What is the latest 2008
recorded vote count?
There are 131.37 million recorded. Obama leads by exactly 9.52m: 69.46-59.94m (52.87-45.62%).
Who voted?
Returning Kerry, Bush and third-party voters, first-timers and others who sat out the 2004 election but voted in a prior election. In 2004, there were 122.3 million recorded votes. Bush won by 62-59m (50.7-48.3%).
Can we estimate the
number of returning Election 2004 voters in 2008?
The Final 2008 National Exit Poll (NEP) breaks down the mix of returning and new voters:
|
Implied |
2004 |
Total |
Mix |
Obama |
McCain |
Other |
Obama |
McCain |
Other |
|
Vote |
DNV |
17.08 |
13% |
71% |
27% |
2% |
12.1 |
4.6 |
0.3 |
|
42.5% |
Kerry |
48.61 |
37% |
89% |
9% |
2% |
43.3 |
4.4 |
1.0 |
|
52.9% |
Bush |
60.43 |
46% |
17% |
82% |
1% |
10.3 |
49.6 |
0.6 |
|
4.6% |
Other |
5.25 |
4% |
66% |
24% |
10% |
3.5 |
1.3 |
0.5 |
|
114.3 |
Total |
131.37 |
100% |
52.62% |
45.52% |
1.86% |
69.13 |
59.80 |
2.44 |
How could 60.4m (46% of 131.37) have been returning
Bush voters?
He had 62.0m votes in 2004. About 59m were alive in
2008. Assuming 95% turned out in 2008, only 56m voted. The NEP is off by 4.0m
Bush voters.
And just 48.6m (37%) were Kerry voters?
How could returning
Bush voters outnumber Kerry voters by 11.8m?
Bush’s 2004 vote margin was only 3.0m.
How could 5.25m
(4%) have been third- party 2004 voters?
There were only
1.22m in 2004. The NEP is off by 4.0m third-party voters.
You’re assuming that the 2004 Recorded vote was equal
to the True Vote.
Researchers have concluded that Kerry
won by 8-10m. What about that?
Let’s not get bogged down by a discussion of election fraud. I thought this discussion was going to be based on the 2008 National Exit Poll and the recorded vote.
So the Final NEP
returning voter mix is impossible. How could that be?
Here’s how. There
are three possibilities:
a) Returning Kerry
voters misspoke and claimed they voted for Bush in 2004
b) Returning Bush
voters misspoke and claimed they voted for third-parties in 2004
c) The Final
NEP was forced to match
the recorded vote; therefore the returning 2004 voter mix and/or the vote
shares had to be adjusted.
Oh. Are you now going to claim that the 46/37
Bush/Kerry mix in the Final 2008 NEP was due to Kerry voters who indicated that
they voted for Bush with his current 22% approval
rating? Is this the 2008 Kerry version of the 2004 Gore voter “false recall”
theory? What would motivate returning Kerry voters to say that they voted for
Bush?
Ok, they just forgot that
they voted for Kerry. Not that they wanted to identify with Bush, mind you.
They just forgot they voted for Kerry in 2004. And returning Bush voters did
not want to admit they voted for him, so they lied and said they voted for a
third-party candidate.
But the Final NEP
is always forced to match the recorded vote, right? So why conjecture about the motivation of returning voters?
Yes, it’s always forced to match. You have a point there. In any case, the average national pre-election poll had Obama winning by 51-43%. Allocating undecided voters equally, that equates to 53-45%, exactly matching the vote.
Not so. The
pre-election polls underestimated
Obama’s vote for two basic reasons: 1) the challenger (Obama) typically wins
70-80% of undecided voters and 2) there are two types of pre-election polls:
registered (RV) and likely-voter (LV). RV polls include new voters; LV polls
are a subset of the full RV sample and exclude many newly registered voters.
Why did realclearpolitics.com
fail to include RV polls in their final list of 15 LV polls?
Gallup 11/02
53 40 13
ABC/WP 11/02 54 41 13
Pew 11/01
50 39 11
Pew 10/26
52 36 16
NBC
10/20 52 42 10
Average 52.2 39.6 12.6
The average RV poll had Obama leading by 12.6
points (52.2-39.6%); the average LV by just 7.2 (50.8-43.6%). After allocating
the undecided vote (70% to Obama), he led the average RV by 57.2-41.6% and the
average LV by 53.8-44.7%. The average RV was close to the True Vote, which was
calculated using the Final NEP vote shares and the returning voter mix.
According to the Final NEP, Obama won 71% of new voters. No wonder Obama’s
projected average RV poll (57.2%) matches his 57.1% True Vote calculation (see below).
Well, that’s one
way of getting the results you want. Adjust the pre-election polls to fit your
argument.
Really? Then consider the following plausible scenarios based on the 2008 NEP vote shares that were used in matching the recorded vote (which you believe is correct). They only differ in the returning voter mix which is based on 1) the 2004 recorded vote (which you also believe to be correct) and 2) the 2004 unadjusted exit poll (which you don’t believe).
To determine the returning voter mix, the following assumptions were made for both scenarios based on documented statistics: 3.45m uncounted votes in 2004, 6 million died (1.2% annual mortality), and 113.7m (95% turnout) returned to vote in 2008.
Obama’s True
Vote was 55.7% assuming the 2004 recorded vote was fraud-free; it was 57.5%
based on the 2004 unadjusted exit poll (the election was stolen). Kerry won the
poll by 52-47%.
1. 2004 recorded vote:
a) Obama wins by 17.6m: 75.4-57.8 (55.7-42.7%) assuming 4.0m uncounted votes (3.0% of 135.4m cast).
b) Obama wins by 15.8m: 72.5-56.7 (55.2-43.1%) assuming no uncounted votes
|
Recorded |
2004 |
Total |
Mix |
Obama |
McCain |
Other |
Obama |
McCain |
Other |
|
Vote |
DNV |
21.71 |
16.0% |
71% |
27% |
2% |
15.4 |
5.9 |
0.4 |
|
48.27% |
Kerry |
55.72 |
41.1% |
89% |
9% |
2% |
49.6 |
5.0 |
1.1 |
|
50.73% |
Bush |
56.86 |
42.0% |
17% |
82% |
1% |
9.7 |
46.6 |
0.6 |
|
1.00% |
Other |
1.14 |
0.8% |
66% |
24% |
10% |
0.8 |
0.3 |
0.1 |
|
|
Total |
135.43 |
100.0% |
55.69% |
42.66% |
1.65% |
75.43 |
57.77 |
2.23 |
2. 2004 unadjusted state exit poll (WPE):
a) Obama wins by 22.6m: 77.9-55.3 (57.5-40.8%) assuming 4.0m uncounted votes.
b) Obama wins by 20.8m: 75.0-54.2 (57.1-41.3%) assuming no uncounted votes.
|
2004 Unadj. |
2004 |
Total |
Mix |
Obama |
McCain |
Other |
Obama |
McCain |
Other |
|
Exit Poll |
DNV |
21.71 |
16.0% |
71% |
27% |
2% |
15.4 |
5.9 |
0.43 |
|
52.0% |
Kerry |
59.13 |
43.7% |
89% |
9% |
2% |
52.6 |
5.3 |
1.18 |
|
47.0% |
Bush |
53.44 |
39.5% |
17% |
82% |
1% |
9.1 |
43.8 |
0.53 |
|
1.0% |
Other |
1.14 |
0.8% |
66% |
24% |
10% |
0.8 |
0.3 |
0.11 |
|
|
Total |
135.43 |
100% |
57.51% |
40.82% |
1.67% |
77.88 |
55.28 |
2.27 |
You make assumptions for uncounted votes, mortality
and voter turnout to buttress your case.
Is that so? The assumptions are based on historical data. Check out the census for total votes cast in the last 5 elections (the MoE is 0.30%).The percentage of uncounted votes has declined from 10% to 2.74% in 2004. And the majority (70-80%) are Democratic. You can check the U.S. mortality rate tables yourself. As for the 95% turnout of 2004 voters, that is a reasonable assumption based on historical data. In any case, sensitivity analysis shows that changes in the assumptions have minimal impact on Obama’s True Vote share.
For example, assume that 91% of Kerry voters returned to vote in 2008 compared to 95% of Bush voters. In this scenario, Obama’s vote share is 57.2% (a 21.7m vote margin). In the base case, Kerry voter turnout is 95% and Obama’s base case vote share is 57.5% (a 22.6m vote margin).
Here’s another example: In the base case, annual voter mortality is 1.2%. What if it is 0.8%? Obama’s vote share is 57.3% (a 22.0m margin).
And what if Obama’s share of returning Kerry voters was 87% instead of the 89% given in the NEP? His vote share becomes 56.6% (a 20.2m vote margin). But the 2% deviation is very unlikely. The margin of error is 1.14% for a 4195 sample and 89% share (assuming a 20% cluster effect). The probability of the deviation is 1 in 3500.
Showing off again, eh?
And what about this factoid? Since Election Day, Obama has won the final 10.2 million votes (late absentee, provisional, etc.) by 59.2-37.5%. Kerry and Gore also won late votes with 7% higher vote shares than they had on Election Day. What does that indicate to you?
Not a damn thing. Obama won on Election Day by 52.3-46.3%; 10 million is too small a sample to draw any conclusions.
Now, what about the unadjusted 2008 state exit polls?
We don’t have those numbers yet. Exit Pollsters Edison-Mitofsky should release a summary precinct-based report in a few months.
The Final 2004 NEP voting mix was also impossible. The 2004 Election Calculator also had to determine a feasible returning 2000 voter mix. It indicated that Kerry won the True Vote by 53.2-45.4% (67-57m) - a 13m difference in margin from the recorded vote. Obama’s True Vote margin of 23m is also a 13m difference from the recorded vote.
So what? The Election Calculator was wrong in 2004
and is wrong again in 2008.
Didn’t the Jan. 2005 Exit Poll report indicate that
Kerry won the state exit polls by 52-47%, based on the within
precinct discrepancy (WPE)?
Yes, but there was a
catch.
Are you referring to the E-M claim that the
ridiculously high WPE was due to Bush
voter reluctance to be interviewed? Wasn’t the rBr theory refuted elsewhere
in the report and the Final 2004 NEP 43/37 Bush/Gore returning voter mix?
Yes, rBr was refuted. But the WPE was due to “false recall” on the part of returning Gore voters; they misspoke when they indicated they voted for Bush.
Oh, so now you’re going to resurrect the “false
recall” argument. Why would returning Gore voters not tell the truth about
their vote?
They wanted to identify with the Bush, the winner of the 2000 election. “False recall” is still a viable hypothesis. It may be implausible to believe that Gore voters misspoke, but you cannot prove otherwise. Subconsciously, Gore voters wanted to identify with Bush anyway.
Come on. Everyone knows that Bush stole that
election. “False recall” is an implausible
joke. It wasn’t a viable hypothesis in 2004 and it’s not one now. Look at the
facts. Gore won by 540,000 votes and Bush had a 48% approval rating. Not only
that, the 2000 Census reported 110.8m votes were cast - but only 105.4m were
recorded. Assuming that Gore won 70-80% of the 5.4m uncounted votes, his true
margin was close to 3 million.
The evidence strongly suggests that Obama won by 17-23m votes, not by the recorded 9.5m. Why are you in a state of denial?
There you go again. Back to your old conspiracy theories, just like in 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006.Obama won. Get over it.
Conspiracy theories? It’s a catch-22. Without the raw 2004 exit polls, you can’t prove that returning Gore voters told the truth about their vote. Without the raw 2008 exit polls, you can’t prove that the final adjusted exit polls, which were forced to match the vote, were bogus. Without a paper ballot, you can’t prove that touch screen votes were rigged; the evidence is lost in cyberspace forever. Without a full recount of paper ballots, you can’t prove that optical scan votes were miscounted. Without the “liberal” mainstream media focusing on the statistical and exit poll anomalies, the majority of the public will remain ignorant about the full extent of election fraud. Without interviewing whistleblowers like Stephen Spoonamore and Clint Curtis, who have already testified in Congress under oath, the public will never ask why there have been no indictments. The only thing that you can prove is that the voting machines can be hacked and experts have already done it. Let’s HAVA drink.