A Reply to Nate Silver’s “Ten Reasons Why You Should Ignore Exit Polls”
Nate, this is a reply to your November 2008 post. I realize it is two years after the fact, but
with the midterm elections next week, I thought it would be instructive to
review what you said about exit polls. I for one would like to know if you feel
the same way about them. By the way, I’m still waiting for your response to
these twenty-five questions
I posed back in July. But after reading your “ten reasons”, I can come up with
ten reasons why you have never responded. The “experts” whom you cite are
anything but.
You begin with this:
“Oh, let me count the ways. Almost
all of this, by the way, is lifted from Mark Blumenthal's outstanding Exit Poll FAQ. For the long version, see
over there”.
Your first mistake was to believe all those
discredited GOP talking points. Now I will count the ways.
Are you asking us to ignore a) the final exit
polls or b) the unadjusted, preliminary state and national exit polls? If it’s
(a), then you must believe that election fraud is systemic since final exit
polls are always forced to match the recorded vote, even if it is fraudulent.
If it’s (b), then you must believe election fraud is a myth. Based on your
sources, it must be (b) and you probably believe “voter fraud” is real.
1. Exit polls have a much larger intrinsic margin for error
than regular polls. This is because of
what are known as cluster sampling techniques. Exit polls are not conducted at
all precincts, but only at some fraction thereof. Although these precincts are
selected at random and are supposed to be reflective of their states as a
whole, this introduces another opportunity for error to occur (say, for
instance, that a particular precinct has been canvassed especially heavily by
one of the campaigns). This makes the margins for error somewhere between
50-90% higher than they would be for comparable telephone surveys.
RC: Exit polls have a much smaller margin of
error than pre-election polls. That should be obvious by now. Even Dick Morris
agrees. Exit pollsters Edison-Mitofsky state in the National
Exit Poll Notes and the NEP
Methods Statement that
respondents were randomly-selected and the overall margin of error was 1%.. Adding a 30% cluster effect raises the calculated 0.86% MoE to 1.1%. It stands to reason that exit polls are more
accurate than pre-election polls because a) those polled know exactly who they
voted for and b) in pre-election polls, respondents might change their mind - or
not vote.
http://richardcharnin.com/TrueVoteModelDocGettingStarted.htm
2. Exit polls have
consistently overstated the Democratic share of the vote. Many of you will recall this happening in 2004, when
leaked exit polls suggested that John Kerry would have a much better day than
he actually had. But this phenomenon was hardly unique to 2004. In 2000, for instance,
exit polls had Al Gore winning states like
RC: Of course the Democrats always do better
in the exit polls than in the recorded vote. Read about it here: http://richardcharnin.com/StateExitPollDiscrepancies.htm
But
did you ever consider why? Could it be due to the fact that millions of votes
are uncounted in every election? And that the vast majority are Democratic
(over 50% are in minority districts)? The
You make the false assumption that the
recorded vote is the True Vote. Uncounted votes alone put the lie to that
argument. Not to mention votes switched at the DREs
and central tabulators. It is also contradicted by a linear
regression analysis:
non-response rates increased going from the strongest Bush states to the
strongest Kerry states which suggests that non-responders were Kerry voters.
3. Exit polls were particularly bad in this year's primaries. They overstated
Barack Obama's performance by an average of about 7 points.
RC: Did you ever hear about Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation
Chaos” in which he advised Republicans to crossed over
in the Democratic primaries and vote for Hillary Clinton? His objective was to
deny Obama the nomination. Are you aware that Obama easily won the all the
caucuses in which
voters were visually counted? Read about it here: http://richardcharnin.com/2008PrimariesLinks.htm
4. Exit polls
challenge the definition of a random sample.
Although the exit polls have theoretically established procedures to collect a
random sample -- essentially, having the interviewer approach every nth person who leaves
the polling place -- in practice this is hard to execute at a busy polling
place, particularly when the pollster may be standing many yards away from the
polling place itself because of electioneering laws.
RC: You should read what the exit pollsters
say about random samples. Exit pollsters Edison-Mitofsky state in the notes to the National
Exit Poll Notes that voters are
randomly selected as they exit the poling booth. What is your definition?
5. Democrats may be more likely to participate in exit polls. Related to items #1 and #4 above, Scott Rasmussen has found that Democrats supporters are more likely to agree to
participate in exit polls, probably because they are more enthusiastic about
this election.
RC: You quote a biased GOP pollster who never
did an exit poll? There is no evidence that Democrats are more likely to
participate. In fact, 2004 exit poll data shows just the opposite. You are resurrecting the reluctant Bush
responder (rBr)? That was disproved by the exit pollster’s own
data back in 2004 when you were predicting baseball scores.
http://www.ap.org/media/pdf/EvaluationEdisonMitofsky.pdf
6. Exit polls may
have problems calibrating results from early voting. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, exit polls will attempt account for people who voted before Election Day in most (although not all) states by means of a random telephone
sample of such voters. However, this requires the polling firms to guess at the
ratio of early voters to regular ones, and sometimes they do not guess
correctly. In
RC: Are you aware that Edison-Mitofsky stated
that their 2004 precinct design sample was near perfect? You mention
7. Exit polls may
also miss late voters. By
"late" voters I mean persons who come to their polling place in the
last couple of hours of the day, after the exit polls are out of the field.
Although there is no clear consensus about which types of voters tend to vote
later rather than earlier, this adds another way in which the sample may be
nonrandom, particularly in precincts with long lines or extended voting hours.
RC: You apparently were unaware that Kerry
was leading by a steady 3-4% at
Try this one:
Obama had 52.6% of 121 million votes recorded on Election Day and 59%
of the 10 million late votes recorded
after Election Day.
8. "Leaked"
exit poll results may not be the genuine article. Sometimes, sources like Matt Drudge and Jim Geraghty have gotten their hands on the actual exit polls
collected by the network pools. At other times, they may be reporting data from
"first-wave" exit polls, which contain extremely small sample sizes
and are not calibrated for their demographics. And at other places on the
Internet (though likely not from Gergahty and Drudge,
who actually have reasonably good track records), you may see numbers that are
completely fabricated.
RC: You quoted Matt Drudge of all people?
Guess you were unfamiliar with his political leanings. Anyway, Kerry led by a
steady 51-48%s from
9. A high-turnout
election may make demographic weighting difficult. Just as regular, telephone polls are having difficulty
this cycle estimating turnout demographics -- will younger voters and
minorities show up in greater numbers? -- the same
challenges await exit pollsters. Remember, an exit poll is not a definitive record of what happened at the polling place;
it is at best a random sampling.
RC: Kerry won 57-62% of new (mostly young) voters.
At least you agree that exit polls are indeed random samples. Glad you
corrected point # 4.
http://richardcharnin.com/2004TurnoutProof.htm
10. You'll know the actual results soon enough anyway. Have patience, my friends, and consider yourselves lucky:
in
RC: Surely you jest. Exit polls are more trouble than they are worth? I
suggest you do some research. Are you aware that in the 1988-2004 presidential
elections, 108 exit polls exceeded the 2% margin of error – and 99 red shifted
to the Republican? Do you have any idea what the probability is? Let’s a little
think. At the 95% confidence level, 12 of the 238 exit polls would be expected
to exceed the MoE (6 for the Democrat and 6 for the
Republican) in an unbiased sample. Read about it here: http://richardcharnin.com/StateExitPollDiscrepancies.htm
Nate, your problem is that you refuse to believe that Election Fraud is
systemic or that it even exists. You apparently believe that the recorded vote accurately
depicts what really happened and therefore the exit polls were in error. Son,
you have it exactly backwards. Tell that to Keith Olbermann
or Rachel Maddow next time you guest on their show.
Why don’t you tell the folks at the NY Times that election analysts
want to see the 2010 unadjusted exit poll data? We are still waiting for the
2008 numbers - because it would confirm that Obama won by more than double his
recorded 9.5 million vote margin. We know that he won by approximately 22
million votes based on the National Exit Poll vote shares. Read about it here:
http://richardcharnin.com/ObamaProof.htm
Of course, the impossible returning voter mix had to be changed to a
feasible one. You would agree that 103% turnout of living 2004 Bush voter is
impossible, yes? And you would agree that the NEP inflated the number of
returning 2004 third-party voters by indicating there were 5 million although
only 1.2 million were recorded? And you would agree that there could not have
been 12 million more returning Bush voters than Kerry voters – especially since
Bush won the recorded vote by 3 million and Kerry won the True Vote by 10
million?
http://richardcharnin.com/FurtherConfirmationOfaKerryLandslide.htm
