Reply #84: sigh

[OnTheOtherHand]

Ron, if you actually read Manjoo's article, you saw the part where he writes, "But nobody argues the errors happened by chance. Everyone in the exit poll debate agrees that there was a systematic cause for the errors in the poll." To paraphrase your rhetoric, the question that has to be asked is, why are you trying to rebut straw men?

In the passage of his response that you cite, Manjoo argues that Kerry's apparent exit poll margins in Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio were all within the margins of error. Since you ignored this point, it stands unrebutted. Indeed, it is confirmed by the table on pp. 21-22 of the E/M evaluation report. A fact that you have not addressed at all.

As for the judicial races, will someone please forthrightly acknowledge that Kucinich's statement is completely unsupported? RFK writes, "'Down-ticket candidates shouldn't outperform presidential candidates like that,' he (Kucinich) says. 'That just doesn't happen.'" But so far no one has presented any race in which a presidential candidate outdrew a judicial candidate in every county in Ohio. I figure it probably happened sometime, but I'm not even sure of that. Maybe Kucinich had a different "That" in mind, but someone will need to define, and demonstrate, the That that just doesn't happen. Otherwise the argument reduces to hand-waving.

No one is confusing Resnick with Connally. Resnick beat Gore in 81 counties, and Black beat him in 40; Connally beat Kerry in only 12.

Ah, but isn't it inexplicable that those 12 counties were among "the most conservative counties (judging by their Bush vote shares) in Ohio"? No. Since the 2000 and 2004 presidential races unsurprisingly evince more partisan polarization than the judicial races, we can generally expect Dem presidential candidates to fare best compared with same-party judicial candidates in Dem counties, and worst in Rep counties. For instance, even though Resnick got over more 100K more votes than Gore statewide, Gore got about 50K more votes in Cuyahoga County than Resnick did. In Warren County, where Bush beat Gore by over 40 percentage points, Resnick received almost 5,000 more votes than Gore did, or over 25% more votes.

I share Febble's lack of surprise that Moyer did poorly where Connally did well, or whatever you think you have demonstrated. I think you will find it hard to surprise political scientists that one candidate did poorly where his opponent did well. I don't even much like your chances with economists.