched ANYTHING (such as the "True Vote" BS), it would be to errors cancelling out, not because he's a good pollster.

[althecat]

2. I suppose the millions of discarded ballots is BS too....

The "True vote" BS as you call it is pretty much a fact - millions of votes are discarded each election - even without fraud - which there is ample evidence of.

[HughMoran]

5. "millions of discarded ballots"

Saying that doesn't prove anything.

[BzaDem]

8. Sure, there are always going to be ballots that are not properly filled out and are discarded.

In many cases, such ballots should be counted. (See Florida, 2000). There might even be tens of thousands of them (see Florida, 2000).

But the idea that there are millions of properly-filled-out ballots that are always discarded due to some conspiracy is pure fantasy. You posting it over and over and over again doesn't change that.

[althecat]

29. Greg Palast and RFK Jnr proved that discarded ballots alone decided the 2004 election.

Electronic fraud - proven by the polls and maths - just makes the reality a shit load worse.

[Major Hogwash]

45. That's exactly the answer he is push-polling for in this thread. That there was no fraud in 2004.

An extreme position to take on the DU 6 years after the fact.

[BzaDem]

48. If you took the position you are currently taking on Daily Kos, you would have been BANNED.

So it is interesting to here you come here and redefine what an "extreme position" is.

:rofl:

I never said there was no fraud. I simply said that Bush won, and would have won if every ballot was counted exactly once.

[althecat]

51. Well that is an interesting observation for reasons which will soon become obvious....

:)

Tis perhaps a good thing that Markos Moulitsas isn't actually the emperor of all things information on the web.

And tis a huge shame that he decided - like Stalin - that (on this issue) that the best approach to dealing with people with ideas you don't like is to deport them outside of his kingdom.

[Chan790]

3. I'm with Nate Silver.

Zogby sucks and TrueVote is voodoo vote counting. It's about as transparent as Diebold and no more believable...thus the only workable measurable metric is the actual recorded vote totals. Hopefully that will change and we can have transparent elections at some future date, but the voodoo vote counting is all wet and by no means a solution.

[althecat]

4. No one is suggesting replacing elections with voodoo....

The point is that the evidence points to most recent US elections being voodoo already. Meanwhile after 8 years of publicity around the vulnerability of elections - and a growing pile of evidence of actual fraud almost nothing has been done to protect the most vital part of democracy - the counting of votes. Blaming the pollsters - like Nate Silver does - is a refuge of the the intellectually dishonest. How can pollsters be expected to predict the outcome of a rigged system.

[BzaDem]

9. The pollsters got the 2008 election EXACTLY right, matched with the recorded vote you despise.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html

Using 15 polls, the pre-election average was 7.6%. The actual margin was 7.3% (well within the margin of error).

Truth hurts.

[althecat]

11. Some more channelling.....

The point is that using the the recorded vote is bogus. And you call it a "workable" metric? TIA has proved that the recorded Bush 2004 vote is a sham. To you it is a "workable" metric. You need to consider total votes cast, voter mortality and a FEASIBLE voter turnout.

Do you really believe that 110% of living Bush 2000 voters turned out in 2004?  Because that is what the Final 2004 National Exit Poll, which was FORCED TO MATCH the 2004 RECORDED VOTE, indicates.

All Final Exit Polls are forced to match the recorded vote. Do you believe this is a statistically sound procedure?

*******

And I might add myself...

And yes the truth does hurt. After 8 years of rigged elections the pollsters have started to fudge their numbers to factor in the fraud - they have to do so otherwise they face getting criticism like that from Nate Silver - its a circle of sophistry and its far from surprising.

Remember pre-election polls have samples of 1000 odd. The NEP has a sample of 20,000+ and its not asking people who they might vote for but who they actually vote for after they vote.... and yet it has been consistently wrong since 1998..... the official explanation reluctant bush responder is where the BS is if you want to find some.

[BzaDem]

14. The total sample of all polls in the RCP average is FAR greater than 20 thousand. Nice try though.

Pre-election polls have accurately predicted outcomes of elections for decades. They EASILY predicted the outcome of the last two cycles. The fact that you continue to believe that the "recorded vote" is a sham (despite being matched within tenths of a percent by the average of 15 pre-election polls) says MUCH more about you than it does about the recorded vote.

[althecat]

18. You can't add polls together like that.......

Especially when each has its own special methodology etc.

[BzaDem]

20. Sure you can. They just did.

It might be harder to analyze, and perhaps an equally-weighted average isn't the best method of analysis. That doesn't mean though that such an average says nothing. On the contrary, such averages often hew closely to the "recorded vote" you continue to trash. It certainly does not consistently bias the results in one direction than the other (to the extent the input data on average does not do so). That said, there is probably a more intelligent weighting to each poll than an equal weight.

Nate Silver did a much more rigorous average, weighting by standard deviations and sample sizes and using other characteristics of the polls and the pollsters. He got a substantially similar result. In fact, the 2008 election was notable for how easy it was to predict based solely on pre-election polling using a variety of methods. The fact that your method says otherwise is an indiciation of failure of your method, not the failure of pre-election polls or aggregations of said polls.

[althecat]

23. It doesn't reduce the margin of error

But when you conduct a poll of 20,000 you expect to get your answer correct.

[althecat]

12. Of the 15 Polls - None of them were registered voter (RV) polls

None of them were registered voter (RV) polls. Thet were all likely voter (LV) polls, which understated new voter turnout (Obama won new voters by 71%).

Did you look at the tables in the source?

Table 6 compares RV and LV polls. 

Obama led in the Gallup, ABC, Pew Rearch and NBC/WSJ registered voter (RV) polls by  53-40% - before undecided voters were allocated. After allocation, Obama had 57%.

 The LV polls understated Obama's vote.

Charnin's True Vote Model (Table 7) confirms Obama had over 57%.

You have just received a free education in polling.

:)

[BzaDem]

15. That is a good thing. If any were of registered voters, they should be thrown out of the average.

In case you haven't noticed, registered voters don't all vote. That's why they apply likely voter screens. That is literally the point of likely voter screens. Any poll that doesn't apply one within days of an election is inaccurate and should not be taken seriously.

These screens don't just look at previous voting patterns -- they also look at enthusiasm and self-reported interest. Many of them also used early voting (and were accurate in their measurements of early voting).

[althecat]

19. The overall phenomena you point to is that pollsters adjust to the circumstances....

So if pollsters find over the period of say 5 electoral cycles that there is a tendency for republicans to get more votes than polling previously would indicate the obvious thing to do is to adjust for the error. Zogby on the other hand is a bit more old school and perhaps has a longer memory :)

[BzaDem]

21. What a joke. Zogby SPECIFICALLY adjusts his results based on the party ID from the LAST election.

In other words, in 2012, he will weight his results for a D+8 electorate. It doesn't matter if party ID polls indicate the electorate is closer to R+8. He will still weight them as D+8. In other words, Zogby does EXACTLY what you are mocking in your post (and I don't know of any other pollster who does it to the extreme that Zogby does).

[althecat]

24. Do you believe the recorded vote is correct in all elections ?

... I know thats what Zogby does, they all do it..... its one of the reasons why electoral fraud is so hard to find and why the unadjusted NEP is such a good red-flag. Unfortunately I expect that now we know there is a 4%+ rBR (reluctant bush responder) effect in play the NEP may just start adjusting for that at the outset.

Question is do you think the recorded vote is fine... i.e that the election system is sound as it is and that there has been no major fraud from 2000-2008?

[BzaDem]

27. What do you mean "correct"?

I believe that with hundreds of millions of ballots, there can always be errors that affect very close elections. No one would deny that.

In general, I believe that a properly-filled-out ballot is very likely to be counted in any jurisdiction. This is especially true in close elections, as the chances of a properly-filled-out ballot being discounted in both a normal count and a recount is pretty slim.

There are also plenty of ballots that aren't properly filled out (and are thus rejected by machines), but whose intent can nevertheless be deciphered. These generally do not matter in elections with a high margin of victory. But in a close election, these ballots should be counted in a recount. Whether or not they are counted often depends on state law and the counters, and whenever possible law should be changed to count ballots whenever the intent is clear. Al Franken's election was a good example of this; every single ballot rejected by the machines was examined in public and voted on in public by the state elections board.

In the case of electronic voting without a voter-verified paper trail, while I despise such systems and believe that they should all be changed, I do not believe that there has been massive intentional fraud that has flipped the result in elections. I do not find the evidence of fraud persuasive at all.

I also do not believe (as the Republicans frequently alledge) that there is massive in-person voter fraud, or ballot box stuffing.

Is the recorded vote a perfect representation of the voters' will? Of course not. Is it the best representation we have (combined with hand recounts in close elections)? Yes.

I would look at extremely skeptically ANY theory that massive fraud exists in all of the diverse areas of the country with different voting machines, different vote counters, different levels of scrutiny, and different laws. I would certainly dismiss out of hand theories that relied solely on the statistical "evidence" of a single poll, without any actual evidence of vote manipulation at the local level.

I generally look unfavorably on conspiracy theories of all types, and the more ridiculous the claim, the more direct evidence (and not indirect statistical voodoo) required to justify.

[althecat]

28. Not persuasive?

"In the case of electronic voting without a voter-verified paper trail, while I despise such systems and believe that they should all be changed, I do not believe that there has been massive intentional fraud that has flipped the result in elections. I do not find the evidence of fraud persuasive at all."

In that case you start from a position of faith.

Not persuasive? You mean that Bush won fairly in 2000 and 2004? For some of us those are true "conspiracy" theories.

Can you prove he won fairly?

Our position is that you should be able to - but you cannot - meanwhile a growing body of evidence shows that Gore and Kerry both had elections stolen - that the election infrastructure remains fatally flawed and all too easy to cheat - and that whenever anyone attempts to probe disputed elections officials fight tooth and nail to prevent and obstruct inquiry.

Its not a conspiracy theory its a conspiracy fact.

[BzaDem]

30. We all know what happened in 2000, and Bush did indeed win in 2004.

Your "growing body of evidence" is not persuasive at all (and that's putting it quite charitably).

Any other questions?

[EFerrari]

31. Right. Bush won in Ohio. That's why Ken Blackwell turned himself into a pretzel

sabotaging the recount.

There was no vote suppression, either. Those people rioting at the state house were just hooligans.

Two people went to jail but that was just activist judges.

Nothing to see here!

[althecat]

32. Well said Elizabeth :)

[EFerrari]

34. It's always good to see you at DU.

:hi:

[BzaDem]

33. I never said Blackwell did nothing wrong, or that there wasn't voter suppression.

I simply said that Bush won Ohio. If everyone who wanted to vote were able to vote, and there were no suppression, and no Blackwell antics, the margin might have been smaller. But Bush still would have won.

[EFerrari]

35. Neither you nor anyone else knows who won Ohio.

Ohio was a farce of the first order.

[BzaDem]

37. Neither you nor anyone else knows who won Wyoming. n/t

[EFerrari]

38. Precisely.

Although common sense would lead someone so inclined to keep track of Blackwell's illegalities in the run up to the election, during the vote and during the recount.

Wyoming, not so much.

Everything really isn't everything.

[althecat]

39. Some reading material....

Robert f. Kennedy Jr.
http://wwwtruthout.org/article/robert-f-kennedy-jr-was-2004-election-stolen


Michael Keefer
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KEE501A.html


Direct Proof of Massive Fraud in Ohio... Ron Baiman PhD
http://organikrecords.com/corporatenewslies/2196.pdf

[althecat]

40. Correct RFK Jnr Link Re Ohio

http://www.truth-out.org/article/robert-f-kennedy-jr-was-2004-election-stolen

[BzaDem]

41. The problem is the assumption that the exit poll is actually correct.

If you assume the exit poll is actually correct, you can of course mechanically generate gargantuan odds of "fraud." (The odds of the "recorded vote" being that off are 1 in 1 trillion steptillion gazillion! OH NO!)

But if you stop assuming on faith that the exit poll sample space is an accurate representation, everything starts to make sense. If you take a set sample space and sample uniformly at random (or according to some other known distribution), then you can of course calculate the odds of a given sample result diverging from the result of the whole space. But if the actual sample space of the exit poll (or the assumed distribution) does not represent the acutal population, you are ALWAYS going to get error. NOT getting error would be the anomoly in this case.

Sampling at random is obviously not very difficult. The hard part in polling is sampling from a distribution that reflects the population the pollster is trying to sample from. The fact that a pollster got the distribution wrong does not indicate that the "recorded vote" is wrong; it much more likely indicates that the pollster is wrong.

The election results of 2004 and 2008 were NOT surprising. Almost all pre-election tracking polls (with good historical track records) had Bush ahead in 2004, and aggregating them together under a variety of methods predicted the result quite well. In fact, Bush was ahead in almost every reading of every pre-election tracking poll (out of 15 or so) since the beginning of September 2004 (after both conventions). Likewise, the pre-election polls in 2008 all had Obama ahead since mid-September, which converged on the final margin when aggregated together.

To believe you, you would have to discount nearly ALL pre-election polls (with good historical track records going back decades), AND the "recorded vote." However, a normal, rational person would simply discount your exit poll and everything would be consistent. That is usually how conspiracy theories work. There is a mountain of evidence indicating nothing strange happened, and there is a tiny bit of evidence (such as a poorly-conducted or errent exit poll) that something is awry. Instead of acknowledging that the bulk of the evidence points to a straightforward outcome, they throw out virtually all the evidence in favor of their outlier.

You can continue to post this and you will continue to get the conspiracy theorists to recommend your posts. But this is hardly surprising; conspiracy theorists by their nature tend to see conspiracies everywhere. Your "evidence" means no more than that.

[althecat]

50. Only thing is the previously perfect exit polling method, only fails in the US and only since 1998

Your post above is the same reasoning used to justify the absurd Reluctant Bush Responder explanation - which is simply an after the fact explanation which follows once you assume the vote count is correct.

Which given that there is a bunch of reason to suspect it - lacks any intellectual honesty.

The rest of your post is based on patently incorrect information - or at best a misreading of the correct information.

In 2004 Kerry was ahead in the pre-election polling averages by 1.5% as pointed out by Mr Hogwash.... the full details of the True Vote, NEP and pre-election polling for the race are all here.

http://www.richardcharnin.com/WhenDecided.htm

And as for your tinfoil slights at the end - it is your putting your head in the sand and relying on a "faith based" approach to election integrity is the real issue here.

The evidence of conspiracy is obvious and plain - most abundantly so in 2004 in Ohio. That you choose not to see it is presumably due to your not wishing to have your faith in the elections machinery questioned. This is your character flaw - not yours. And it reflects not a jot on the many smart DUers who choose to think for themselves.

[BzaDem]

59. I don't need the "reluctant Bush Responder" explanation. That assumes the Exit Poll model was

even remotely correct, with one or two incorrect assumptions. I am not assuming such with the exit poll. If you take into account the fact that the exit poll was obviously wrong (as even its conductors assert), everything else makes sense.

But then again you would just take that as evidence that the conductors of the exit polls were "in" on it.

:rofl:

The recent article (that said the more people holding an incorrect belief are confronted with actual evidence, the more they hold their incorrect belief) rings very true here. I cannot find a more obvious example of this phenomenon than you and your "True vote."

"The evidence of conspiracy is obvious and plain"

If you say so.

[althecat]

61. The creator of the exit poll was deeply troubled by its failure - he invented RBR

..... he did so because he could think of no other explanation if you have some other explanation for the failure of the exit poll in the US from 1998 onwards (when it continues to work everywhere else) then please enlighten us.

And as I said RBR is no explanation at all its simply and after the fact assumption that explains what happened if you beleive the recorded vote.

As for Mitofsky - he is now dead. Which is a shame as at least he took the criticism of his exit polling results seriously which is more than can be said for the numerous munchkins who now trade on his good name.

[tiptoe]

62. rbr == a rationalization. nt

[BzaDem]

64. An exit poll is somehow valid because the poll conductor couldn't think of any other explanation?

:rofl:

[althecat]

25. Do you believe the recorded vote is correct in all elections ?

... I know thats what Zogby does, they all do it..... its one of the reasons why electoral fraud is so hard to find and why the unadjusted NEP is such a good red-flag. Unfortunately I expect that now we know there is a 4%+ rBR (reluctant bush responder) effect in play the NEP may just start adjusting for that at the outset.

Question is do you think the recorded vote is fine... i.e that the election system is sound as it is and that there has been no major fraud from 2000-2008?

[HughMoran]

6. .

[Major Hogwash]

7. Wow, this is unbelievable! I'd like to meet this guy. Thanks for the channelling.

I knew there was some election fraud in 2004 because Kerry had a 7 point lead going into the final weekend.
There's no way in hell he could have lost that 7 point lead to lose to Bush by 3 points in just ONE weekend.

That's a 10 point swing, in just 3 days.
There's no way that an election could swing that much in so short of time.

[BzaDem]

10. Kerry did not even have close to a 7 point lead going into the final weekend. Bush was ahead by 1.5.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry.html

That's an average of polls from 14 companies on the final weekend.

[Major Hogwash]

42. Bullshit!! That's why I didn't post here at that time.

Too many flames coming from this forum that year.
You can average anything AFTER THE FACT.

Hell, if you think the pages on the internet can't be altered, you're in for a big surprise.
6 months after 9/11 in 2001 when Michael Moore was questioning how the bin Laden family members were flown out of the country during the 3 days that ALL COMMERCIAL FLIGHTS WERE CANCELLED, his comments were not only removed from Snopes dot com, they were wiped out of the Google cache where Snopes dot com had said he was wrong!!!

On the Friday before the election, not only did CNN state that Kerry's lead had increased to 7 points, so did the talking heads at MSNBC.
I was there.

That's the end of this conversation for me.

[BzaDem]

43. Are you being serious? You are claiming that the PAGES WERE ALTERED???

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. The only people who believe this BS are the people that believe ANY conspiracy theory written by ANYONE on the Internet. What if the average of 14 pre-election polls was extremely close to the margin of victory (with the vast majority putting Bush ahead)? Then the page was altered. If you can go back to the 14 pollster's sites to verify all the numbers, then all 14 pollsters' sites were altered. If you can go to archive.org to see the exact copy of the site the week before the election, then archive.org was altered.

What if almost every single reading of every single poll from September onwards showed Bush ahead or tied?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry.html

Then every single reading of every single poll from September onwards was cooked (or changed after the fact).

The more evidence that proves you wrong, the more evidence that has been falsified (to you).

This reminds me of the recent study that showed that when people who have incorrect beliefs are shown irrefutable data contradicting their beliefs, the more data they are shown, the more they actually believe their incorrect beliefs.

[Major Hogwash]

44. You're not serious at all about the outcome of the 2004 election.

I was at Kerry's campaign HQ's here in Idaho in 2004 when the news came out that Kerry's lead had INCREASED the weekend before the election.

We were getting our campaign brochures handed out to us when they told all of us to run to the main room to watch the news on the tv.
CNN had just announced that Kerry's lead was anywhere from 3 to 7 points ahead of Bush, depending on which poll they were talking about.
We switched the channels to MSNBC and they were reporting exactly the same thing.
So was Fox News!!!

This was on Friday, the day before the Bush administration released the latest videotape made by Osama bin Laden.
I will never forget that day as long as I live.
When that tape was released, I knew they would have another dirty trick, another "October Surprise" up their sleeve.

So, you can claim that every poll since September had Kerry behind, but that means nothing to me. Nada, nothing, zip, zilch, less than zero, quanto cero.

I was there.

You weren't.

[BzaDem]

46. You have the right to your false beliefs, but that doesn't make your beliefs any less false.

If you won't look at evidence TODAY staring you in the face, that is your problem (not the problem of a poll or a website). If that means "Nada, nothing, zip, zilch, less than zero, quanto cero," then that is even more your problem. You have the absolute right to have beliefs that are completely false. But that doesn't make the beliefs any less false.

If someone were to come to me and say "We never landed on the moon, and any evidence to the contrary means nada, nothing, zip, zilch, less than zero, quanto cero, etc," their false belief isn't somehow less false simply because they believe it. (Similarly for people who don't believe in evolution, etc.)

Your username is an apt description of your beliefs regarding the 2004 election.

MSNBC 10/31/2004
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6376974/
"According to the survey, conducted by Hart/McInturff, Bush gets support from 48 percent of likely voters, Kerry gets 47 percent, and independent Ralph Nader gets 1 percent. That's a slight change from the previous NBC/Journal poll released earlier this month, when Bush and Kerry were tied at 48 percent."

CNN/USA TODAY/GALLUP 10/29-10/31
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/nation/polls/usatodaypolls.htm
"In the final USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll before the election, President Bush held a 49-47 edge over Sen. John Kerry when the undecided voters were not allocated to a particular candidate. When Gallup, using a statistical model that assumes that 9 of 10 of those voters would support Kerry, allocated the voters, the poll ended as a dead heat with each candidate garnering 49%. The Gallup allocation formula is based on analyses of previous presidential races involving an incumbent."

FOX NEWS 11/1/2004:
http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/110104_poll.pdf
PDF (see link)


And those are just what you cited. Here are some more.

CBS/NEW YORK TIMES 10/29-11/1
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/01/politics/main652662.shtml
"The telephone survey of 1,600 adults, which was conducted from Friday to Monday, found President Bush with a 49-47 percent lead over Sen. John Kerry among likely voters including people leaning toward a candidate."

ABC/WASHINGTON POST 10/28-10/31
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/2004tracking/track110104.html
"The latest tracking result represents the four-night average of data collected by telephone Oct 28 - 31 among a randomly selected national sample of 4,009 adults, including 3,511 self-identified registered voters and 2,904 likely voters."
(see link for results)

NEWSWEEK 10/27-10/29
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6367631/site/newsweek/
"Oct. 30 — After months of the tightest presidential election contest in recent memory, a new NEWSWEEK poll suggests momentum may be moving toward President George W. Bush. As the bitter campaign enters its final days, against the eerie backdrop of a surprise appearance by Osama Bin Laden, Bush’s lead is still within the poll’s margin of error, but larger than last week. If the election were held today, 50 percent of likely voters would cast ballots for Bush and 44 percent for the Democrat, Sen. John Kerry."

[althecat]

49. A Comprehensive state pre-election poll trend proves that Kerry was leading in the polls in 2004

A Comprehensive state pre-election poll trend proves that Kerry was leading in the polls.
http://richardcharnin.com/2004FinalStatePolling.htm

[BzaDem]

58. Ah. Having finally backed off the idiotic premise that Kerry was leading the national polls

you switch your argument to a "state pre-election poll trend." At least we're getting somewhere.

[tiptoe]

60. Monthly averages of 18 National Pre-Election polls in 2004 and Undecided Voters allocation:

The aggregate of State Pre-Election Polls from 2-Jul thru 1-Nov given in a previous post showed
Kerry leading all the way except for 7-Sep and 14-Sep:
http://richardcharnin.com/2004FinalStatePolling.htm

The following link shows the National Polls: Pre-election Trend, a monthly average of 18 national pre-election polls, with Kerry leading every month approaching the election except September, in step with the State PE polls:
http://www.richardcharnin.com/WhenDecided.htm

The article also discusses how Undecided Voters came to be allocated 75% to Kerry, 25% Bush:

1. Gallup cited as allocating 90% to Kerry,
   
2. Harris Interactive 66% (2:1) to 80% (4:1) "for the challenger" Kerry, and
   
3. "Final Zogby Election Day polling had Kerry winning by 50-47%, with 311 electoral votes,
   indicating that 75% of undecided voters broke for Kerry."

[BzaDem]

65. Kerry rarely led in ANY national poll after the conventions.

If your article or statistical model says differently, then your article or statistical model is incorrect. I was around in 2004. The following link matched what it said in 2004.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/bush_vs_kerry.html

In the 85 polls taken in September onwards, Kerry led in 7 of them. Seven.

[althecat]

13. Excellent reccing DU.....

By my calculations - three votes from the posters above this thread must have at least 9 fans...

:bounce:

[Octafish]

16. TruthIsAll is Tops!

Guy was on the money in 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006. Weird how some people did all they could to get him to stop writing about election fraud.

Kick & Recommend. :toast: Salud, Hermano!

[tiptoe]

57. k! nt

[matt819]

17. Why such antipathy toward TIA?

I've been reading TIA's posts for years. I'm not a numbers guy, but his narrative analysis strikes me as pretty sharp.

So, why the antipathy here toward TIA?

Also, why haven't his analyses been picked up by the left-ish side of the MSM?

[BzaDem]

22. Anyone can cook up a model to support a conspiracy theory. That doesn't mean it deserves respect.

[althecat]

26. So it is a conspiracy theory with no merit? All the election results are hunky dory....

Nothing to see here....

Thing is its hard to believe that. Ask yourself?

Do you believe the Final 2008 National Exit Poll which stated that there were 12 million MORE returning Bush than Kerry voters?

Do you believe that Bush won by 3 million recorded votes?

[Freddie Stubbs]

47. Perhaps for the same reason he was tombstoned from DU

[althecat]

52. And why was he tombstoned Freddie?

As I recall it came after some prolonged and extreme provocation from trolls.....

[Freddie Stubbs]

54. He appeared to be mentally unstable, unable to accept any critiques of his ideas

[Name removed]

55. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Freddie Stubbs]

56. No, just a Democrat who has been posting here since 2002

[ConsAreLiars]

36. A kick for substance and a rec to counter the unreccers (nt)

[tiptoe]

63. kick! nt

[althecat]

53. You can read/download TIA's full 2004 election analysis as a PDF here....

http://richardcharnin.com/2004ElectionFraudAnalysis.pdf