Reply #239: mal-pResidency discount [View All]

[davekriss]

What I meant (OTOH): If Bush received 100 votes in precinct x in 2000, is it reasonable that he can count on those same 100 votes in 2004? Could not events between 2000 and 2004 have measurably eroded support? Say, for illustration, going in to 2004 and without count tampering Bush could only count on 90 votes. Thus a "swing" back to 100 votes for Bush might be correlated with 10 votes of exit poll red shift, but you would have missed this in your analysis.

If some reasonable assumption could be made on "mal-pResidency discount" before applying your analysis, you might find a correlation that escapes you now. However, finding the basis for that "reasonable assumption" might prove difficult, given the slight Bush lead in pre-election voting. I therefore say this tongue-in-cheek as I know, if I say "surely such a discount exists", it examples the "fraud of the gaps" fundamentalism that you find so frustrating.

You conclude that suppression is clear, and perhaps a degree of miscount, but these were not sufficient to flip Ohio for Bush that otherwise would have gone to Kerry (based on the slight lead in pre-election polling Bush held going in to election day). I might agree but I'd need to know more. All you've achieved with me is unweighting of the exit poll argument. What about other states? Is it possible that other states were flipped sufficient to make Ohio decisive? Is anyone with your academic rigor looking at this now?