Reply #151: well, fair enough

[OnTheOtherHand]

I don't think anyone intended to put it forward as a mathematically necessary conclusion, although I can't speak for all the people involved. So far I stand by what I said in my little essay -- if there is fraud in there, it is well disguised. (Perfectly possible especially for narrowly targeted fraud. Indeed, fraud could avoid the exit polls entirely -- but then, why oh why do we keep talking about them?)

Normal distributions aren't a necessary assumption, as far as I can tell, but I don't claim to have canvassed all imaginable distros.

A lot depends on context. ESI did an obvious test, it came up negative, they said 'no smoking gun,' and they are taking flak for it. I think ESI made the right call -- although I don't see any way that the Ohio exit poll data could "rule out" decisive fraud. On a national scale, well, we'll see. (I am falling asleep over here, so I had better not try to sum things up!)