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But wait! The election's not over....
Dec. 21st, 2004 11:19 amYou know, pissed disappointed bereft pissed as I was at the election results, I was prepared to write off all the business about election tampering as so much sour grapes - pointless whinging from the whiny-assed nancies that the Democratic Party has become, and screw it, we need a *real* agenda.
But apparently, not really.
"[I]n key state after key state, counts showed very different numbers than the polls
predicted; and the differentials were all in the same direction. The first shaded column in Table 1 shows the differential between the major candidates’ predicted (exit poll) percentages of the vote; the next shaded column shows the differential between their tallied percentages of the vote. The final shaded column reveals the 'shift.' In ten of the eleven consensus battleground states, the tallied margin differs from the predicted margin, and in every one, the shift favors Bush."
The shifts range from 1.6% to 9.5%, with a cluster in the 5-7% area.
And his conclusion: "Assuming independent state polls with no systematic bias, the odds against any two of these statistical anomalies occurring together is between 5,000:1 and 10,000:1. (20-40 times more improbable than ten straight heads from a fair coin) The odds against all three occurring together are 662,000-to-one. As much as we can say in social science that something is impossible, it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote counts in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error."
Will this change the result of this election? Hardly. Do I still think we need to focus on actual positions, instead of courting the middle? Definitely.
But dang, if it just doesn't start to look like we're being set up.
But apparently, not really.
"[I]n key state after key state, counts showed very different numbers than the polls
predicted; and the differentials were all in the same direction. The first shaded column in Table 1 shows the differential between the major candidates’ predicted (exit poll) percentages of the vote; the next shaded column shows the differential between their tallied percentages of the vote. The final shaded column reveals the 'shift.' In ten of the eleven consensus battleground states, the tallied margin differs from the predicted margin, and in every one, the shift favors Bush."
The shifts range from 1.6% to 9.5%, with a cluster in the 5-7% area.
And his conclusion: "Assuming independent state polls with no systematic bias, the odds against any two of these statistical anomalies occurring together is between 5,000:1 and 10,000:1. (20-40 times more improbable than ten straight heads from a fair coin) The odds against all three occurring together are 662,000-to-one. As much as we can say in social science that something is impossible, it is impossible that the discrepancies between predicted and actual vote counts in the three critical battleground states of the 2004 election could have been due to chance or random error."
Will this change the result of this election? Hardly. Do I still think we need to focus on actual positions, instead of courting the middle? Definitely.
But dang, if it just doesn't start to look like we're being set up.
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