Comparing 2012 to 2008: Late Votes, Total Votes and 2008 Exit Polls

Comparing 2012 to 2008: Late Votes, Total Votes and 2008 Exit Polls

Richard Charnin
Dec.13, 2012

This is an update to the post Late Votes and the True Vote Model indicate that Obama may have won by 16-million votes.

A table of 2012 late and total votes and corresponding 2008 votes and unadjusted exit polls has been added to the 2012 model. It reveals a pattern of intriguing similarities which strengthen the case that the 4-5% systemic election fraud factor reduced Obama’s True Vote margin by approximately 10-12 million.

The 2008 Election Model projected a 53.1% vote share for Obama and 365.3 expected EV; he had 52.9% and 365 EV. The model utilized Likely Voter (LV) polls which understated Obama’s True Vote share.

Anticipating the systemic 5% fraud factor, the 2012 True Vote Forecast Model included two projections: 1) the recorded vote based on Likely Voter polls (Obama had 51.6%) and 2) the True Vote based on estimates of returning 2008 voters and corresponding vote shares of returning and new voters. The recorded vote projection exactly matched Obama’s 332 EV. In the True Vote Model, he had 55.2% and 380 EV.

In 2008, Obama had 52.3% on Election Day and 52.87% of the total 131.1 million recorded votes. He had 59.2% of 10.16 million late votes. In 2012, Obama had 50.34% on Election Day and 51.03% of the total 129.13 million recorded votes. He had 58.0% of 11.68 million late votes. The 2.0% differential between Obama’s 2012 and 2008 late vote shares matches the spread between his 51.03% total share and his 52.87% share in 2008.

In 2008, Obama had 58.0% in the unadjusted state exit poll aggregate (82,388 respondents) and 61.0% in the National Exit Poll (17,836). He also had 58.0% in the True Vote Model If the exit polls and the True Vote Model are accurate, then the 10.16 million Late Votes accurately represented the 2008 electorate. Obama’s 59.2% late vote share was right in the middle of the 58-61% exit poll range. In 2012, there were just 31 state exit polls. The unadjusted state and national polls have not been released.

Obama had a 56.1% two-party share in the 2012 post-election True Vote Model. It is likely that the 5% Fraud Factor resulted in his 51.0% recorded share.

Was the Late Vote a legitimate proxy of the True Vote? To find out, we need to weight (multiply) each state’s late vote share by its total vote. In 2008, Obama won the weighted aggregate Late Vote by 57-39%, the same 18% margin as the unadjusted state exit polls and the True Vote Model. In 2012, he won the weighted Late Vote by 54-42%; the 12% margin matched the 56-44% two-party True Vote Model.

The 2012 unadjusted exit polls are unavailable. But it is reasonable to assume that Obama would have 56% in the aggregate poll (2% below his 2008 aggregate share) given the 2% difference between Obama’s 2008 and 2012 late vote shares.

2008/2012 correlation:
Late Vote: 0.84
Recorded Vote: 0.98
2008 Late Vote/Exit Poll: 0.74
Late % of Total Vote: 0.83

Florida
2008: 405,000 late votes, Obama 50.9% recorded, 51.6% late, 52.1% exit poll
2012: 166,000 late votes, 49.9-49.3% recorded on Election day;
57.8-41.2-1.0% late
More than 200,000 Florida voters were discouraged by long lines and left without voting – most were for Obama.

Ohio
2008: 500,000 late votes, 51.4% recorded, 54.0% late, 54.1% exit poll
2012: 228,000 late votes, 50.3-48.3% recorded on Election Day;
57.1-31.8-11.1% late

Virginia
2008: 249,000 late votes, 52.6% recorded, 65.4% late, 62.5% exit poll
2012: 160,000 late votes, 50.6-47.8% recorded on Election Day;
64.7-34.2-1.1% late

Track Record: Election Model Forecast; Post-election True Vote Model

2004 Election Model (2-party shares)
Kerry:
Projected 51.8%, 337 EV (snapshot)
Recorded: 48.3%, 255 EV
State exit poll aggregate: 51.7%, 337 EV
True Vote Model: 53.6%, 364 EV

2006 Midterms
Regression Trend Model Projected Democratic Generic share: 56.43%
Unadjusted National Exit Poll: 56.37%

2008 Election Model
Obama
Projected: 53.1%, 365.3 EV (simulation mean);
Recorded: 52.9%, 365 EV
State exit poll aggregate: 58.0%, 420 EV
True Vote Model: 58.0%, 420 EV

2012 Election Model
Obama Projected: 51.6% (2-party), 332 EV snapshot; 320.7 expected; 321.6 mean
Adjusted National Exit Poll (recorded): 51.0-47.2%, 332 EV
True Vote Model 56.1%, 391 EV (snapshot); 385 EV (expected)
Unadjusted State Exit Polls: not released
Unadjusted National Exit Poll: not released

 

A Reply to Nate Silver’s “Ten Reasons Why You Should Ignore Exit Polls”

A Reply to Nate Silver’s “Ten Reasons Why You Should Ignore Exit Polls”

Richard Charnin (TruthIsAll)
Oct. 29, 2010
Update: March 25, 2013

Nate, you have it all wrong in your book. The Signal is the 52-42% Democratic lead in the 1988-2008 unadjusted presidential state and national exit polls. The Noise is the media propaganda that the Democrats won by 48-46% as shown in the published adjusted polls. But we all know that it is standard operating procedure to force the exit polls to match the (bogus) recorded vote. The media (that means you) want the public to believe that Systemic Election Fraud is a myth.

Nate, this is a reply to your November 2008 post Ten Reasons Why You Should Ignore Exit Polls. It’s four years later but it would be instructive to review your comments on exit polls to see if you feel the same way about them. I’m still waiting for your response to my open letter regarding your pathetic last-place ranking of pollster John Zogby . I would also be interested in your answers to these twenty-five questions. It would enable readers to gauge your perspectives on election fraud.

Are you asking us to ignore a) the final exit polls or b) the unadjusted, preliminary state and national exit polls? If it’s (a), then you must believe that election fraud is systemic since unadjusted exit polls are always forced to match the recorded vote, even if they are fraudulent. If it’s (b), then you must believe that election fraud is a myth and that the recorded vote reflects actual voter intent (i.e. the true vote). Based on your writings, it must be (b). After reading your “ten reasons”, I can come up with ten reasons why you have never responded to my posts.

The “experts” whom you cite all have issues. You wrote: Oh, let me count the ways. Almost all of this, by the way, is lifted from Mark Blumenthal’s outstanding Exit Poll FAQ.

Your first mistake was to believe all those discredited GOP talking points and to cite Mark Blumenthal as your source. You may not be aware that Mark was the original Mystery Pollster and has worked full-time since 2004 to debunk any references to exit polls as indicators of election fraud.

In June 2006, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote a seminal article in Rolling Stone Magazine: Was the 2004 Election Stolen? In a pitiful attempt to debunk RFK, Salon’s Farhad Manjoo wrote Was the 2004 Election Stolen? No. Manjoo’s hit piece contained factual errors and omissions and was fully debunked by a number of analysts. Mark Blumenthal then attemped a defense of Manjoo and smeared RFK in this piece: Is RFK, Jr. Right About Exit Polls?

Here is My Response to the Mystery Pollster’s critique of RFK and an Open Letter to Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com.

Now I will count the ways. My responses follow each of your statements as to why we should ignore exit polls.

1. Exit polls have a much larger intrinsic margin for error than regular polls. This is because of what are known as cluster sampling techniques. Exit polls are not conducted at all precincts, but only at some fraction thereof. Although these precincts are selected at random and are supposed to be reflective of their states as a whole, this introduces another opportunity for error to occur (say, for instance, that a particular precinct has been canvassed especially heavily by one of the campaigns). This makes the margins for error somewhere between 50-90% higher than they would be for comparable telephone surveys.

RC: Not true. I should stop right here. Exit polls have a much smaller margin of error than pre-election polls. It stands to reason that exit polls are more accurate than pre-election polls because a) those polled know exactly who they voted for and b) in pre-election polls, respondents might change their mind – or not vote.

Regarding cluster samples, perhaps you are unaware that exit pollsters Edison-Mitofsky state in the notes to the National Exit Poll as well as in the NEP Methods Statement that exit poll respondents were randomly-selected and the overall margin of error was 1%. Adding the standard 30% cluster effect raises the calculated 0.86% MoE to 1.1%.

But I understand why you would claim that exit polls are inaccurate since you apparently believe election fraud on voting machines is non-existent. After all, you never discuss the fraud factor. So of course you would conclude that the exit poll discrepancies from the recorded vote indicate that the polls are wrong. The fundamental problem with all your analysis is that you fail to consider the possibility that the polls were close to the truth and the discrepancies from the recorded vote were the result of systematic election fraud. But that is typical of mainstream media pundits. If they discussed the fraud factor, they would be out of a job.

You apparently believe that the final Likely Voter (LV) pre-election polls (which are a subset of all Registered Voters (RV) interviewed) are spot-on because they match the bogus recorded vote. But LV polls always understate Democratic turnout, since the vast majority of voters who fail to pass the Likely Voter Cutoff Model are young, newly registered Democrats. That’s one reason why Democrats average higher in the RV polls than in LVs and the media avoids the RVs in the month prior to the election. Another factor is that telephone polls miss cell-phone users who are young and Democratic. Most important, pre-election polls have been shown to overweight Republicans based on prior bogus recorded votes.

2. Exit polls have consistently overstated the Democratic share of the vote. Many of you will recall this happening in 2004, when leaked exit polls suggested that John Kerry would have a much better day than he actually had. But this phenomenon was hardly unique to 2004. In 2000, for instance, exit polls had Al Gore winning states like Alabama and Georgia (!). If you go back and watch The War Room, you’ll find George Stephanopolous and James Carville gloating over exit polls showing Bill Clinton winning states like Indiana and Texas, which of course he did not win.

RC: There you go again, assuming that the recorded vote was fraud-free.

Of course the Democrats always do better in the exit polls than in the recorded vote. But did you ever consider why? Perhaps you are unaware that millions of votes are uncounted in every election and the vast majority are Democratic (over 50% are in minority districts). The U.S. Census reported over 80 million net uncounted votes since 1968. You make the false assumption that the recorded vote is the True Vote. Uncounted votes alone put the lie to that argument, not to mention votes switched at the DREs and central tabulators.

You say Clinton did not win Indiana or Texas. How do you know? Can you provide proof that the voting machines were not tampered with? Perhaps you are unaware that in 1992 there were 9.4 million net uncounted votes, approximately 75% for Clinton. Clinton’s margins were very plausible. The exit polls indicated that he won Indiana by 53-30% (Perot had 16%) and Texas by 43-32% (Perot had 25%). But they were both likely stolen by Bush. Clinton lost Indiana (42.9-36.8%) by 138,000 votes (330,000 uncounted). He lost Texas (40.6-37.1%) by 215,000 (663,000 uncounted). So had all the votes been counted, Clinton would have won both states. Note that we are not even considering vote-switching from Clinton or Perot to Bush, just the uncounted votes.

In 1996, there were 8.7 million net uncounted votes – again, approximately 75% for Clinton. Clinton won the Indiana exit poll by 50-40%, but Dole won the recorded vote by 117,000, 47.1-41.6% (230,000 net uncounted). The Texas exit poll was tied at 46-46%, but Dole won by 280,000 votes, 48.8-43.8% (700,000 net uncounted). Again, had all the votes been counted, Clinton would have likely won both. And this does not include vote switching from Clinton or Perot to Dole, just the uncounted votes.

3. Exit polls were particularly bad in this year’s primaries. They overstated Barack Obama’s performance by an average of about 7 points.

RC: You are apparently unaware of Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” in which he advised Republicans to cross over in the Democratic primaries and vote for Hillary Clinton. His objective was to deny Obama the nomination. Obama easily won the all the caucuses in which voters were visually counted.

4. Exit polls challenge the definition of a random sample. Although the exit polls have theoretically established procedures to collect a random sample — essentially, having the interviewer approach every nth person who leaves the polling place — in practice this is hard to execute at a busy polling place, particularly when the pollster may be standing many yards away from the polling place itself because of electioneering laws.

RC: You are apparently unaware that exit pollsters Edison-Mitofsky wrote in the notes to the 2004 National Exit Poll that respondents were randomly selected as they exited the polling booth. What is your definition of a random sample?

5. Democrats may be more likely to participate in exit polls. Related to items #1 and #4 above, Scott Rasmussen has found that Democrats supporters are more likely to agree to participate in exit polls, probably because they are more enthusiastic about this election.

RC: You quote a biased GOP pollster who never did an exit poll. There is no evidence that Democrats are more likely to participate. In fact, the historical data shows otherwise. You are resurrecting the reluctant Bush responder (rBr) hypothesis that was disproved by the exit pollster’s own data in each of the 2000, 2004 and 2008 elections. It is also contradicted by a linear regression analysis which showed that response rates were highest in partisan GOP precincts and Red states.

6. Exit polls may have problems calibrating results from early voting. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, exit polls will attempt account for people who voted before Election Day in most (although not all) states by means of a random telephone sample of such voters. However, this requires the polling firms to guess at the ratio of early voters to regular ones, and sometimes they do not guess correctly. In Florida in 2000, for instance, there was a significant underestimation of the absentee vote, which that year was a substantially Republican vote, leading to an overestimation of Al Gore’s share of the vote, and contributing to the infamous miscall of the state.

RC: You are apparently unaware that exit pollsters Edison-Mitofsky claimed that their 2004 precinct design sample was near perfect.

Perhaps you are unaware of the fact that in the 2000 election, nearly 6 million ballots were never counted (a combination of spoiled, absentee and provisional) – and 75-80% were Gore votes – meaning that his True Vote margin was at least 3 million more than his recorded 540,000. And that is why Gore led the state exit poll aggregate by 50-45%.

You are either unaware or choose to ignore the fact that in Florida there were over 180,000 spoiled ballots (113,000 double and triple-punched and 65,000 underpunched) that were never counted – and 75% were Gore votes. You apparently believe the GOP con that the spoiled ballots were due to stupid voters. Why don’t you mention the thousands of Gore absentee ballots that were discarded? Perhaps you are unaware that it has been determined GOP election officials discarded Democratic absentee ballots and included GOP ballots that were filed after the due date. And what about the Palm Beach butterfly ballot in which thousands of Jews were fooled into voting for Buchanan?

If you really believe that Bush won both the national and Florida elections in 2000, then you must also believe that a) the tooth fairy exists, b) global warming is just a hoax and c) the economic meltdown was due to natural supply and demand forces and that the economic forecasting models were at fault. You ignore the strong evidence that the meltdown was due to corrupt global banksters gaming the financial system. And of course, you ignore the election fraudsters that have systematically gamed the computers to miscount votes and prevent millions of eligible citizens from voting. According to you, it is all just noise, never human corruption.

7. Exit polls may also miss late voters. By “late” voters I mean persons who come to their polling place in the last couple of hours of the day, after the exit polls are out of the field. Although there is no clear consensus about which types of voters tend to vote later rather than earlier, this adds another way in which the sample may be nonrandom, particularly in precincts with long lines or extended voting hours.

RC: As a quant, you should ask how was it that Kerry led by 51-48% at 12:22am (13047 respondents) but Bush led at 1:00am at the final (13660) after just 613 additional respondents? It’s simple. The pollsters had to force the National to match the bogus recorded vote (Bush 50.7-48.3%). It was impossible – a total sham. It was Kerry who led the final unadjusted NEP by 51.7-47.0%.

Are you aware that final exit polls are always FORCED to match the recorded vote? The 2004 adjusted final National Exit Poll indicated that 43% (52.6 million) of 2004 voters were returning Bush voters and 37% Gore voters. But Bush only had 50.5 million voters in 2000 – and approximately 2.5 million died. So there could not have been more than 48 million returning Bush voters. If 47 million turned out, there had to be 5.6 million phantom Bush voters. How do you explain that?

In 2008, Obama won the unadjusted National Exit Poll (17836 respondents) by 61-37%. But the poll was forced to match the recorded 52.9-45.6%. Are you aware that Obama had 52.4% of 121 million votes recorded on Election Day and 59.2% of the 10 million recorded later?

8. “Leaked” exit poll results may not be the genuine article. Sometimes, sources like Matt Drudge and Jim Geraghty have gotten their hands on the actual exit polls collected by the network pools. At other times, they may be reporting data from “first-wave” exit polls, which contain extremely small sample sizes and are not calibrated for their demographics. And at other places on the Internet (though likely not from Geraghty and Drudge, who actually have reasonably good track records), you may see numbers that are completely fabricated.

RC: Really? Are these fabricated? You are apparently unaware of the National Exit Poll timeline. Kerry led by 51-48% at 4:00pm (8349 respondents), 9:00pm (11027) and 12:22am (13047). Kerry led at the final 13660 respondents by 51.7-47.0%. But at approximately 1:00am, Kerry responders were flipped to Bush in order to force the poll to match the recorded vote.

9. A high-turnout election may make demographic weighting difficult. Just as regular, telephone polls are having difficulty this cycle estimating turnout demographics — will younger voters and minorities show up in greater numbers? — the same challenges await exit pollsters. Remember, an exit poll is not a definitive record of what happened at the polling place; it is at best a random sampling.

RC: Perhaps you are unaware that high turnout is always good for the Democrats. That’s why the GOP is always trying to suppress the vote. The National Exit Poll indicates that Kerry won 57-62% of new voters and that Obama had 72% of new voters in 2008. But at least you now agree that exit polls are indeed random samples. Glad you corrected point #4.

9. You’ll know the actual results soon enough anyway. Have patience, my friends, and consider yourselves lucky: in France, it is illegal to conduct a poll of any kind within 48 hours of the election. But exit polls are really more trouble than they’re worth, at least as a predictive tool. An independent panel created by CNN in the wake of the Florida disaster in 2000 recommended that the network completely ignore exit polls when calling particular states. I suggest that you do the same.

RC: I suggest that you do your homework. You will surely fail this Election Fraud Quiz. Exit polls are more trouble than they are worth? Yes, it’s true – for those who rig the elections. Perhaps you are unaware that the exit polls were the first indicators that the 2004 election was stolen. Nate, your problem is that you refuse to admit that Election Fraud is systemic – or that it even exists. You want your readers to believe that the recorded vote accurately depicts true voter intent and that the exit polls are always wrong. Tell that to Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow when you guest on their show.

In 2008, Obama had a recorded 52.9% share and won by 9.5 million votes. But he had to overcome the 5% fraud factor. You are probably unaware that the unadjusted National Exit poll indicates that he won 61% of 17,836 respondents. Obama had 58.0% in the unadjusted state exit poll weighted aggregate (82,388 respondents) winning by 23 million votes – exactly matching the True Vote Model which used the same adjusted final NEP vote shares.

The Bush/Kerry 46/37% returning voter weights in the adjusted final 2008 NEP implied that there were 12 million more returning Bush than Kerry voters – an impossible 103% turnout of living Bush voters. The True Vote Model calculated a feasible 47/40% Kerry/Bush split. Bush won the bogus recorded vote by just 3 million but Kerry won the True Vote by 10 million.

And you would also surely agree that there could not have been 5 million returning third-party voters indicated by the final 2008 NEP since just 1.2 million were recorded in 2004.

We have the 1988-2008 unadjusted state and national exit polls from the Roper website (nearly 500,000 exit poll respondents). The Democrats led the polls by 52-42%; but just 48-46% in the recorded vote. That’s an awful lot of Reluctant Republican Responders, yes?

Presidential election fraud is consistent and predictable. The unadjusted state and national exit polls have matched the True Vote Model in every election since 1988.

You are probably unaware that of the 274 state exit polls in the 1988-2008 presidential elections, 126 exceeded the margin of error (including a 30% cluster factor). Only 14 would be expected to exceed the MoE at the 95% confidence level. Of the 126, 123 “red-shifted” to the Republican and THREE to the Democrat. The probability is 5E-106. Can you explain it?
P= 0.0000000000 0000000000 0000000000 0000000000 0000000000 0000000000 0000000000 000000000 00000000000 0000000000 000005

Finally, Nate, you need to gain a new perspective on exit polls.

—————————————————-
Track Record: Election Model Forecast; Post-election True Vote Model

2004 Election Model (2-party shares)
Kerry 51.8%, 337 EV (snapshot)
State exit poll aggregate: 51.7%, 337 EV
Recorded Vote: 48.3%, 255 EV
True Vote Model: 53.6%, 364 EV

2008 Election Model
Obama 53.1%, 365.3 EV (simulation mean);
Recorded: 52.9%, 365 EV
State exit poll aggregate: 58.0%, 420 EV
True Vote Model: 58.0%, 420 EV

2012 Election Model
Obama Projected: 51.6% (2-party), 332 EV snapshot; 320.7 expected; 321.6 mean
Adjusted National Exit Poll (recorded): 51.0-47.2%, 332 EV
True Vote Model 56.1%, 391 EV (snapshot); 385 EV (expected)
Unadjusted State Exit Polls: not released
Unadjusted National Exit Poll: not released

 

The Late Recorded Votes: A confirmation of the True Vote?

The Late Recorded Votes: A confirmation of the True Vote?

Richard Charnin
Updated: Jan.7, 2013

The late vote timeline included in the 2012 True Vote Model shows that Obama’s lead increased dramatically after Election Day. He won the 11.7 million late votes recorded after Election Day by 58.0-38.3%, but led the first 117.4 million recorded by just 50.3-48.1%. Once again, as in every election since 2000, the Democratic late vote share exceeded the Election Day share by a substantial margin. What is the cause of this anomaly? Some possible reasons are given below.

Dave Leip’s US Election Atlas and Wikipedia provided daily state vote updates.

Obama vote share margins:
Election Day: 50.3-48.1% (2.2% of 117.45 million votes).
Late vote 58.0-38.3 (19.7% of 11.68 million votes).
Total vote: 51.03-47.19% (3.8% of 129.13 million votes.
Weighted late vote: 54.0%-41.8% (12.2%).
(Late state vote shares are weighted by total votes cast)

Obama 2-party shares and margins:
51.2-48.8% Election Day Recorded share (2.4%)
56.3-43.7% Late Vote share weighted by total recorded vote (12.6%)
52.0-48.0% Total vote (4.O%)
60.2-39.8% Unweighted Late Vote share (20.4%)
56.1-43.9% True Vote Model (12.2%)

2012 Late Vote Timeline
On……Obama led by…
Nov. 8 50.34-48.07% of 117.45 million recorded votes
Nov. 9 50.43-47.97% of 119.58 (2.13 late)
Nov.10 50.51-47.87% of 122.20 (4.75 late)
Nov.11 50.52-47.86% of 122.58 (5.13 late)
Nov.13 50.55-47.82% of 122.94 (5.49 late)
Nov.14 50.61-47.76% of 123.73 (6.27 late)
Nov.16 50.66-47.69% of 124.69 (7.24 late)
Nov.20 50.73-47.61% of 125.53 (8.07 late)
Nov.25 50.80-47.50% of 126.87 (9.41 late)
Nov.28 50.88-47.38% of 127.74 (10.29 late)
Nov.29 50.90-47.36% of 127.87 (10.42 late)
Dec.05 50.94-47.31% of 128.36 (10.90 late)
Dec.21 50.96-47.28% of 128.74 (11.28 late)
Final
Dec.31 51.03-47.19% of 129.13 (11.68 late)

Election Day and Late vote shares
(Late votes in thousands)
* indicates suspicious anomaly
…………….EDay Late Late Votes (000)
Total………..50.3% 58.0% 11,677

Alabama………39% 37% 312 *
Alaska……….41% 40% 80
Arizona………43% 47% 666 *
Arkansas……..37% 36% 25
California……59% 63% 3,609 *
Colorado……..51% 54% 222 *
Connecticut…..51% 59% 1,307 *
Delaware……..59% 80% 0
D. C…………91% 90% 50
Florida………50% 53% 182 *
Georgia………45% 49% 47 *
Hawaii……….71% 72% 0
Idaho………..32% 33% 45
Illinois……..57% 65% 130 *
Indiana………44% 49% 88 *
Iowa…………52% 63% 24 *
Kansas……….38% 37% 39
Kentucky……..38% 29% 117 *
Louisiana…….58% 41% 1
Maine………..56% 57% 64
Maryland……..62% 65% 236 *
Massachusetts…61% 55% 132 *
Michigan……..53% 71% 222 *
Minnesota…….53% 79% 6
Mississippi…..44% 46% 85
Missouri……..44% 71% 12
Montana………42% 40% 49
Nebraska……..38% 44% 27
Nevada……….52% 69% 3
New Hampshire…52% 35% 10
New Jersey……58% 61% 327 *
New Mexico……53% 60% 13
New York……..63% 68% 902 *
North Carolina..48% 48% -4 *
North Dakota….39% 15% 3
Ohio…………50% 59% 229 *
Oklahoma……..33% 32% 2
Oregon……….53% 58% 330
Pennsylvania….52% 43% 292 *
Rhode Island….63% 60% 29
South Carolina..44% 47% 111 *
South Dakota….40% 44% 0
Tennessee…….39% 40% 8
Texas………..41% 43% 53
Utah…………25% 23% 106
Vermont………67% 65% 61
Virginia……..51% 65% 160 *
Washington……55% 57% 1,217
West Virginia…36% 36% 29
Wisconsin…….53% 48% 15 *
Wyoming………28% 25% 3

No one knows what the unadjusted exit polls look like in 2012. And 19 states were not even exit polled. Maybe we’ll get to see the polls a year from now – when all talk of 2012 election fraud has died down.

The late votes can be viewed as a proxy for the unadjusted state exit polls. In 2008, 10 million late votes matched the polls. Unlike an exit poll survey, however, naysayers cannot use the worn out bogus claims that a) late poll “respondents” are lying about how they voted and b) there is a differential response: Democrats are more anxious to be interviewed than Republicans.

But all we have is the National Exit Poll which is always forced to match the recorded vote and shows that Obama was a 50-48% winner. All demographic crosstabs were forced to conform to the recorded vote. About 80 questions were asked of over 25,000 exit poll respondents, but the most important was missing: Who did you vote for in 2008: Obama, McCain or Other?

The past vote question has always been asked in prior exit polls. It is used as the basis for the True Vote Model to measure prior election voter turnout and vote shares in the current election. The returning voter mix displayed in the adjusted Final National Exit Poll has been determined to be impossible in at least four presidential elections – a clear indicator of a fraudulent vote count.

As in every presidential election since 1988, the Democrat Obama did much better than the recorded vote. If the Late Votes are representative of the total vote, they are another confirmation of systematic election fraud. Why would the late votes always show a sharp increase in the Democratic vote share?

In the 2000, 2004, and 2008 elections, late votes recorded after Election Day showed a dramatic increase in Democratic vote shares. The late votes closely matched the state and national exit polls and the True Vote Model. The anomaly is also apparently occurring in 2012.

2000: 102.6 million votes recorded on Election Day. Gore led 48.3-48.1%.
Gore had 55.6% of the 2.7 million late votes.

2004: 116.7 million votes recorded on Election Day. Bush led 51.6-48.3%.
Kerry had 54.2% of the 4.8 million late 2-party votes.

2008: 121 million votes recorded on Election Day. Obama led 52.3-46.3%.
Obama won 10.2 million late votes by 59.2-37.5%. He won the 131 million recorded votes by 52.9-45.6%, a 9.5 million vote margin. But he did much better in the unadjusted National Exit Poll: 61-37% (17,836 respondents, a 31 million vote margin. He also won the unadjusted state exit poll aggregate (82,388 respondents) by 58.0-40.5%, a 23 million margin. Obama had an identical 58.0% in the True Vote Model, exactly matching and confirming the state exit polls.

But this is the kicker: the exit polls and True Vote Model vote shares closely matched the 10 million late recorded votes!

To summarize Obama in 2008:
1- National Exit poll (17,836 respondents): 61.0%
2- State exit poll weighted aggregate (82,388 respondents): 58.0%
3- True Vote Model: 58.0%
4- Late vote (10.2 million): 59.2%
5- Recorded vote: 52.9%

The CNN 2008 Election site shows Obama winning by 66.88-58.43 million votes, an 8.45 million margin. The final recorded vote was 69.50-59.95, a 9.55 million margin. Why has CNN not updated the 2008 Election website to include the final 4.15 million votes? Obama won 63% of them.

- Could it be that since the winner has been decided, there is no longer an incentive on the part of the perennial vote thieves to continue switching late votes? Plausible.
- Could it be that the late votes are paper ballots (provisionals, absentees) and not from DREs? Absolutely.
- Could it be that the late votes are coming in from Democratic strongholds? Maybe some, but surely not all.

State vote totals show that the late votes are a reasonable representation of the total electorate. The deviation between the Late and Election Day recorded votes is less than 3% in 20 states. There are 8 in which the deviation exceeds 10% (4 for Obama and 4 for Romney). There are currently 12 with fewer than 3,000 late votes. View the data tables, bar chart and frequency chart in the 2012 Forecasting model.

The consistent Democratic late vote share discrepancies from the Election Day shares are not proof of fraud. But there is no reason why the phenomenon is ignored in the mainstream media and academia. Obviously, without having an accurate composition of the late vote demographics we cannot make a definitive judgment as to whether they are representative of the total electorate. But there are a number of reasons why Obama would be expected to do better in the late vote. The only question is how much better?

1)Late votes are cast on paper ballots, not DREs or optiscans. Therefore we would expect a higher Democratic share than on Election Day because voting machines are rigged. Check.

2)There is no incentive to fix the votes after the election. Check.

3)The increase in Democratic late vote share has occurred in each election since 2000, enforcing the case that it is a structural phenomenon. Check.

4)In 2008, Obama had a 59% share compared to 52% on Election Day. There were 10 million late uncounted votes or 7.8% of 131 million recorded. In 2004, there were 5 million late votes of 122 million (4%). In 2000, 3 million of 105 million (3%). The late vote percentage is rising faster than the increase in minority voters. Check.

5) The average late vote margin exceeded the recorded margin by 11%.
Margins: State Exit Poll aggregate,National Exit Poll,Late Vote share,Recorded share,Deviation
2000 5. 2. 10 0.5 9.5
2004 4. 5. 8. -2.4 10.4
2008 18 24 20 7.3 13.6
2012 na na 14 2.7 11.3


6)Blacks and Hispanics voted at a higher rate for Obama in 2012. Since the total vote declined by 7 million, there were fewer white voters, thus increasing Obama’s total share. Approximately 13% of 2012 voters were black and 10% Latino. Check.

7) Obama’s 2-party late vote shares far exceed his Election Day shares (see above).

Election Model Forecast; Post-election True Vote Model

2004 Election Model (2-party shares)
Kerry: 51.8%, 337 EV (snapshot)
State exit poll aggregate: 51.7%, 337 EV
Recorded Vote: 48.3%, 255 EV
True Vote Model: 53.6%, 364 EV

2008 Election Model
Obama: 53.1%, 365.3 EV (simulation mean);
Recorded: 52.9%, 365 EV
State exit poll aggregate: 58.0%, 420 EV
True Vote Model: 58.0%, 420 EV

2012 Election Model
Obama Projected: 51.6% (2-party), 332 EV snapshot; 320.7 expected; 321.6 mean
Adjusted National Exit Poll (recorded): 51.0-47.2%, 332 EV
True Vote Model 56.1%, 391 EV (snapshot); 385 EV (expected)
Unadjusted State Exit Polls: not released
Unadjusted National Exit Poll: not released

 

Early Voting: good for Obama. Election Day Voting: not so much

Early Voting: good for Obama. Election Day Voting: not so much

Richard Charnin

Oct. 15, 2012

Early voting appears to be strongly for Obama – just like in 2008. This analysis compares early voting by mail or hand-delivered paper ballots to Election Day voting.

The objective is to estimate 2008 Election Day vote shares for each state given its early voting percentage, unadjusted exit poll and recorded vote share.

In 2008, 40.6 million (30.6%) of 131.3 million votes were cast early on paper ballots that were hand-delivered or mailed in. Mail-in ballots accounted for 31.7% of early votes.

Analysis of 2008 exit poll data shows that the states which voted early had the highest percentage of early votes had the lowest exit poll discrepancies (red-shift).

Obama had 58.0% in the state exit poll aggregate, but just 52.9% recorded. The assumption in this analysis is that early vote shares were approximately equal to the unadjusted exit polls – and Obama’s True Vote.

Election Day vote shares required to match the recorded vote are calculated using this formula:

Election Day share = (Recorded share – Early vote share) / Election Day share of total vote

Therefore, Obama’s estimated Election Day share was approximately:
50.5% = (52.9 – 58.0*.31) / .69 = (52.9-17.8) / .69

Note: Obama’s total early vote was equal to his 58% exit poll times the early voting share of the total recorded vote. Therefore, assuming Obama had 58% of the 31% who voted early, he must have had a 50.5% share on Election Day. The 7.5% discrepancy from his True 58% share was likely due to the systemic election fraud factor.

Election Model Forecast; Post-election True Vote Model

2004 Election Model (2-party shares)
Kerry 51.8%, 337 EV (snapshot)
State exit poll aggregate: 51.7%, 337 EV
Recorded Vote: 48.3%, 255 EV
True Vote Model: 53.6%, 364 EV

2008 Election Model
Obama 53.1%, 365.3 EV (simulation mean);
Recorded: 52.9%, 365 EV
State exit poll aggregate: 58.0%, 420 EV
True Vote Model: 58.0%, 420 EV

2012 Election Model
Obama Projected: 51.6% (2-party), 332 EV snapshot; 320.7 expected; 321.6 mean
Adjusted National Exit Poll (recorded): 51.0-47.2%, 332 EV
True Vote Model 56.1%, 391 EV (snapshot); 385 EV (expected)
Unadjusted State Exit Polls: not released
Unadjusted National Exit Poll: not released

 

2000-2004 Presidential Elections County True Vote Model

2000-2004 Presidential Elections County True Vote Model

Richard Charnin

March 28, 2012

The database has been restructured for easier use. It is based on county recorded vote changes and 2000 and 2004 as well as National Exit Poll vote shares. It now calculates the approximate 2004 True Vote for counties in 21 states.

The 2004 County True Vote Model:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjAk1JUWDMyRdDNzZWhMcF9sS3pHRWdUZE8zdEs4aGc#gid=23

In 2000, Gore won the unadjusted state exit polls by 50.8-44.4%. He won the National Exit Poll by 48.5-46.3%

In 2004, Kerry won the unadjusted state exit polls by 51.1-47.6%. He won the National Exit Poll by 51.7-47.0%%

The database contains Election Day recorded votes. In 2000 approximately 2.7 million votes were recorded after Election Day; in 2004 approximately 6 million were. Gore and Kerry each had 55% of the late two-party vote.

In 2000, there were approximately 6 million uncounted votes. In 2004, there were approximately 4 million. Gore and Kerry had 70-80%. Uncounted votes (Total Votes Cast) are not included in the True Vote calculations.

The number of returning 2000 voters is calculated assuming 5% voter mortality over the four year period. The default turnout assumption is that 98% of living 2000 voters voted in 2004.

The number of new voters is calculated as the difference between the 2004 recorded vote and the number of returning 2000 voters. This is just an approximation since the recorded 2000 county vote is used – not the True Vote based on total votes cast .

The Model uses adjusted 12:22am National Exit Poll vote shares as a basis for calculating total state and county vote shares. The adjusted shares are applied to each county’s estimated share of new voters and returning Gore, Bush and Other voters. The weighted average of the county vote shares should closely match the calculated state True Vote.

State and county vote shares are calculated based on the differential between the unadjusted state and national exit poll shares.

The Input sheet is for data entry. Enter the state code in cell A2.

The default assumption is that 2000 voters return to vote in proportion to the 2000 unadjusted exit poll. Enter code 1 to use the 2000 recorded vote as the returning voter option. Since the unadjusted 2000 exit poll is close to the True Vote, the default option is a better choice.

The user has the option of incrementing the returning Gore voter mix percentage. The Bush share will decrease (increase) by the same percentage.

The living 2000 voter turnout rate is set to 98%, but can be changed if desired.

In order to gauge the impact of changes in vote shares, incremental changes to Kerry’s base case vote shares can be input. Bush’s shares will adjust automatically in the opposite direction (the total must equal 100%). Other third-party vote shares are unchanged.

Analyzing the results
The data is sorted by 2004 county vote. The discrepancies are displayed as vote margin (in thousands) and a percentage. The probability of fraud increases as the discrepancy increases. The county True Vote is only an estimate. It can only be determined if the ballots are hand-counted.

The correlation statistic shows the relationship between two variables and ranges from -1 to +1, where -1 is a perfectly negative correlation and +1 is perfectly positive. A near-zero correlation indicates that there is no relationship. A positive correlation indicates that both variables move in the same direction: as one variable increases (decreases), the other also increases (decreases). A negative correlation indicates just the opposite: as one variable increases (decreases) the other decreases (increases).

The model calculates the correlation statistic (relationship) between Kerry’s recorded vote share and the True Vote discrepancy. In general, there is a strong negative correlation between the variables, indicating that as Obama’s recorded county vote share increases (decreases) the discrepancy decreases (increases). This is an indication that the GOP counties are the most fraudulent (as measured by vote share margin discrepancy).

For example, in Ohio, the -0.82 correlation was very strong indicating that Bush counties were extremely fraudulent relative to Kerry counties (based on vote share margin discrepancies).

County Correlation Ratios between the Democratic Recorded Vote and
the True Vote Share Margin Discrepancy
State 2004 2008
NC -0.01 -0.72
WI -0.70 -0.50
OH -0.82 -0.50
NY -0.62 -0.45
FL -0.43 -0.79

Florida
At 8:40pm CNN showed that of 2846 exit polled, Bush led by 49.8-49.7%.
Kerry won the unadjusted exit poll (2862 respondents) by 50.8-48.0%.
But at 1:41am, the poll flipped to Bush (52.1-47.9%) for the SAME 2862 RESPONDENTS, matching the recorded vote a 381,000 vote margin.
Kerry won the True Vote by 52.7-46.1%, a 500,000 vote margin.

Kerry’s largest discrepancies from the True Vote were in DRE counties:
Broward, Hillsborough, Palm Beach, Dade, Pinellas.
Most fraudulent counties based on…
Votes: Dade Broward Palm Beach
Margin: Broward Palm Beach Volusia Polk

Ohio
At 7:30pm CNN showed that of 1963 exit polled, Kerry led by 52.1-47.9%
Kerry won the unadjusted exit poll (2020 respondents) by 54.1-45.9%.
At 1:41am, the poll flipped to Bush (50.9-48.6%) for the SAME 2020 RESPONDENTS, matching the recorded vote, a 119,000 vote margin.
Kerry won the True Vote by 53.1-45.5%, a 426,000 vote margin.

Ohio used Punched card machines, DREs and Optical Scanners.
Most fraudulent counties based on…
Votes: Cuyahoga Franklin Montgomery Butler
Margin: Butler Warren Clermont

New York
All counties Lever machines.
Kerry won the recorded vote by 58.4-40.1%, a 1,251,000 vote margin.
Kerry won the Exit Poll by 62.1-36.2%.
Kerry won the True Vote by 63.0-35.1%, a 2,060,000 vote margin.
Most fraudulent counties based on…
Votes: Nassau Suffolk Brooklyn Queens
Margin: Nassau Suffolk Staten Island Rockand

Wisconsin
Kerry won the recorded vote by 49.7-49.3%, an 11,000 vote margin.
Kerry won the Exit Poll by 52.0-46.8%.
Kerry won the True Vote by 52.8-45.6%, a 217,000 vote margin.
Most fraudulent counties based on…
Votes: Waukesha Brown Sheboygan
Margin: Waukesha Brown Sheboygan Washington

Arizona
In 2000 Gore won the exit poll (47.2-46.4%) but lost the vote by 50.9-44.7%.
In 2004, Bush won the exit poll (52.8-46.3%) and the recorded vote (54.9-44.4%).

But Kerry won the True Vote by 52.0-46.2% (assuming 2000 voters returned in proportion to the 2000 exit poll). If the model is correct, there was massive election fraud (a 16% discrepancy).

Pennsylvania
Most fraudulent counties based on…
Votes: Allegheny Montgomery Bucks
Margin: Northampton York Westmoreland

 

The 2000-2004 Presidential County Recorded Vote Database

Richard Charnin

March 1, 2012

The 2000-2004 Presidential County Vote Database is a forensic spreadsheet tool for viewing, filtering, sorting and comparing county vote changes from 2000 to 2004. It is important to note that the database contains Election Day recorded votes, not the True votes. The 2004 county voting machine type is indicated.

The database has been updated. It currently consists of 21 states in a single file and includes the True Vote Model for each county.
http://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2012/03/06/2000-2004-presidential-elections-county-true-vote-model/

The original database consists of two worksheets:
Part 1:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjAk1JUWDMyRdGFHdkloa0FUeUp0dmlRbFl6bjViQkE#gid=1

Part 2:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjAk1JUWDMyRdEMxYmxrWElBeTdZWWhtMHZrSEZQa0E#gid=1

In 2000, Gore won the recorded vote by 540,000. But there were nearly 6 million uncounted votes. Gore won the unadjusted exit poll by 50-44% – a six million vote margin that was close to the True Vote Model.

In 2004, Bush won the recorded vote by 3 million. There were nearly 4 million uncounted votes. Kerry  won the unadjusted exit poll by 51-47.5%. The True Vote model indicates that he had 53.5% and won by 10 million votes.

Why bother to analyze state and county recorded votes? What if a county had a near-zero percentage increase in Bush’s 2004 margin from 2000? In other words, if there was nearly equal fraud in both elections, how would we know? Well, if we have evidence of 2004 fraud in a given county, but there was no change in margin from 2000, then we can hypothesize that fraud also occurred in 2000. Conversely, if there was a change in margin in 2004, we could hypothesize that there was an increase in the fraud factor. Since Election Fraud is systemic, the 2000/2004 county vote database has applicability in other state and presidential elections.

New York had the highest level of fraud: there was a 55% average difference between comparable Kerry and Bush correlations. Florida was next at 49%, Ohio had 35%. Oregon, the only vote-by-mail 100% paper ballot state with mandated random county hand-recounts, had just a 4% difference. The results confirmed a prior analysis which indicated a) that Oregon stood alone as the only fraud-free Battleground state and b) confirmed that election fraud caused the large exit poll discrepancies in New York, Florida and Ohio- and many other states.

New York

Bush’s 2004 recorded NY county vote gain over 2000 is indeed an Urban Legend. His percentage gain in the 15 largest NY urban and suburban (Democratic) counties far exceeded those of Kerry. In 2000, Gore won the NY recorded vote by 60-35% with 5% to third parties. But Kerry won by just 58-40%, a 7% decrease in margin. 

NY voted exclusively on Lever machines which had the highest discrepancies (11%) of all voting machine types.

In 2004, Nader had less than 0.5% of the vote nationally. Since returning Nader voters preferred Kerry over Bush by 64-17%, Kerry should have won NY by 63-36% (assuming zero net defections of returning voters). In fact, he won the unadjusted exit poll by 62.1-36.2%. But his recorded margin exceeded Gore in just 6 of 62 counties.

Columbia was the ONLY COUNTY where Bush had fewer votes than he did in 2000 – an indication that Coumbia’s election had zero fraud. Bush had 12,100 votes in 2000 and 11,200 in 2004.

This graph shows Bush and Kerry percentage gains over 2000 in the 15 largest NY counties.
http://www.richardcharnin.com/TIACountyVoteDatabase_24111_image001.png

The Bush Urban Legend is also illustrated in this graph which shows the implausible high (0,61) correlation between NY county population size and Bush percentage gain from 2000.
http://richardcharnin.com/TIACountyVoteDatabase_14517_image001.gif

Florida

Gore won the FL unadjusted exit poll by a whopping 53.4-43.6% (3% to Nader et al), but Bush won by 537 votes. They were tied at 48.8% – only because the Supreme Court stopped the recount. There were nearly 200,000 uncounted spoiled ballots, a combination of undervotes, overvotes, Butterfly ballots, etc.  

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Kerry led the 2004 pre-election polls.
http://richardcharnin.com/FL04exitpoll_12679_image001.png

In 2004 Bush won again, this time by 52.1-47.9%. Returning Nader 2000 voters broke by nearly 4-1 for Kerry, who also won the unadjusted exit poll by 50.8-48.0%. So how did Bush do it? Well, for one thing FL voting machines were now a mix of unverifiable DREs and Optical scanners. No more punch cards. No more hanging chads. HAVA fixed that problem, so that votes could be stolen cleanly in Cyberspace. No longer would there be blood evidence at the crime scene.

The biggest Democratic counties (Palm Beach, Broward and Dade) showed  virtually no change in Bush’s margin from 2000 to 2004. But changes in county recorded votes can be misleading. Does no change mean that there was no fraud? Obviously not. Election Fraud in both 2000 and 2004 caused Gore and Kerry margins to decline at nearly the same rate. The near-zero net change in margin masks the uniform vote thefts. But the the level of fraud must have increased in counties where Bush gained the most over his 2000 vote (Brevard, Polk, Hillsborough, etc.). Margins increased by 4% in Hillsborough, 7% in Broward and 6% in Palm Beach. These counties used DRE touchscreens in 2004.

Of the 67 Florida counties, Kerry did better than Gore in just five, whereas Bush increased his margin in 62. But in Leon County there was a 10,000 increase in Kerry’s margin, his biggest county gain. Does the fact that Ion Sancho, the Election Integrity activist whose famous “Hursti Hack” demonstrated that Optical Scanners can be rigged and also happens to be the Leon County Election Supervisor, have anything to do with it? 

Oregon

This 100% paper ballot state uses Optical scanners. Vote is by mail or hand-delivery of ballots to a polling site. A hand recount of ballots is mandated for randomly selected counties. Not surprisingly, with the combination of mandated hand counts (a fraud deterrent) and high turnout, Oregon was the only Battleground state that Kerry won by a margin better than Gore.

Gore won Multnomah, Oregon’s largest county, by 104,000 votes (64.3-28.6%). But Kerry did even better. He won it by 152,000 votes (72.5-27.5%) and apparently picked up a large number of returning Nader 2000 voters. It’s very telling to compare Kerry’s expected gains in urban Multnomah to Bush’s impossible, unexpected gains in heavily Democratic NY counties.

Oregon is a 100% paper ballot state, mandates random hand recounts and enjoys heavy voter turnout. Do these factors have anything to do with Oregon being the only Battleground state in which Kerry’s winning vote share exceeded that of Al Gore?

Ohio

In 2000, Bush beat Gore by 50.0-46.5%, but the exit poll was close (48.5-47.4%). In 2004, Kerry won the exit poll by a solid 54.1-45.7% but lost the recorded vote by 50.8-48.7% – quite a red-shift. Although there were many Battleground states and strong Democratic states in which vote miscounts favored Bush, Ohio was the epicenter of election fraud. The majority of its 88 counties voted on punch card machines, the rest on DREs and Optical scanners.

In 2000, Gore won Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) by 63-34%. Kerry did even better; he won by 67-33%. Kerry had a 61,000 net gain in margin. But keeping in mind that these are recorded vote shares. Based on the vast evidence of documented fraud, Gore and Kerry must have done much better than their recorded votes indicate. Bush vote gains from 2000 were highest in Butler, Warren and Clermont counties. All had numerous voting irregularities and anomalies.

Did Ken Blackwell, Secretary of State and co-chair of the Ohio Bush-Cheney campaign, have anything to do with Kerry losing Ohio ?

 

Response to the TruthIsAll FAQ

Response to the TruthIsAll FAQ

Richard Charnin (TruthIsAll)

April 8, 2012

This is an updated response to Mark Lindeman’s “TruthIsAll FAQ”, written in 2006. It is a summary version of the original which includes 2008 election results. This is the original Response to the TruthIsAll FAQ

Mark is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bard College, NY.

Since the last update, unadjusted state and national presidential exit polls have been made available on the Roper UConn site. I created a spreadsheet database of 1988-2008 unadjusted state and national presidential exit polls. It contains detailed polling and recorded vote statistics organized for each election in separate worksheets. Graphics and tabular analysis worksheets were also included.

The data shows a consistent pattern of massive one-sided state and national exit poll discrepancies from the recorded vote and further debunks the arguments presented by Lindeman in the original TIA FAQ.

For example, the Democrats won the 1988-2008 state unadjusted exit polls and the National Exit Polls by an identical 52-42%. The average recorded vote margin was just 48-46%. The 8% average margin discrepancy is much bigger than we had been led to believe by the exit pollsters prior to the Roper listing. The 2004 exit poll 7% discrepancy was not unique. In fact, 2008 was much worse. The aggregate state exit poll discrepancy was 11%; the National Exit Poll a whopping 17%.

In every election, the Roper data shows that the final, official National Exit Poll was forced to match the recorded vote with no change in the number of unadjusted exit poll respondents.

Before the Roper data became available, I created the 1988-2008 Presidential True Vote Model. The unadjusted exit polls closely matched and confirmed the model. Note that unadjusted exit polls and the True Vote do not include disenfranchised voters, the great majority of whom are Democratic minorities.

have recently written two books on election fraud analysis: Matrix of Deceit: Forcing-Pre-Election and Exit Polls to Match Fraudulent Vote Counts and Proving Election Fraud: Phantom Voters, Uncounted Votes, and the National Exit Poll

Voters today are much more aware of systemic election fraud than they were in 2004 when the mainstream media hoodwinked millions into believing that Bush won three million vote “mandate”. The media prepares the public with pre-election polls that are biased in favor of the GOP. After the election, the National Election Pool (NEP) funds the exit pollsters who always the numbers in order to match the (bogus) recorded votes – even if the adjustments are mathematically impossible.

It should now be obvious to anyone paying attention that the lock down on serious election fraud analysis proves media complicity in the fraud.

It is a long running media myth that the 2000 election was close. Bush won Florida (and therefore the election) by 537 official votes. But pre-election and unadjusted exit polls indicated that Al Gore easily won the state. Gore won nationally by 540,000 recorded votes (48.4-47.9%). He won the unadjusted state exit polls (58,000 respondents) by 50.8-44.4%, a 6 million vote margin. He also won the unadjusted National Exit Poll by 48.5-46.3%. The exit polls confirmed the True Vote Model – and vice-versa.

In 2004, unadjusted state and national exit polls indicate that John Kerry won by 5-6 million votes with 51.0% and 51.7%, respectively. The True Vote Model indicated he won by 10 million votes with a 53.6% share. Serious election researchers agree that the 2004 election was stolen. Further Confirmation Of a Kerry Landslide is a complete analysis of the 2004 election.

In the 2006 midterms, a Democratic Tsunami gave them control of congress, but the landslide was denied; the unadjusted exit polls (56.4%) indicate they did much better than the official 53%. The statistical evidence indicates that election fraud cut the 12% Democratic landslide margin in half, costing them 10-20 House seats. The landslide was denied.

In 2008, Obama won by 9.5 million recorded votes with a 52.9% share. The unadjusted state exit polls (82,000 respondents) indicate that he had 58.0%. He had a whopping 61% share in the unadjusted National Exit Poll (17,836 respondents).

The post-election True Vote Model used Final National Exit Poll (NEP) vote shares and calculated a feasible returning 2004 voter mix: Obama had 58.0% and won by 23 million votes. The landslide was denied.

Response to the TruthIsAll FAQ – Updated for 2008

Mark Lindeman wrote the TruthIsAll FAQ in late 2006. Mark has been posting non-stop since 2005 trying to debunk the work of scores of independent election analysts who cite pre-election and exit polls as powerful evidence that Kerry easily won the True Vote in 2004 and that the 2006 Democratic landslide was denied by election fraud.

Mark posts as “On the Other Hand” on the Democratic Underground and “Hudson Valley Mark” on Daily Kos (as well as on numerous other forums). He quickly responds to posts that analyze pre-election and exit polls – and invariably attempts to debunk them if they are presented as indicators of election fraud. But it’s a good thing that Mark wrote the FAQ. By doing so, he provides a snapshot summary of the polling debates which are still taking place on various election forums. And the TIA FAQ provides a forum for presenting new and updated evidence of systemic election fraud based on pre-election and post-election polling analysis.

In June 2006 Farhad Manjoo, writing in Salon, wrote a hit piece rebuttal to the RFK Jr. Rolling Stone article “Was the 2004 Election Stolen?” Farhad claimed to have consulted with Lindeman as a primary advisor in writing the piece.

Manjoo’s article was immediately debunked by a number of well-respected election researchers. They noticed a number of statistical and logical errors.

In January 2007, I wrote the “Response to the TruthIsAll FAQ” along with a detailed statistical analysis: “2000-2006 Election Fraud Analytics”.

The 2006 and 2008 election results confirmed that the 2004 election was indeed a Kerry landslide and that Gore won by much more than the recorded 540,000 vote margin. And this was long before the Roper UConn release of the unadjusted exit polls which provided a conclusive confirmation.

That is what the evidence shows, regardless of whether or not it is ever discussed in the media. Statistical analysts and political scientists who have looked at the evidence must be well aware of the systemic fraud, but job security and unwillingness of Democratic politicians and the mainstream media to discuss the issue are strong incentives to perpetuate the ongoing myth that historical election results have been accurate. Only a handful of liberal bloggers have even touched on the subject. A number of books have been written which show that massive fraud in the form of voter disenfranchisement and vote miscounts occurred in 2000-2008. Not one book has been written to prove that Bush won in 2004.

For brevity, I have abbreviated Lindeman’s comments and my responses to the questions posed in the original FAQ but have added references to the 2008 election.
___________________________________________________________________________

A TruthIsAll (TIA) FAQ
by Mark Lindeman

TruthIsAll (TIA) is the pseudonym of a former Democratic Underground (DU) regular who now posts elsewhere. Many of his writings are available at truthisall.net TIA argues, among other things, that the 2004 U.S. presidential pre-election polls and the exit polls both indicate that John Kerry won the election.

Who is TruthIsAll (TIA) and why do you care what he says?

ML
I don’t know who he is. Apparently he has worked in quantitative analysis for many years; he has described himself as an “Excel expert.” His allegations of election fraud — in particular, his enumeration of (presumably far-fetched) things one must believe in order to believe that Bush won the 2004 election — formed the template for the 2005 Project Censored story making the same case.

Many people believe that TIA’s arguments irrefutably demonstrate that John Kerry won the popular vote and the election. Many more people believe that TIA’s arguments have no merit whatsoever, and therefore don’t bother to try to refute them. I do not like to see weak arguments go unchallenged. (But plenty of people have criticized TIA’s arguments — I make no claim to originality.)

I also think that these particular weak arguments lead to poor political judgments. If TruthIsAll is right, it follows that the 2004 election was obviously stolen. So, one might conclude, among other things, that (1) most voters preferred Kerry to Bush, (2) Democratic political leaders are effectively complicit in a cover-up, and (3) Democrats cannot win crucial elections until and unless the current voting systems are thrown out. I disagree with all of these conclusions.

(Now that the Democrats have won House and Senate majorities in the 2006 election, argument #3 must be modulated. Fraud-minded observers now often argue that the Republicans stole some votes and even some seats, but that either for some reason they could not — or did not dare? — steal enough votes, or that they had to decide how many votes to steal several weeks in advance, and were caught flat-footed by a late Democratic surge. As I address on the Miscellaneous page, I have seen no convincing evidence of widespread vote miscount.

OK, so what are TIA’s arguments?

ML
He has many posts, but many of them make these basic claims:
Pre-election polls (both state and national) gave Kerry better than a 99% chance of winning the election.

Well-established political generalizations, such as the “incumbent rule,” buttress the conclusion that Kerry should have won.

The exit polls gave Kerry a lead in the popular vote well beyond the statistical margin of error, and diverged substantially from the official results in many states, generally overstating Kerry’s vote total. (This claim is largely true, although not everything TIA says about it is.)

Fraud is the only good explanation of the exit poll discrepancies. In particular, there is no good reason to believe that Kerry voters participated in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters. Since Kerry did better than Bush among people who did not vote in 2000, Bush would have had to do much better among Gore 2000 voters than Kerry did among Bush 2000 voters — and that can’t have happened.

It is pretty easy to look around and determine that not many political scientists are expressing agreement with these views. But why not? It could be that political scientists have a status quo bias and/or are afraid to rock the boat by confronting unpleasant truths; perhaps some are even paid by Karl Rove. It could be that political scientists simply haven’t looked at the evidence. It could be that political scientists see gaping holes in TIA’s arguments. It could be some combination of those factors, and others besides. For what it’s worth, I will explain at some length why I don’t agree with TIA’s views.

Please note that this is not a one-size-fits-all election integrity FAQ.

Do you think that electronic voting machines are almost ridiculously insecure and unreliable?

ML
I do, although I certainly don’t agree with every word of every critic. Do you think that John Kerry won or should have won Ohio? You may be right. I don’t know. I doubt it, but I haven’t set out to knock down each and every argument about fraud or vote suppression in the 2004 election — in fact, I agree with several of them. But the arguments (by TIA and others) that Kerry won the popular vote are not at all likely to be true, in my opinion.I have rarely quoted TIA at length because (1) the FAQ is already very long and (2) TIA’s writing is often hard to read. But if you think I have mischaracterized one of his arguments, or if you have other questions or comments about the FAQ, please feel free to contact me at [my last name]@bard.edu.

TIA
These are just a few well-known researchers whose analyses confirm mine: Steve Freeman, Ron Baiman, Jonathan Simon, Kathy Dopp, Greg Palast, RFK Jr., Mark C. Miller, Bob Fitrakis, Michael Keefer, John Conyers, Richard Hayes Phillips, Paul Lehto, etc. At least four have advanced degrees in applied mathematics or systems analysis. I have three degrees in applied mathematics.

It would be useful if Mark would mention the names of the political scientists or statisticians who disagree with my analysis and believe that Bush won the election fairly in 2004. How do they account for his 3 million “mandate”? How do they explain where Bush found 16 million new voters net of voter mortality and turnout? What are their confirming demographics? Do any of the analysts you refer to have degrees in mathematics or statistics? Did their 2004 projections match the exit polls? Or did they match the vote miscount? Have any of them ever written about or considered election fraud in their analysis? Have they analyzed the impact of uncounted votes on election results? What is their track record? Were their projections based on economic or political factors or did they use state and national polling? What was the time period between their final projections and Election Day?

FAQ Summary and Response

1. The Pre-Election Polls

1.1. What did the national pre-election polls indicate?

ML
According to most observers, most pre-election polls put George W. Bush slightly ahead of John Kerry.

TIA
That is simply not the case. Kerry led the pre-election polls from July to Election Day except for a few weeks in September. Real Clear Politics is often cited as the data source but it only listed final Likely Voter (LV polls) – but not one Registered Voter (RV) poll. The final five pre-election polls from CBS, FOX, Gallup, ABC, and Pew had the race essentially tied. Kerry led the five-poll RV average 47.2-46.0; Bush led the LV average 48.8-48.0. Gallup’s RV sample had Kerry leading 48-46; the LV subset had Bush leading 49-47. Gallup allocated 90% of the undecided vote (UVA) to the challenger, so their final prediction was 49-49. Kerry led in the final battleground state polls.

The final five LV samples predicted an average 82.8% voter turnout, but according to post-election Census data, turnout was 88.5%. A regression analysis indicated that Kerry had 48.9% given the 82.8% prediction or 49.3% assuming he had 75% of undecided voters (UVA). But he had 51.3% given the 88.5% turnout and 52.6% with a 75% UVA. Kerry’s pre-election RV polls were 2-3% better than the LV subset since a solid majority of newly registered voters were Democrats.

2008 Update: The Pre-election RV polls had Obama leading by 52-39%. He led the LV subsets (the only ones listed at RCP) by 50-43%. Neither average includes an allocation of undecided voters.

1.2. How does TIA come up with those 99+% probabilities of a Kerry victory?

ML
Basically, those probabilities (for both state and national polls) assume that all his assumptions (for instance, about how “undecided” voters will vote) are right, and that the only source of uncertainty is random sampling error.

TIA
The 2004 Election Model assumed a final 75% undecided voter allocation (UVA) percentage; but provided scenarios ranging from 60-87%. The 5000 trial Monte Carlo EV simulation gave Kerry a 98.0% win probability assuming 60% UVA (99.8% for the base case 75% UVA).

The base case assumption was that Kerry would win 75% of the undecided vote. But the sensitivity analysis showed that he won with 50%. Historically challengers have won the undecided vote over 80% of the time. Gallup assigned 90% of undecided voters to Kerry. There were approximately 22 million new voters; Kerry won this group by 3-2. There were 3 million defecting third-party (Nader) voters; Kerry won this group by nearly 5-1 over Bush.

2008: The Final 2008 Election Model forecast (EM) exactly matched Obama’s 365 electoral votes and was just 0.2% higher than his recorded 52.9% vote share. His True EV and popular vote were both higher than reported since the final projection was based on Likely Voter polls which understated Obama’s share. He led by 52-39% in the final RV polls- before undecided voters (7%) were allocated. After allocation, he led by 57-41%.

Obama’s expected EV was calculated as the cumulative sum that state win probability multiplied by its electoral vote. The 5000 election trial simulation produced a mean 365.8 EV. Convergence to the theoretical expected 365.3 EV illustrates the Law of Large Numbers.

1.3. Doesn’t the high turnout in the election mean that the registered-voter poll results are probably more accurate than the likely-voter results?

ML
No, high turnout is not a reason to dismiss the likely-voter results. Most pollsters already expected high turnout.

TIA
In 2004, average projected turnout based on the final five LV polls was 82.8%; the Census turnout estimate was 88.5%. A regression analysis of turnout vs. vote share indicated a 82.8% turnout and Kerry had 49% share. But with 88.5% turnout, he had 52.6%. The full RV sample was more accurate then the LV subset since it included many newly registered voters that LV polls filtered out. Because of the extremely high turnout (22 million new voters) many new (i.e. Democratic) voters were missed by the LV polls which understated Kerry’s projected share. Kerry won new voters by 57-62%, based on the National Exit Poll time line. But the Final NEP (13,660 respondents) was forced to match the recorded vote. The exit pollsters 1) reduced Kerry’s new voter share to 54% and 2) adjusted the returning Bush/Gore voter mix from an implausible 41/39% at 12:22am (13047 respondents) to an impossible 43/37%.

The unadjusted National Exit Poll (13,660 respondents shows Kerry winning by 51.7-47.0%. He had 51% in the unadjusted state exit poll aggregate (76,000 respondents).

2008: With 75% of undecided voters allocated to Obama, final RV polls nearly matched his 58% True Vote share. The True Vote Model is based on a feasible returning voter mix, unlike the impossible 2008 National Exit Poll Bush/Kerry mix (46/37%). The NEP Vote shares were not changed. The 2008 True Vote Model confirms that the 2004 and 2006 NEP adjustments to the returning voter percentages were mathematically impossible in 2004 and implausible in 2006. They were necessary in order to match the poll to the fraudulent recorded vote.

1.4. How about the state polls?

ML
There TIA’s data hold up somewhat better, although his probabilities don’t. While the national polls (prior to TIA’s massaging) fit the official results rather closely, the state polls do not fit as well.

TIA
Professional pollsters must be “massagers” as well since they also allocate undecided voters. Kerry led by 48-47% in the final pre-election RV polls before undecided voters were allocated and by 51-48% after allocation. The pre-election RV polls confirmed the unadjusted state aggregate exit polls which he won by 51.0-47.5%.

According to the National Exit Poll, Kerry easily won the majority of more than 22 million new voters. He led new voters by 62-37% at 8349 respondents (4pm), 59-39% at 11027 (9pm), 57-41% at 13047 (12:22am). His new voter share was sharply reduced to 54-44% at 13660 (1:00am) in the final adjusted poll that was forced to match the recorded vote.

2008: Obama had 57% in the RV polls and 53% in the LV polls after allocating undecided votes.

1.5. What about cell phones?

ML
TIA and others have argued that the pre-election polls were biased against Kerry because they do not cover people who only use cell phones — and these were disproportionately young voters who favored Kerry.

TIA
True. Young people are heavily Democratic cell phone users.
2008: There were more cell-phone users than in 2004. It is one reason why Obama did better in the RV polls.

The “Rules”: Did They Favor Kerry?

2.1. Don’t undecided voters break sharply for the challenger?

ML
Undecided voters probably sometimes break sharply for the challenger. But I can find no evidence that this rule is useful in “allocating” reported undecided voters in presidential elections.

TIA
Undecided voters virtually always break for the challenger. If the undecideds approved of the incumbent they would not be undecided. Mark claims there is no evidence that allocation is “useful”. What is the basis of that statement? Professional pollsters find allocating undecided voters quite useful. Gallup allocated 90% to Kerry. Zogby and Harris: 75-80%.

2008: Six pollsters who allocated an average 67% of the undecided vote to Obama.

2.2. What about the rule that incumbents don’t do better than their predicted shares in the final polls?

ML
On average, it is true that incumbents don’t do better — or, rather, much better — than their predicted shares in the final polls.

TIA
That is a contradiction. Mark agrees that incumbents do no better than their final predicted shares, then he must also agree that undecided voters break for the challenger. If undecideds broke for the incumbent, he would have a higher vote share than his final poll. Therefore how could Bush have won if he did not do better than the final polls indicated – unless he won undecided voters? But the evidence shows that he did NOT win undecideds. That is a contradiction. Bush led the final LV polls by 47-46 before undecided voters were allocated. Kerry led the final RV polls by 48-47. Undecided voters broke 3-1 for Kerry. His adjusted 51-48 projection was confirmed by the unadjusted state exit poll aggregate (51.0-47.5) and the unadjusted National Exit Poll (51.7-47.0).

2008: Obama was the de facto challenger since McCain represented a continuation of Bush policies.

2.3. What about the rule that incumbents don’t win when their final approval rating is below 50%?

ML
TIA has stated that Bush’s approval rating on November 1 was 48.5% based on the “average of 11 polls.”

TIA
That is true. You can look up his monthly approval ratings in the 2004 Election Model. In every election since 1972, the incumbent won re-election if his approval rating exceeded 50%.
From 1968-2008, the average incumbent final 46.5% approval rating exactly matched the average True vote!

Bush was the ONLY incumbent with approval below 50% to win re-election! There was a strong 0.87 correlation between Bush’s monthly pre-election approval ratings and the national polls. The Bush state approval ratings were highly correlated to his state vote and exit poll shares.

2008: On Election Day, the Bush 22% approval rating indicated that a major Obama landslide was in the making.

Describing the Exit Poll Discrepancies

3.1. How do the exit polls work?

ML
Let me say first of all that the main point of the exit polls is not to project who will win the election — although the exit poll interviews are combined with vote count data in order to make projections.

TIA
Unadjusted exit polls work just fine – until the category weights and/or vote shares are forced to match the recorded vote. That makes no sense at all. For one thing, this standard practice assumes that the election is fraud-free. In order to force the Final National Exit Poll to match the recorded vote in 2004, 2006 and 2008, the NEP required an impossible return voter mix and/or implausible vote shares. Most people know that the 2004 election was not fraud-free but are unaware that fraud was just as massive in the 2006 midterms and 2008. The landslides were denied.

2008: The Final 2008 NEP contains impossible returning voter weights. The unadjusted aggregate of the state exit polls (82,000 respondents) showed Obama won by 58-40.5%. The unadjusted National Exit Poll (17,836 respondents) indicated he won by 61-37%.

The published NEP returning voter mix was impossible. It implied that there were 5 million returning third-party voters, but there were only 1.2 million third-party recorded votes in 2004. It also implied that there were 60 million returning Bush voters. Bush had 62 million recorded votes. Approximately 3 million Bush 2004 voters died prior to 2008. Even assuming the fraudulent recorded 62 million, then at most 59 million returned to vote in 2008. Of course that assumes 100% living Bush 2004 voter turnout – not possible.

3.2. How accurate are exit polls?
ML
It depends, of course. Most attempts to argue that exit polls are highly accurate strangely steer around U.S. national exit polls.

TIA
Unadjusted exit polls are quite accurate. Respondents report who they just voted for; there are no undecided voters. On the other hand, the Final National Exit Poll is grossly inaccurate, since it is always forced to match the recorded vote, even if it is fraudulent.

Kerry won the unadjusted National Exit Poll (13,660 respondents) by 51.7-47.0%. He had 51% in the unadjusted state exit poll aggregate (76,000 respondents). The exit pollsters ignored their state and national polls and just flipped the numbers. The published National Exit Poll (the same 13,660 respondents) gave Bush 51%. The National Exit Poll is a subset of the State exit polls.

2008: The unajusted national exit poll (17,836 respondents) shows that Obama led by 61-37%. He led the weighted, unadjusted state exit polls of 81,388 respondents by 58-40.5%, exactly matching the True Vote Model. Obama did 5.1% better than the recorded vote. The discrepancies are far beyond the 1.0% margin of error.

3.3. Couldn’t spoiled ballots and/or fraud account for these past discrepancies?
ML
Probably not, although they certainly may contribute. Greg Palast offers an estimate of 3.6 million uncounted ballots in 2004 alone.

TIA:
May contribute? They sure do contribute. The best evidence indicates that 70-80% of uncounted votes are Democratic. In 2004, the Census reported 3.4 million uncounted votes. This was confirmed by government statistics (see Greg Palast). If all votes cast had been counted, Bush’s margin would have been reduced from 3.0 to 1.3 million.

But in 2004, uncounted votes were only a fraction of the total fraud. Vote miscounts (switched, stuffed ballots) accounted for most of the discrepancies. In 2000, uncounted votes were a major factor. The Census Bureau reported 5.4 million net uncounted votes, reducing Gore’s margin from approximately 3.0 million to 540,000.

In every election there are millions of net uncounted votes (uncounted less stuffed ballots).
Net Uncounted Votes = Total Votes Cast – Total Votes Recorded

In order to match the recorded vote in 1988, 1992, 2004 and 2008, the National Exit Polls required that returning living Nixon and Bush voter turnout had to exceed 100%. In other words, there were millions of phantom Bush voters.

The Democratic 1988-2008 unadjusted exit poll margin was 52-42%. The average recorded vote margin was just 48-46%. That’s an 8% margin discrepancy, much higher than we had been led to believe prior to the Roper listing.

3.4. What about exit pollster Warren Mitofsky’s reputation for accuracy?
ML
Here is how Mitofsky International’s website puts it: “[Mitofsky's] record for accuracy is well known”.

TIA
The Final National Exit poll is always “perfect” because it is always forced to match the recorded vote. But the NEP needed an impossible returning voter mix to match the 2004 recorded vote – because the recorded vote was fraudulent. The unadjusted state aggregate exit poll had Kerry winning by 52-47% and closely matched the UVA-adjusted pre-election polls. Either way, the exit polls were quite accurate – even though they were polar opposites.

2008: The Final NEP was forced to match the recorded vote with an impossible 46% Bush -37% Kerry returning voter mix (12 million more returning Bush than Kerry voters).

3.5. Didn’t the exit polls indicate that Kerry won by more than the polls’ margin of error?
ML
It depends on what one means by “the exit polls” and “won.”

TIA
Hmm… the question should be asked: In how many states did the unadjusted exit poll discrepancy exceed the margin of error? The MoE was exceeded in 29 states – all in Bush’s favor. The probability is ZERO. Among the 29 were Ohio, Florida, NM, Iowa and Colorado. All flipped from Kerry to Bush.

The question should be: how come not ONE solid Bush state exceeded the margin of error? Because they were already in the bag. Except for Texas, they are small population states and therefore not viable candidates for vote padding.

3.6. Why are the pollsters’ estimates of uncertainty larger than the ones calculated by TruthIsAll and others?

ML
TruthIsAll sometimes has argued that the exit polls should be treated as simple random samples (like drawing marbles from a hat). In this instance, the margin of error for Ohio, with a reported sample size of 2040, would be about 4.5 points on the margin using the 95% standard.

TIA
The Ohio exit poll MoE was 2.2%. Notes to the National Exit Poll (13047 respondents) indicate that MoE was 1.0% and that voters were randomly selected as they exited the voting booth. See exitpolls_us_110204.gif

2008: The Final 2008 NEP had 17,836 respondents; the MoE was less than 1.0%

3.7. Doesn’t E/M’s own table show that the margin of error is plus-or-minus 1% for 8000 respondents or more?

ML
That table (on page 2 of the national methods statement) applies to percentages in the tabulations, not to the vote projections.

TIA:
The 1.0% MoE applies to the projected vote share for any given category cross tab in which at least 8000 have been sampled. There were 13,047 respondents at 12:22am and the MoE was 0.86%. It was 1.12% after including a 30% “cluster effect”. In the “Voted in 2000” category, there were approximately 3200 respondents (2.2% MoE, including the cluster effect). The MoE declines as vote shares diverge from a 50/50% split. For the 60/40% new voter split, the MoE was 1.7%. The MoE was just 1.0% for returning Bush and Kerry voters(a 90/10% vote split).

3.8. Doesn’t everyone agree that the exit poll results were outside the margin of error?

ML
Yes: overall, and in many states, the exit poll results differed from the official results by beyond the margin of error, overstating Kerry’s performance.

TIA:
It is more accurate to say that the official vote understated Kerry’s True Vote. The Edison-Mitofsky Evaluation of the 2004 Election System reported than the MoE was exceeded in 29 states – all in favor of Bush. From 1988 to 2008, the margin of error (including a 30% cluster effect factor) was exceeded in 137 of 300 state exit polls. The probability of that is zero. All but 5 red-shifted to the Republicans. The probability of that is zero.

2008: The unadjusted state aggregate (58% Obama share) exactly matched the True Vote Model and the National Exit Poll (61%). They indicated that Obama won by 22-23 million votes.

3.9. Aren’t survey results far outside the margin of error prima facie evidence of fraud?

ML
Margins of “error” refer to random sampling error. Most survey researchers would say that results outside the calculated margin of error most likely evince non-sampling error in the survey, such as non-response bias, sampling bias, or measurement error.

TIA
They evince non-sampling error? What about a vote counts? Do they evince fraud? Or is that inconceivable?

3.10. Which states had the largest exit poll discrepancies? Wasn’t it the battleground states?

ML
No, the largest exit poll discrepancies were generally not in battleground states.

TIA
Yes, they were. The overall WPE was higher in the battleground states; the lowest WPEs were in strong Bush states with low electoral votes. Not surprising, since there was noneedto steal votes in bed-rock GOP states. The largest exit poll discrepancies by vote count were in Democratic strongholds: New York and California. The NY exit poll discrepancy accounted for 750,000 of Bush’s total 3.0 million vote margin. Kerry won the unadjusted exit poll by 62-36%; the margin was reduced from 26% to 18% in the recorded vote (58.5-40%).

Are we to believe that Bush gained vote share from 2000 to 2004 in Democratic urban locations while his share of the vote in rural areas declined? The strong 0.61 correlation between county size and percentage increase in the recorded Bush vote in New York State is one example of the implausible Bush Urban Legend. His recorded urban vote share increased as a result of election fraud.

Explaining the Exit Poll Discrepancies

4.1. How did the exit pollsters explain the discrepancies in 2004?
ML
In the Edison-Mitofsky Evaluation of the 2004 Election System, they stated Within Precinct Error was “most likely due to Kerry voters participating in the exit polls at a higher rate than Bush voters”.

TIA
What data did they base that hypothesis on? It’s a myth that was quickly promoted in the corporate media (the exit pollster’s benefactors). The pollsters own data shows the opposite. Response rates were higher in Bush (rural) strongholds than in Kerry (urban) strongholds. Could the 6.5% average WPE have simply been due to the fact that there were more Kerry voters than Bush voters? How does E-M explain the mathematically impossible 43/37% returning Bush/Gore voter mix in the Final National Exit Poll? They can’t have it both ways. The Final NEP was forced to match the miscounted recorded vote.

2008: New election, same anomaly. This time it’s 46/37%.

4.2. What is the “reluctant Bush responder” (rBr) hypothesis?
ML
What the pollsters concluded in the evaluation report was simply that Kerry voters apparently participated at a higher rate.

TIA
That was a trial balloon immediately floated by the exit pollsters to explain the discrepancies but they had no data to back it up. In fact, the report suggested otherwise; there was a slight Bush bias in the exit polls. But no one in the media has called them on it. The rBr canard was contradicted by the Final National Exit Poll. A mathematically impossible Bush/Gore 43/37 returning voter mix was required to match the vote count. Unfortunately few read the report.

The Final National Exit Poll indicated that returning Bush voters comprised 43% of the electorate; just 37% were Gore voters. Bush needed 55% of non-responders to match his recorded vote since he had 47% of responders. Exit Poll response was higher in strong Bush states than in Kerry states.

2008: Expect the same tired canard: Democratic voters were more anxious to speak to the exit pollsters, blah, blah, blah…

4.3. Does the participation bias explanation assume that fraud is unthinkable?
ML
I will present several lines of argument that participation bias accounts for much of the exit poll discrepancy, and that fraud does not.

TIA
Do the “lines of argument” include data from the E-M report that indicates Bush voters participated at a higher rate? The change in the Bush recorded vote share from 2000 to 2004 is an incorrect measure of Swing. It should be based on total votes cast (i.e. the True Vote). The correlation between TRUE vote swing as measured by the 2000 and 2004 unadjusted exit polls and recorded Red-shift was a strong 0.44.

Kathy Dopp of U.S. Count Votes proved that it is not NECESSARY that there be a CORRELATION for fraud to occur; the assertion was logically false.

2008: Expect the “swing vs. red-shift: canard to be used again. But as in 2004, “swing” in 2008 will assume a fraud-free 2004. In any case, the premise has been proven logically false, since it is easy to display scenarios that disprove it.

4.4. Don’t the high completion rates in “Bush strongholds” disprove the rBr or bias hypothesis?

ML
No, and I’m amazed how much mental effort has gone into elaborating this very weak argument.

TIA
Amazed that a regression analysis shows completion rates declined from Bush to Kerry states? The analysis is a “strong” argument. The Kerry vote share vs. Exit Poll completion graph clearly shows the pattern.

2008: The E-M report has not yet been released. Why? It will surely show the same regression trend.

4.5. How can you explain the impossible changes in the national exit poll results after midnight?

ML
As I explained above, the tabulations are periodically updated in line with the projections — and, therefore, in line with the official returns.

TIA
But what if the tabulations were corrupted by official vote miscounts? Given the overt 2000 election theft, matching to the recorded vote count in 2004 requires a major leap of faith: to assume that Bush had neither motive, means or opportunity to steal the election.

4.6. Why were the tabulations forced to match the official returns?
ML
If the official returns are more accurate than the exit polls — and bear in mind that exit polls have been (presumably) wrong in the past — then weighting to the official returns should, generally, provide more accurate tabulations.

TIA
The polls were “presumably” wrong?. I suppose it was “presumably” coincidental that in the last 6 elections, the margin of error was exceeded in 137 of 300 state presidential exit polls – and 132 red-shifted to the Republican. Here is simple proof that the vote count was wrong: a significant part of the exit poll discrepancies in every election since 1968 can be explained by millions of uncounted votes.

2008: The Final NEP once again assumed an impossible mix of returning Bush/Kerry/Other voters (46/37/4%). The Bush 46% (60.2m) share is impossible; there were at most 57 million returning Bush voters – if you assume that his 62 million recorded votes in 2004 were legitimate. The 4% returning third-party (5.2m) share is impossible or the 2004 third-party vote was significantly higher than the official reported 1.2 million.

4.7. Wasn’t there an effort to cover up the exit poll discrepancies?
ML
Not that I can see.

TIA
That’s because you are not looking for them. You don’t see them either a) because you refuse to consider the preponderance of the evidence or b) you are not looking hard enough. The National Exit Pool has not provided raw, unadjusted precinct data for peer review. When pressured to provide unadjusted Ohio exit poll data, they “blurred” the data by not divulging the precincts. Of course, the MSM has never discussed this. But that is no longer even necessary. We have the unadjusted state and national exit polls and the incontrovertible red-shifts and the impossible forced matching of the exit polls to the recorded votes. We don’t need anything else. The data that has been released proves systemic Election Fraud far beyond any doubt.

2008: There is obviously an ongoing, recurring effort to cover up the fraud. Just look at the NEP. No one is questioning the 8% discrepancy between the Obama’s unadjusted NEP (61%) and his recorded share (53%).

4.8. Is there any specific reason to think that the exit poll discrepancies don’t point to fraud?

ML
One of my favorites is based on TruthIsAll’s observation: “Based on the pre-election polls: 41 out of 51 states (incl DC) deviated to Bush. Based on the exit polls: 43 out of 51 deviated to Bush.”

TIA
How can the margin of error be exceeded in 29 states, all in favor of Bush, and not be an indicator of massive fraud? How can forcing the Final NEP to match the vote count (using impossible weights and implausible vote shares) not be an indicator of fraud? How can the state and national polls not indicate fraud? When input to the Interactive Election Simulation model, the 51-48% Kerry victory was confirmed by the unadjusted state exit poll aggregate (52-47%) and the unadjusted National Exit Poll (51.7-47%) After allocating undecided voters, pre-election state and national polls matched the corresponding unadjusted exit polls.

2008: The unadsjusted exit polls show an even larger red-shift than 2004.

4.9. Is there any specific reason to believe that participation bias does explain the discrepancies?

ML
Yes, beyond the facts that participation bias is common, that past exit polls have overstated Democratic performance, and that the exit poll discrepancies don’t correlate with pre-election poll discrepancies, “swing” from 2000, or electronic voting machine use, there is also some evidence indicating participation bias in 2004.

TIA
But we KNOW that a major cause of the discrepancies was sue to uncounted votes. And we have evidence that the votes have been miscounted as well? True, the Democrats always do better in exit polls than the recorded vote because 70-80% of uncounted votes are Democratic. The premise of the “swing vs. red-shift” argument (that the 2000 and 2004 recorded votes are appropriate to measure swing) is invalid. At least 5.4 million (net of stuffed) ballots were never counted in 2000 and 3.4 million were uncounted in 2004. The false premise kills the argument that near-zero correlation between vote swing and red shift “kills the fraud argument”. The “swing vs. red-shift” canard is pure double-talk designed to confuse. It was debunked in general by Kathy Dopp at US Count Votes in a mathematical proof. And using votes cast and the True Vote as the baseline shows that in fact, the correlation has been a strong one in the elections where a Bush was the incumbent.

2008: The media is sure to use the same, pathetic bias argument that Democratic voters were more likely to be exit-polled – among other things.

4.10. Aren’t you offering a lot of unproven speculation?
ML
You could call it that, or you could call it scientific reasoning on the basis of incomplete evidence.

TIA
On the contrary, you are forsaking the scientific method by your refusal to consider the best evidence (the data) and an unbiased analysis. Instead you resort to faith-based and disproven arguments. The True Vote Model has been confirmed by the unadjusted exit polls. The evidence is overwhelming. You have seen more than enough evidence but refuse to accept any of it.

2008: Even with more evidence of fraud in the impossible 2008 Final NEP, Mark still invokes rBr and “false recall”.

4.11. Are you saying that the exit polls disprove fraud?
ML
No. As noted earlier, many forms of fraud may be compatible with the exit poll results. However, it seems hard to reconcile massive, widespread fraud – on the order of many millions of miscounted votes — with the exit poll results unless one begins by discounting the details of the exit poll results.

TIA
A “massive” 5% vote switch is very possible with unverifiable touch screens and invisible central tabulators. Uncounted votes accounted for over half of Bush’s 3 million “mandate”. There were 125.7 million votes cast in 2004. In 2000, 110.8 million votes were cast. Approximately 5.5 million died. Of the 105 million still living, approximately 102 million voted in 2004. Therefore there were 23 million new voters and 3 million returning Nader voters. How did they vote? For Kerry. He had approximately 15.5 million (60%) – a 5 million margin. Gore won the popular vote by 540,000. So how did Bush turn a 5.5 million deficit into a 3 million surplus? That’s an 8.5 million net vote switch. Are we to believe that 8.5 million more Gore voters defected to Bush than Bush voters defected to Kerry? That is beyond implausible.

2008: And now we are expected to believe that were 12 million more returning Bush than Kerry voters.

4.12. Are you saying that you are sure Bush didn’t steal the election?
ML
No, depending on what one means by “steal.” In particular, I think it is at least possible that some combination of vote suppression (purges, long lines, intimidation, etc.) and uncounted votes cost John Kerry a victory in Ohio, and therefore in the election. (Obviously “uncounted votes” can be regarded as a form of vote suppression.) I doubt it, but I am not arguing against it here.

TIA
There you go, refusing once again to even consider the probability that votes were miscounted electronically. Why not? You agree that vote suppression is “possible” when it is proven by the facts. After all the anecdotal evidence of vote miscounts, you still only go as far as to suggest “vote suppression” and uncounted votes as “possibilities”, but do not consider the very real probability that votes were miscounted at the touch screens and central tabulators.

Why would election officials employ visible vote suppression in the light of day but not resort to invisible, unverifiable electronic vote switching and other surreptitious methods?

You cannot logically refute that.

2008: A new election and still the same unverifiable voting machines. It’s a repeat of the 2006 Democratic Tsunami. Landslide denied.

Comparing 2004 to 2000

5.1. Why has TruthIsAll called the “2000 presidential vote” question the clincher?

ML
TIA emphasizes two aspects of this table. First, he notes, it is impossible that 43% of the 2004 electorate voted for Bush in 2000. That would be over 52 million Bush voters, whereas Bush only got about 50.5 million votes in 2000. (Some of those voters must have died, or not voted for other reasons.)

TIA

Unadjusted exit poll update: Well, now that the actual National and state exit poll numbers have been released and show that Kerry had 51.7% in the former and 51.0% in the latter, thus confirming the mortality and turnout analysis in the True Vote Model, it’s just a moot point now, is it not? It’s a moot point now that we have proof that the 13,660 actual responses were adjusted in the Final National Exit Poll to force a match to the recorded vote.

But here is my original response to this anyway. It’s still valid because it is irrefutable logic that has been confirmed by the unadjusted exit polls – even though it stands by itself.

It’s a clinch because of simple arithmetic: The 43% statistical weighting in th final NEP implies 52.6 million returning Bush voters – 2.1 million more than his recorded 50.46 million in 2000. But let’s not stop there. Approximately 2.5 million died, therefore at most 48 million could have voted in 2004. If 46 of 48 million returned to vote in 2004, then the Final NEP overstated the number of Bush voters by 6.6 million. This is not rocket science or brain surgery.

2008:
Another unadjusted exit poll update: And now we have the unadjusted National Exit Poll (17,836 respondents) showing that Obama had 61%. And we have the unadjusted state exit polls (82,000 respondents) showing that he had 58.0%. once again, the exit pollsters and their benefactors in the mainstream media are hoisted on their own petard.

It’s even worse this time around. The returning Bush/Kerry voter mix was 46/37%. Even if Bush won by the recorded 3 million votes and there was zero fraud in 2004, the mix implies that there were 12 million more returning Bush than Kerry voters. But if Kerry won by the unadjusted exit poll 52-47% (6 million votes) then there was an 18 million switch!

5.2. What is wrong with the “impossible 43%” argument?
ML
It assumes that exit poll respondents accurately report whom they voted for in the previous election. In reality, exit poll respondents seem to have overstated their support for the previous winner in every exit poll for which I could obtain data, ten in all, going back to 1976. Lots of other evidence indicates that people often report having voted for the previous winner although they didn’t. Perhaps most telling is an (American) National Election Study (NES) “panel” in which people were interviewed soon after the 2000 election, and then re-interviewed in 2004.

TIA
This will put the 43/37 argument to eternal rest and close the book on False Recall. In the unadjusted 2004 NEP (13,660 respondents) Kerry had 7,074 (51.71%) and Bush 6,414 (46.95%). Of the 13,660 respondents, 3,182 were asked who they voted for in 2000: 1,257 (39.50%) said Bush and 1,221 (38.37%) said Gore. When the 39.5/38.37 mix is applied to the 12:22am NEP vote shares, Kerry has 51.74%, exactly matching the unadjusted NEP.

This puts the lie to the published Final NEP (Bush 50.7-48.3%) and the 43/37% returning Bush/Gore mix. We have just proved that the Final NEP 43/37 mix is a forced result – not an actual sample.

Gore had 540,000 more official votes than Bush (3 million if the True Vote 5.4m uncounted votes are included). Why would returning Gore voters, but not returning Bush voters, misstate their past vote? It makes no sense. The past vote question was posed to 3,182 of 13,660 exit poll respondents. Yet the responses to past vote question confirmed the 2004 unadjusted National Exit poll (13,660 respondents).

The past vote question was not a factor in the other category crosstabs: sex, race, income, party-id, location, when decided, military background, etc). The respondents were only asked who they voted for. And 51% said Kerry. No fog, no forgetting.

False Recall assumes the recorded vote as a baseline, not the True Vote. Gore won the recorded vote in 2000 by 540,000. But he won the unadjusted state exit polls by 6 million (50.8-44.5%). The implication of false recall and swing vs. red-shift was that the 2000 election was a fair one. That is a FALSE PREMISE.

There is no evidence to suggest Gore voters forgot or were motivated to lie. Retrospective surveys matched the True Vote when total VOTES CAST was used as a baseline. The NES respondents told the truth about their past vote: In 1968-2008, the average NES winning margin was 11.4%.

The average True Vote winning margin was 10.6%. The average True Vote winning share deviated by 0.4% from NES. The average Democratic True winning share deviated by 0.7%. The average Republican True winning share deviated by 0.46%.

2008: It’s hard to believe that the “false recall” canard is still being used, especially since Bush’s 48% approval rating in 2004 declined to 30% in 2006 and 22% in 2008. Are we expected to believe that the ridiculous 2008 Final NEP 46/37% returning voter mix was due to Kerry voters misstating their past vote to the exit pollsters and that returning Bush voters were reluctant to be interviewed? It’s a true Hobson’s choice dilemma.

5.3. What is wrong with the second argument, where new (and Nader) voters break the stalemate in favor of Kerry?

ML
The second argument assumes that Kerry did about as well among Bush 2000 voters as Bush did among Gore 2000 voters. Superficially, the exit poll table supports this assumption.

TIA
The 12:22am National Exit Poll indicated that Kerry had 10% of returning Bush voters and Bush just 8% of returning Gore voters. But in order to force the Final NEP to match the recorded vote, the shares had to be changed to 9% and 10%. Changing the Bush/Gore returning voter mix to 43/37 was not sufficient to match the recorded vote.

In the Democratic Underground “Game” thread, participants agreed to the stipulation that there could not have been more returning Bush voters than were still living. In order to match the recorded vote, Mark had to increase Bush’s share of returning Gore voters to an implausible 14.6%. And he had to reduce Kerry’s share of new voters to 52.9%. The new voter share had already been reduced from 62% at 4pm to 59% at 7:30pm to 57% at 12:22am to 54% in the Final. In effect, Mark abandoned the “false recall” argument. But he reverted back to it when he saw that his fudged vote shares were not taken seriously.

2008: We thought “false recall” was laid to rest in 2006, but Mark still uses it – even as he concedes that Final National Exit Poll weights/shares are always adjusted to force a match to the “official” count. Contradictions abound. Mark wants to have it both ways (rBr and “false recall”). But it’s a Hobson’s Choice. One argument refutes the other. He is spinning like a top.

5.4. But… but… why would 14% of Gore voters vote for Bush??
ML
If one thinks of “Gore voters” as people who strongly supported Gore and resented the Supreme Court ruling that halted the Florida recount, then the result makes no sense. For that matter, if one thinks of “Gore voters” in that way, it makes no sense that they would forget (or at any rate not report) having voted for Gore. Nevertheless, the NES panel evidence indicates that many did. (Of course, the figure may not be as high as 14% — although it could conceivably be even higher).

TIA
Right, it makes no sense. It only makes sense if you consider that the Final NEP was forced to match a corrupt recorded vote by changing the 12:22am return voter mix and the vote shares. But it’s not just that the number of returning Gore defectors makes no sense; the vote share adjustments in the Democratic Underground “Game” were beyond implausible.

The Final was forced to match the recorded vote. The 43/37 returning Bush/Gore voter mix was impossible. The mix required over 6 million phantom Bush voters. The Final had to adjust corresponding Bush vote shares to implausible levels. Kerry won all plausible scenarios in a sensitivity analysis of various vote share assumptions.

2008: To believe that 46% were returning Bush voters, there had to be 12 million more returning Bush than Kerry voters. But even assuming that the official 3 million Bush “mandate” was legitimate, one would only expect an approximate 3 million difference in turnout. Instead we are asked to believe that 4.5 million Kerry voters (7.6% of 59 million) told the exit pollsters they voted for Bush, despite his 22% approval.

TruthIsAll FAQ:
Miscellaneous

M.1. What about the reports of flipped votes on touch screens in 2004?
ML
Many people reported difficulty voting on electronic voting machines (DREs), in particular, that attempts to vote for one candidate initially registered as votes for another. The Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS), connected to the “OUR-VOTE” telephone hotline, recorded close to 100 such incidents. TruthIsAll has asserted that 86 out of 88 reports of electronic vote-flipping favored Bush. He cites the odds of this imbalance as 1 in 79,010,724,999,066,700,000,000.

TIA
The probability calculation is correct. The odds that 86 of 88 randomly selected vote switching incidents would be from Kerry to Bush are one in 79 sextillion. The reports came from widely diverse, independent precincts but were just a drop in the bucket. Many voters know of someone whose vote was switched right before their eyes. And yet Mark still does not accept that electronic vote switching was a major cause of the exit poll discrepancies. The votes were not just switched on touch screens. Invisible, unverifiable central tabulators “consolidate” reported precinct votes. But no one could report those vote flips to EIRS.

M.2. Did the 2006 exit polls manifest “red shift” compared with official returns?

ML
Yes. For instance, the initial national House tabulation — posted a bit after 7 PM Eastern time on election night — indicates that Democratic candidates had a net margin of about 11.3 points over Republican candidates. The actual margin was probably about 7 points, depending on how uncontested races are handled.

TIA:
There is no basis for that statement. It’s a “belief” based on a few outlier polls with no allocation of undecided voters. The 120 “generic poll” moving average regression trend line projected that the Democrats would win 56.4% of the vote. The unadjusted aggregate state exit polls produced an identical 56.4% share.

M.3. Do pre-election “generic” House polls in 2006 match the initial exit poll returns?
ML
Not really. A “generic” poll is one that asks respondents whether they would vote for (in Gallup’s words) “the Democratic Party’s candidate or the Republican Party’s candidate,” rather than naming specific candidates.

TIA
So what if the names were not indicated? That is pure nonsense! Yes, they matched all right. The trend-line of 120 pre-election Generic Polls, all won by the Democrats, projected a 56.4% Democratic vote share. Lo and behold, the unadjusted exit poll aggregate was an identical 56.4%!

Yes, it’s true: Generic polls were not a good predictor of the recorded vote. But they did predicted the True Vote! A corrsponding pre-election model quantified the risk that 10-20 House elections would be stolen.

M.4. What about the massive undervotes in Sarasota County, Florida (C.D. 13)?
ML
Without getting into the specifics, the short answer is: I think that if voters had been able to cast their votes as they intended, the Democratic candidate Christine Jennings would have won the House race in Florida’s 13th Congressional District (FL-13) by thousands of votes, instead of losing by under 400. I have seen no evidence that the events in FL-13 shed light on outcomes in any other Congressional race.

TIA
Are we to believe that FL-13 was an isolated case of missing and/or switched votes? And there is no evidence of vote miscounting in the other 434 districts? A number of post-election studies indicate otherwise.

End of FAQ Summary Update
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