Twenty-five Questions for Nate Silver

Updated: July 24, 2010

In December 2009, you posted 20 questions for bill killers. Now I have 25 polling/math questions for you. Most are on election killers, but for variety, I included one about baseball (the 1951 Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff) and another on the JFK assassination.

The questions are in multiple-choice format. Many election activists are interested in your answers. Take your time and respond at your convenience. And it’s open book. You will find most of the answers in my book: Proving Election Fraud: Phantom Voters, Uncounted Votes, and the National Exit Poll.

1) Approximately how many votes have been uncounted in the 11 presidential elections since 1968?

a) 10 million; b) 30 million; c) 80 million

2) According to the Evaluation of Edison Mitofsky Election System report, in the five presidential elections from 1988 to 2004, 65 of the 238 State Exit Polls had a Within Precinct Discrepancy (WPD) exceeding 6.0% (i.e. exceeded the 3% margin of error). How many of the 65 deviated beyond the MoE for the Republican?

a) 30; b) 40; c) 64

3) In 2004 at 12:40am, the adjusted “composite” state exit polls indicated that the margin of error was exceeded in 16 states, all in favor of Bush. How would you compute the probability and what was it?

a) 1 in 1000; b) 1 in 1 million; c) 1 in 19 trillion

4) In 2004, the unadjusted exit poll margin of error was exceeded in 29 states, all in favor of Bush. What is the probability?

a) 1 in 10 million; b) 1 in 100 trillion; c) less than 1 in 1000 trillion

5) In 2004, Kerry’s aggregate unadjusted state exit poll share of 100,000+ respondents was

a) 48%; b) 50%; c) 52%

6) In 2000, Gore won Florida easily and the national recorded vote by 540,000. But according to the Census, approximately 6 million votes were uncounted. Therefore, a reasonable estimate of Gore’s True Margin is

a) 1 million; b) 2 million; c) 3 million

7) According to the 1992 National Exit Poll, the percentage of living Bush 1988 voters who turned out to vote in 1992 was

a) 95%; b) 98%; c) 119%

8) According to the 2004 National Exit Poll, the percentage of living Bush 2000 voters who turned out to vote in 2004 was

a) 95%; b) 98%; c) 110%

9) In 2000, Gore had 51.0 million recorded votes; Bush had 50.46 million. The Final 2004 National Exit Poll indicated that returning Bush 2000 voters comprised 43% (52.6 million) of the 122.3 million recorded; returning Gore voters just 37% (45.2 million). Given the 1.25% annual voter mortality, 2.5 million Bush 2000 voters died prior to 2004. Assuming that 47 of 48 million living Bush voters turned out in 2004, the National Exit Poll overstated returning Bush voters by

a) 2 million; b) 4.6 million; c) 5.6 million

10) According to the 2008 National Exit Poll, 46% (60.3 million) of the 131.4 million who voted were returning Bush 2004 voters and 37% (48.6 million) were returning Kerry voters. Assuming that Bush won by the 3 million recorded vote margin, the NEP required 12 million more returning Bush than Kerry voters in order to match the 2008 recorded vote. That is

a) implausible; b) highly unlikely; c) virtually impossible

11) The 2008 Election Analysis shows that Obama had 52% of 121 million votes recorded on Election Day. What was his share of the 10 million late votes recorded after Election Day?

a) 52%; b) 54%; c) 59%

12) According to the 2004 Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS), of 88 reported vote-switching incidents, 86 were from Kerry to Bush, 2 from Bush to Kerry. What are the odds of this occurrence assuming a random sample of independent, unbiased machines?

a) 1 in 1 million; b) 1 in 100 million; c) 1 in 79,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

13) In the 2006 midterms, the Final National Exit Poll was forced to match the recorded vote (52-46% in favor of the Democrats). What was the Democratic share in the unadjusted exit poll?

a) 52%; b) 54%; c) 56.4%

14) The final 2008 Gallup tracking poll had Obama winning by 53-40%. Given the recorded 1.5% third-party vote, Obama’s projected share after allocating the undecided vote, was

a) 53%; b) 54%; c) 57%

15) The Census indicated that 110.8 million votes were cast in 2000 and 125.7 million in 2004. Given the 1.25% annual voter mortality rate, an estimated 98% turnout of living 2000 voters in 2004, and the 12:22am National Exit Poll vote shares, what was the True Vote?

a) Kerry by 67-57 million; b) Kerry by 63-61 million; c) Bush by 63-61 million

16) Final state and national exit polls are always forced to match the recorded vote. Do you believe this adjustment is justified statistically?

a) Yes; b) No

17) In 2004, Bush won the recorded vote by 50.7-48.3%. John Kerry won the unadjusted aggregate state exit poll (100,000 respondents) by 52-47%. Rasmussen’s prediction closely matched the recorded vote. Zogby closely matched the exit poll. Who was the better pollster?

a) Rasmussen; b) Zogby

18) In the final 2008 tracking polls, Zogby had Obama leading by 54-43%; Gallup by 53-40% and Rasmussen by 51-46%. Who was the best pollster?

a) Zogby; b) Gallup; c) Rasmussen

19) Compare the volatility of the Gallup tracking poll to Research 2000. The Gallup standard deviations were 2.02% for Obama and 1.74% for McCain. The corresponding R2K deviations were 1.59% and 1.86%. Based on these statistics, which poll was the most volatile?

a) Gallup; b) R2K; c) basically equal

20) A majority of the late undecided vote is almost always allocated to the challenger (an undecided voter is probably not satisfied with the incumbent). The final 2004 national pre-election polls indicated a 47% tie with 5% undecided. Since Kerry was the challenger, what was the most likely projection?

a) Kerry by 52-47; b) Kerry by 51-48; c) too close to call

21) In 2004, the Democrats registered millions more new voters than the Republicans. According to the National Exit Poll, Kerry won nearly 60% of 22 million first-time voters and others who did not vote in 2000. In light of an anticipated heavy new voter turnout, was realclearpolitics.com correct in listing 15 final likely voter (LV) polls but not one registered voter (RV) poll?

a) Yes, b) No

22) Given that 15 witnesses to the JFK murder died of unnatural causes within one year of the assassination, how would you calculate the probability?

(assuming there were 1000 witnesses, the probability is 1 in 22,000 trillion; for 5000, 1 in 6 million; for 10,000, 1 in 3000; for 15,000, 1 in 100).

a) 100,000 simulation trials; b) Normal Distribution; c) Poisson Distribution

23) On Aug. 12, 1951 the Brooklyn Dodgers (73-38) held a 13.5 game lead over the NY Giants (59-51). What is the probability that the Giants would rally to tie the Dodgers at 96-58 and force a best of three playoff series?

a) 1 in 1,111,000 b) 1 in 716,000; c) 1 in 587,000

24) In 1996 and 2000, Zogby’s final polls came within 0.5% of the recorded vote. He ranked #1 among all pollsters in both elections. His 2004 Election Day polling (Kerry by 50-47%) closely matched the unadjusted state exit poll aggregate (Kerry by 52-47%) and the 12:22am National Exit Poll which Kerry also won by 50.8-48.2%. The Final NEP was forced to match the fraudulent recorded vote (Bush by 50.7-48.3%). Zogby came within 2% of the True Vote in 2008. Despite his stellar track record, you called him the “world’s worst pollster” and rank him dead last. Do you owe him an apology?

a) Yes; b) No

25) Will you discuss the fact that the National Exit Poll is always forced to match the recorded vote (even if it is fraudulent) in the NY Times or when you next appear on Maddow or Olbermann?

a) Yes; b) No

Answers

1-14: c

15: a

16-18: b

19: c

20: a

21: b

22: c

23: b

24 ?

25 ?