General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Things are about to get a whole lot tougher for Nate Silver [View all]Time for change
(13,714 posts)One thing that concerns me about them is that, with all the extensive and minute detail that goes into his statistical forecasts I've never seen him mention a word about the possibility of election fraud, voter disenfranchisement, etc. Perhaps the NY Times won't allow that.
Anyhow, I consider the neglecting of these things to be a serious oversight. Even in years when there may not be much outright election fraud, the poor and minorities have been systemically disenfranchised by the fact that they typically use older voting machines (punch card machines in particular) that are inferior in their ability to record a voter's intended vote compared to more affluent voting precincts. This is a major reason why exit polls ALWAYS indicate a better result for the Democratic Presidential candidate that what the official vote count shows. Silver refers to this as an indication of an "enthusiasm gap". Clearly, there is much more at play than an enthusiasm gap, if such a gap exists at all as an explanation of why Democratic candidates fail to measure up to their registered voter poll results.