Reply #51: (Febble assumes a stern glare)

[Febble]

Look, I don't care who started it, it's got to stop. There is work to be done.

There is nothing wrong with the sample size of either the exit poll or political scientists. It was a joke (what is wrong with both samples is that they aren't random; although that matters less for the political scientist sample if you argue that papers written are the relevant dependent measure. Whatever. As I said, it was a joke.)

And seeing as we seem to have a complete sense of humour failure around here (my own was short-circuted at the OP) let's get on with the job on another thread.

I will make one serious point before I leave:

If we on DU are serious about convincing people who are presently unconvinced that the American election system is insecure and unjust, then we need to be rigorous about our arguments. It is easy to preach to the converted. It is far harder to preach to the unconverted, and when the unconverted include what market researchers like to call "opinion formers", and when the relevant opinion formers include public opinion professionals and political scientists (the two professions whose opinion is likely to be the most relevant to an assessment of the probity of an election) then we need to get our arguments and facts straight.

So (and this is the same serious point) when a representative of one of those professions (one who, as you point out, is not only a political scientist but an author of a text book on public opinion research) tells us that his colleagues are, by and large, unconvinced by arguments that the election was stolen, then it is sensible to ask ourselves not "is that true" but "why?". And one answer, I submit, is that we (I speak collectively) are sometimes less than rigorous about weeding out the crap arguments from the good.

So let's quit fighting and start weeding. And if we find ourselves in irreconcilable disagreement about what constitutes a weed, let's agree to differ, and leave the mods to deal with the trolls. Neither OTOH nor I are trolls, moles or anything other than ruthless gardeners.

Peace. Or you are grounded.