Reply #3: You don't know the MOE? What DO you know?

[TruthIsAll]

You say:
Also, there are certain to be results outside the margin of error. In a normal poll, the margin of error merely means that 95% of the time the results will be within the margin of error of the correct value--but 5% of the time, the poll is just plain wrong, outside the margin. I don't have a good sense what the margins of error and confidence levels are for Mitofsky's poll, and I'm not sure those numbers are yet public.

Here is a free education for you:

You obviously don't know the MOE for the National Exit Poll.
It is 1.0% as per Mitofsky.

Kerry wins the poll 50.78-48.22%, basewd on his proporuon of the female/male split (54/46). Yes, women, mostly young, new voters, came out to vote for Kerry in droves.

A 1.0% MOE means that 95% of the time, Kerry's actual vote would fall in the range {49.78-51.78}.

It also means that Bush's vote would be in the range {47.22-49.22%} 95% of the time.

Further, it means that the odds of Bush getting 51.23% of the vote (a 3.0% gain over his exit poll) is one out of 547 million.

Do you know what the normal distribution is?
Do you know what the standard deviation is?

Do you know what the relationship is between the standard deviation and the margin of error?

Do you know what this represents?
= NORMDIST (.4822, .5123, .0051, TRUE)

I didn't think so.
Do your homework.
Take Statistics 101.
Learn Excel.

Then come back for your next lesson.