Reply #69: Nothing adversarial. I do my analysis. Let him do his.

[TruthIsAll]

If he wants to respond to my arguments, let him do so.
I post at DU.

I cannot believe that a polling expert could confuse the TV network's required 99.5% confidence level for calling the winner of an election with the 95% confidence level used by pollsters to determine a population mean. These are two totally different problems.

The problem here is NOT to declare a winner. The problem is simply to determine if the deviations from the exit polls for Bush were SIGNIFICANT, both in number and magnitude. We seek to derive a mathematical statement about the probability of this occurrence.

Using the 99.5% confidence criteria (or 3 standard deviations from the mean), effectively raises the MOE and lowers the number of states in which Bush tallies would exceed the MOE - when we all know that 16 did. The more state tallies which exceed the MOE, the stronger the circumstantial evidence of fraud. The MOE is based on THE STANDARD 95% CONFIDENCE LEVEL, regardless of the type of poll.

AGAIN, THESE ARE TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PROBLEMS. OF COURSE, THOSE WHO ARE MATHEMATICALLY CHALLENGED WOULD NEVER KNOW OR APPRECIATE THE DIFFERENCE. BUT THOSE WHO KNOW THE MATH WILL NOT BE FOOLED. THAT'S WHY I RESPONDED ON DU.