12.14.2004
I find it surprising that the powers-that-be or the illuminati or the freemasons or the men in suits or whoever the current conspirators are would wait for nearly 10 years to grease the person who made a story their own outlet wouldn't support. What, do they have a backlog on the hit list or something? Maybe they have done too good of a job and have hit everyone that had it coming, and are down to those who only wish they had it coming. But I admit, though... conspiracies are a lot more exciting than real life.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
BTW, Dr. Freeman's math is a load of crap. Any kind of poll is so riddled with inconsistencies and discrepancies and biases that it can hardly be taken as anything other than fiction or wishful thinking. That is why everyone who is in a position to "call" an election does so with a hundred caveats and disclaimers and margins of error and all. This election, the NEP rolled out a whole new scheme to do exit polls. Who says that it actually did a better job than the old one? I could go into a long tirade of the statistical innacuracies and lack of substance in the paper, and about polling systems in general, but I won't. Nobody wants to hear it. It would be interesting to hear what a real statistician (Freeman is some kind of Business/Organizational Management guy) has to say.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
BTW, Dr. Freeman's math is a load of crap. Any kind of poll is so riddled with inconsistencies and discrepancies and biases that it can hardly be taken as anything other than fiction or wishful thinking. That is why everyone who is in a position to "call" an election does so with a hundred caveats and disclaimers and margins of error and all. This election, the NEP rolled out a whole new scheme to do exit polls. Who says that it actually did a better job than the old one? I could go into a long tirade of the statistical innacuracies and lack of substance in the paper, and about polling systems in general, but I won't. Nobody wants to hear it. It would be interesting to hear what a real statistician (Freeman is some kind of Business/Organizational Management guy) has to say.
< 01:18 >< /j >
Comments:
This concept makes sense to me. The 'phantom bush drift' felt throughout the country was 2-3% stronger in the contested states.... even if the methods of data gathering are flawed, they should be consistently flawed. meaning they would have SOME relevence when he gives the 35 vs 12 comparison. I have never been classically schooled in stats, but i am a fairly capable person. I understand that this guy is "assuming a random sample" which is dangerous etc.
Q: Why were the polls SO wrong in every state... and even MORE wrong in the important swing states.
There are a few theories presented in the paper, but the only halfway credible one is that Republicans are fucking assholes. They don't want to talk to the pollsters, they're not approachable... elitist... fucks. But even a 'hateful liberal' such as myself can understand that not every republican is like that. I know thats not the case as I converse regularily with people that i have no problem with except for the way that they vote. So I find that hard to swallow.
I am curious jeff... what is your explaination of why the poll data was so off....
I'm supposed to believe that counties in FL that are %70 Dem turn around and vote %70 R in 2004? I suppose those people in swing states in OH and FL stood outside for 6 hours so they could CONFIRM THE CURRENT MONKEY IN OFFICE? i just don't believe it. In OH they can prove there are less voting machines for heavy minority precincts.
I hate anytime numbers are brought into something... because it seems like the rug can be pulled from under them so easy.
I know this thing was stolen in my gut.
call this a gut feeling.
My explanation for discrepancies between exit polls and vote counts is that:
1) Polling systems of any kind are easily biased, and are even more easily biased when the questions involve a highly emotional or intense topic. And this does not necessarily have to be intentional. Seemingly simple questions can generate misleading and disparate responses depending on how they are worded. Asking "Do you approve of the president's handling of the Iraq conflict?" can generate surprisingly different responses from "How well do you think the president is handling the conflict in Iraq?" On the surface, they seem to be the same question, but if you try to answer them, you will come up with two different answers, which will increasingly be different the closer you are to a marginal support/nonsupport position. But the exit polls did not ask questions about Iraq. They were ostensibly more straightforward ("who did you just vote for?"), but there are a thousand other ways to bias a poll, and there is almost no way to unravel it after the fact. Polls are NOT a random sample (in the statistically defined sense of the term) and should be viewed very skeptically.
2)The exit poll/vote count discrepancy is incredibly circular. When do we know when exit polling strategies are accurate? When they agree with vote counts. How do we know vote counts are accurate? When they agree with exit polls. There is no objective, empirical way to know what is going on.
As per my biasing point, I can see why some republicans would have hesitated to respond to exit polls, and you just illustrated it for me. You said:
"There are a few theories presented in the paper, but the only halfway credible one is that Republicans are fucking assholes. They don't want to talk to the pollsters, they're not approachable... elitist... fucks."
That is why I think a lot of republicans would be leery of participating. There has been a lot of anger and outright hatred from the left for Bush and R's in general, and I think there is a genuine (and partially justified) fear of angry, shouting public responses. Interestingly, I have read in a lot of places (I frequently read Newsweek, Time and US News & World report at a local grocery store... I think the topics relating to current politics are rather fascinating) that the common perception of the Democratic loss is that most people perceive the left as being the "elitist assholes" - overeducated, condescending, out of touch with working families, etc. I am not making a point here other than to say it is myopic to simply paint the other side as stupid or elitist or whatever and ignore what they have to say.
Regarding Democratic counties voting heavily republican, I would say that demographics change rapidly. Time was, the entire South was solidly democratic. Now, not so. Florida in particular is a very transient population. Snow birds flock there. Immigrants move there and move away. The snow birds die. The people that voted in 2000 are not the same ones that voted in 1996 or 92 or 2004. And the fluctuations get more extreme as you go to smaller geographical areas. What happens when 3 republicans are at a bus stop and the metro transit bus from the local university art department pulls up?
Check out:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/28/florida.voting.ap/index.html
I can also find it entirely believable that counties can suddenly shift political allegiance aside from demographic changes. For example, Jewish populations generally trend a bit left. Bush has been the staunchest supporter for Israel of any president ever. It got him a large fraction of the Jewish vote that voted for Gore in 2000. It is like predicting stock market trends. It is impossible to use historical data to predict the future. Statistically it is known as a random walk. That is why they say that the market is driven by fear and greed. I think that similar motivations drive the political market as well. Maybe not specifically fear and greed, but they come from the same emotional center.
Also, the whole vote-tampering argument is exhibiting a common logical fallacy, known as the Appeal to Ignorance. Basically it means that something must be true if we cannot disprove it. There is all kinds of good data available that says that the vote was fair. Maybe not perfect, but that the outcome reflected the aggregate will of the people. There is no way to prove a negative (like proving that UFO's are not real), and people use that to assume that there was vote tampering. There is something here that we do agree on, however. I think that it is absolutely retarded to not have a paper trail for electronic voting machines. There would still be the conspiracy theorists out there who would say they were faked, too, but it would take some of the teeth out of it. To not have a paper trail only breeds suspicion. That said, I find it incredibly unlikely that electronic voting machines were subject to the kind of "simple" dial-up tampering that is alleged to have happened. If that was the case, why would the outcome have been towards bush? Statistically, the computer/science/technology world leans left and would have the ability to do this. Especially from the hacktivists who would have the ability and the motivation to tamper with the results, if for nothing more than to make them ludicrous (10^100 votes for Nader or a write in for Ron Jeremy or something).
There is also a total lack of evidence. Freeman's source for his data was "uncalibrated" results that CNN mistakenly left posted to its page. The numbers he saw had gone though many hands, and there is no external way to say how "uncalibrated" they were. There are a few anecdotal cases of problems like ~3500 extra votes for Bush in Ohio and poorly calibrated voting machine screens. But nobody has really put forward a coherent picture of something going wrong, let alone real premeditated fraud. Just allegations.
If there was the slightest chance in the world of John Kerry winning, don't you think he would have stuck it out? His own words were to the effect of "If I thought there was a way to win this thing, I would fight for it." (paraphrase)
I am sorry this is getting long... And I should get going as well. I guess the short course of all of this is that the reasons I have outlined here make it extremely unlikely that there was significant voter fraud in this election. I have no way to state that categorically (nobody does, and anyone who tries should be looked on with skepticism), but unil there is a more realistic, coherent picture of real things that happened, I think that the recounters will have an uphill battle, and I think people should move on to more productive endeavours. Again, if you think something should be changed, jump in and do it.
I hope that you respond to all this... I am curious to hear what you think.
jeff
Oh, more comments...
I find it surprising that Kerry supporters (among many merely Bush opponents) are making an effort to bring about the same events (with reversed party affiliations) as the 2000 election. In 2004, Bush won the popular vote. There is no way that recounters are going to be able to make up the 3319608 vote difference. The best that can be hoped for is the gain of a critical state for Kerry, and the same Supreme Court battle as 2000, and the "appointment" of "emperor" Kerry, sans the vitriolic descriptions.
It is amazing how loudly people complain when it is the OTHER party that is doing the legal wrangling and appointing of emperors.
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~ chad >
~ chad >This concept makes sense to me. The 'phantom bush drift' felt throughout the country was 2-3% stronger in the contested states.... even if the methods of data gathering are flawed, they should be consistently flawed. meaning they would have SOME relevence when he gives the 35 vs 12 comparison. I have never been classically schooled in stats, but i am a fairly capable person. I understand that this guy is "assuming a random sample" which is dangerous etc.
Q: Why were the polls SO wrong in every state... and even MORE wrong in the important swing states.
There are a few theories presented in the paper, but the only halfway credible one is that Republicans are fucking assholes. They don't want to talk to the pollsters, they're not approachable... elitist... fucks. But even a 'hateful liberal' such as myself can understand that not every republican is like that. I know thats not the case as I converse regularily with people that i have no problem with except for the way that they vote. So I find that hard to swallow.
I am curious jeff... what is your explaination of why the poll data was so off....
I'm supposed to believe that counties in FL that are %70 Dem turn around and vote %70 R in 2004? I suppose those people in swing states in OH and FL stood outside for 6 hours so they could CONFIRM THE CURRENT MONKEY IN OFFICE? i just don't believe it. In OH they can prove there are less voting machines for heavy minority precincts.
I hate anytime numbers are brought into something... because it seems like the rug can be pulled from under them so easy.
I know this thing was stolen in my gut.
call this a gut feeling.
< / j >
j >My explanation for discrepancies between exit polls and vote counts is that:
1) Polling systems of any kind are easily biased, and are even more easily biased when the questions involve a highly emotional or intense topic. And this does not necessarily have to be intentional. Seemingly simple questions can generate misleading and disparate responses depending on how they are worded. Asking "Do you approve of the president's handling of the Iraq conflict?" can generate surprisingly different responses from "How well do you think the president is handling the conflict in Iraq?" On the surface, they seem to be the same question, but if you try to answer them, you will come up with two different answers, which will increasingly be different the closer you are to a marginal support/nonsupport position. But the exit polls did not ask questions about Iraq. They were ostensibly more straightforward ("who did you just vote for?"), but there are a thousand other ways to bias a poll, and there is almost no way to unravel it after the fact. Polls are NOT a random sample (in the statistically defined sense of the term) and should be viewed very skeptically.
2)The exit poll/vote count discrepancy is incredibly circular. When do we know when exit polling strategies are accurate? When they agree with vote counts. How do we know vote counts are accurate? When they agree with exit polls. There is no objective, empirical way to know what is going on.
As per my biasing point, I can see why some republicans would have hesitated to respond to exit polls, and you just illustrated it for me. You said:
"There are a few theories presented in the paper, but the only halfway credible one is that Republicans are fucking assholes. They don't want to talk to the pollsters, they're not approachable... elitist... fucks."
That is why I think a lot of republicans would be leery of participating. There has been a lot of anger and outright hatred from the left for Bush and R's in general, and I think there is a genuine (and partially justified) fear of angry, shouting public responses. Interestingly, I have read in a lot of places (I frequently read Newsweek, Time and US News & World report at a local grocery store... I think the topics relating to current politics are rather fascinating) that the common perception of the Democratic loss is that most people perceive the left as being the "elitist assholes" - overeducated, condescending, out of touch with working families, etc. I am not making a point here other than to say it is myopic to simply paint the other side as stupid or elitist or whatever and ignore what they have to say.
Regarding Democratic counties voting heavily republican, I would say that demographics change rapidly. Time was, the entire South was solidly democratic. Now, not so. Florida in particular is a very transient population. Snow birds flock there. Immigrants move there and move away. The snow birds die. The people that voted in 2000 are not the same ones that voted in 1996 or 92 or 2004. And the fluctuations get more extreme as you go to smaller geographical areas. What happens when 3 republicans are at a bus stop and the metro transit bus from the local university art department pulls up?
Check out:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/28/florida.voting.ap/index.html
I can also find it entirely believable that counties can suddenly shift political allegiance aside from demographic changes. For example, Jewish populations generally trend a bit left. Bush has been the staunchest supporter for Israel of any president ever. It got him a large fraction of the Jewish vote that voted for Gore in 2000. It is like predicting stock market trends. It is impossible to use historical data to predict the future. Statistically it is known as a random walk. That is why they say that the market is driven by fear and greed. I think that similar motivations drive the political market as well. Maybe not specifically fear and greed, but they come from the same emotional center.
Also, the whole vote-tampering argument is exhibiting a common logical fallacy, known as the Appeal to Ignorance. Basically it means that something must be true if we cannot disprove it. There is all kinds of good data available that says that the vote was fair. Maybe not perfect, but that the outcome reflected the aggregate will of the people. There is no way to prove a negative (like proving that UFO's are not real), and people use that to assume that there was vote tampering. There is something here that we do agree on, however. I think that it is absolutely retarded to not have a paper trail for electronic voting machines. There would still be the conspiracy theorists out there who would say they were faked, too, but it would take some of the teeth out of it. To not have a paper trail only breeds suspicion. That said, I find it incredibly unlikely that electronic voting machines were subject to the kind of "simple" dial-up tampering that is alleged to have happened. If that was the case, why would the outcome have been towards bush? Statistically, the computer/science/technology world leans left and would have the ability to do this. Especially from the hacktivists who would have the ability and the motivation to tamper with the results, if for nothing more than to make them ludicrous (10^100 votes for Nader or a write in for Ron Jeremy or something).
There is also a total lack of evidence. Freeman's source for his data was "uncalibrated" results that CNN mistakenly left posted to its page. The numbers he saw had gone though many hands, and there is no external way to say how "uncalibrated" they were. There are a few anecdotal cases of problems like ~3500 extra votes for Bush in Ohio and poorly calibrated voting machine screens. But nobody has really put forward a coherent picture of something going wrong, let alone real premeditated fraud. Just allegations.
If there was the slightest chance in the world of John Kerry winning, don't you think he would have stuck it out? His own words were to the effect of "If I thought there was a way to win this thing, I would fight for it." (paraphrase)
I am sorry this is getting long... And I should get going as well. I guess the short course of all of this is that the reasons I have outlined here make it extremely unlikely that there was significant voter fraud in this election. I have no way to state that categorically (nobody does, and anyone who tries should be looked on with skepticism), but unil there is a more realistic, coherent picture of real things that happened, I think that the recounters will have an uphill battle, and I think people should move on to more productive endeavours. Again, if you think something should be changed, jump in and do it.
I hope that you respond to all this... I am curious to hear what you think.
jeff
< / j >
j >Oh, more comments...
I find it surprising that Kerry supporters (among many merely Bush opponents) are making an effort to bring about the same events (with reversed party affiliations) as the 2000 election. In 2004, Bush won the popular vote. There is no way that recounters are going to be able to make up the 3319608 vote difference. The best that can be hoped for is the gain of a critical state for Kerry, and the same Supreme Court battle as 2000, and the "appointment" of "emperor" Kerry, sans the vitriolic descriptions.
It is amazing how loudly people complain when it is the OTHER party that is doing the legal wrangling and appointing of emperors.
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