Reply #22: right, "WPE" (or WPD) isn't actually within-precinct in this case

[OnTheOtherHand]

I don't think that explains the discrepancy in this case, but it does knock some zeroes off NEDA's calculated odds. (Hard to say how many, given that we actually don't even know the sample size.) For what it's worth, by my crude reckoning, the pooled Bush percentage in the official counts for those four precincts is about 53.93%, rather than 59.65% for 4M alone.

When people get hung up on the number of zeroes, they are missing the point. The point isn't that 21 Kerry voters out of 31 respondents (or whatever the actual exit poll result was) probably happened by random chance alone. The point is that if we put down our calculators and think about the facts on the ground, this just isn't strong evidence.

Worse, NEDA's supposed refutation of the ESI analysis actually privileges exit poll results over returns from recent elections. This is a very dangerous move. Folks can be as suspicious as they like of past returns, they should certainly be attuned to legitimate sources of variation, but we should not just chuck overboard the empirical fact that more often than not, the most Democratic precincts in one election tend to be the most Democratic precincts in the next.