Reply #73: This just isn't that hard.

[anaxarchos]

I ascribe nothing to you....

I am responding.

OTOH: Bush could have won the election if Gore voters from 2000 had defected to Bush in 2004 at twice the rate that Bush 2000 voters defected to Kerry in 2004.

Several DU'ers: That is not what the exit polls say. The exit polls suggest a similar rate of defections for Kerry and Bush from voters who voted for Gore and Bush in 2000. Take a look at the "Who did you vote for in 2000?" question. Given the turnout and the break toward Kerry of new voters, Bush could not have legitimately won the election.

OTOH: That question you rest your case on is subject to response error. Gore voters could have simultaneously defected at twice that rate AND it would not show up because they would characterize themselves as Bush voters in 2000 despite the fact that they actually voted for Gore.

Me: Let's forget about the "Who did you vote for?" question. We can determine defection rates independently of that question which is, itself, not "context sensitive", etc. (i.e. the response error is an artifact of the question itself and independent of the other survey questions). Let us look at the party ID, "ideology", the GOTV questions, etc. (there are others, BTW). Do they support the notion of a differing internal defection rate between Gore and Bush voters from 2000 or from 2000 to 2004? No, they do not. Thus...

Two Conclusions:

1) The small point - There is no support in the remainder of the survey questions for the response error thesis that OTOH has advanced (this is not a generic refutation... merely that the answer to the "How did you vote?" question jives with the remaining survey questions and thus does not indicate "his" response error in this poll).

2) The MUCH larger point - There is no support in the Exit Polls for a "Gore 2000 voters defection" thesis. Quite the contrary, they indicate a re-run of 2000 (the conventional wisdom) with a much greater turnout. But, if we rerun 2000 in 2004 with a larger turnout, Kerry wins.

Thus, fraud...

Quite Easily Done (QED).

None of this is impacted by anything that you may think or believe. On the contrary, since we have just calculated internal defection rates (or "affirmed" them), and the political environment we started from is a given (the 2000 elections), we have just come up with a reason to suspect "fraud" EVEN IF the 2004 Exit Polls had not indicated a Kerry victory (which they did). rBr or not, the basic internal arithmetic does not "add up".

Ya see?

It really is "The Return of the Clincher"...