Reply #66: Well, as OTOH said, far from

[Febble]

"dismissing" it I have devoted a large chunk of the last couple of years investigating it. You might like to run a search on my posts.

But I'll do a very quick summary:

I was so interested in the discrepancy at precinct level (because at precinct level you have the most statistical power) that when the Edison-Mitofsky report came out, I pored over it in minute detail to try to figure out what it was telling us. And I figured out that they probably hadn't measured it in a very fair way - it underestimated the discrepancy in extreme precincts, particularly high Dem precincts. I figured out a better way, and published a paper on the web, and posted some DKos diaries. Warren Mitofsky got to hear about it, realised I probably had hit on an important problem, re-ran some of his analyses, then hired me to run some more, which I did. Then Mark Lindeman, Rick Brady and I worked some more on the problem of how to measure the discrepancy, and I ran them all again. What I was looking for were "correlates" of discrepancy - what factors were associated with bigger differences, particularly differences favoring Bush (what Jonathan Simon, I think it was, termed "redshift"). And I found that redshift was greater under certain conditions - mostly conditions in which it would have been more difficult to get a good unbiased sample. For example where the interviewing rate was low, or where the interviewers were standing a long way from the precinct. And I found that just a few of these factors were enough to account for all the significant redshift. However, there is a fair bit of wiggle room in the data, so I also looked to see whether there was any evidence of the discrepancy being greater in precincts where Bush had done suspiciously well. And I had data on his vote share in 2000 (a year in which the exit poll discrepancy was small). So I tested to see whether the discrepancy was suspiciously large in precincts where he had increased his vote by a large amount, and perhaps smaller where he had done fairly badly. And I found absolutely no tendency for that to be the case, no matter how I sliced and diced it.. The discrepancy was simply not correlated with any apparent benefit to Bush.

So, far from "dismissing" the difference I've probably looked harder at those discrepancies than anyone else on the planet. Sure, I was lucky to have that opportunity, so I'm not bragging about it. But it certainly was precisely because I didn't "dismiss" the difference that I ended up analysing those differences in such enormous detail. And I didn't find evidence that the discrepancies were due to fraud. But I DID find evidence that they were associated with methodological factors in the poll.

So to get back to your question: I think it is likely that people reported their vote correctly (although it is of course possible that not all of them did - there are anecdotal reports of people deliberately telling interviewers the wrong answer). I also don't think that there was a very marked tendency for Bush voters to refuse more than Kerry voters, although there is some evidence that certain groups of Bush voters may have refused more. What the data suggest, strongly, is that bias crept into the poll at the level of respondent selection. Kerry voters were more likely to be selected than Bush voters. This could have been because they looked more enthusiastic, they were more likely to volunteer; or because the Bush voters avoided making eye contact; or the Bush voters were more likely to evade selection in the first place. The data can't tell us which of those it was. But it can tell us that where that where sticking to strict random sampling would have been more difficult, there was greater redshift in the poll.

It certainly doesn't rule out fraud, although it does mean that widespread massive vote-switching is unlikely. And it does suggest that the exit poll data itself is not strong evidence for (indeed it is actual evidence against) widespread vote-switching fraud. But it makes no difference, IMO, to the case for election reform; and it makes no difference to the strong evidence for voter suppression of various forms. And it makes no difference at all to the case that paperless electronic voting is insecure, non-transparent, unreliable and unauditable.

Hope this clears things up. Thanks for asking.

Lizzie