http://www.geocities.com/electionmodel/TruthIsAllFAQResponse.htmDec.12, 2000 is a day that will live in infamy. Bush needed the help of five right-wing Republicans on the Supreme Court to stop the recount in Florida and enable him to steal the election. There has been an ongoing controversy regarding the 2004 election. State and national pre-election and exit polls pointed to a Kerry victory. Those who claim that Bush won fair and square are relentless in their attempts to thrash polling analyses which suggest that fraud occurred. Since the media will not release tell-tale precinct-level data, analysts must rely on publicly available polling data. And they have determined that the polls provide powerful statistical evidence of fraud. “Voter fraud” has been shown to be a non-existent distraction from the evidence of massive “election fraud”. Voters don’t fix elections, election officials do. The corporate media was quick to dismiss claims of election fraud as a left-wing “conspiracy theory” and the statistical polling analyses of “spreadsheet-wielding Internet bloggers”.
The media never considered the possibility that the votes may have been miscounted and that the exit polls were essentially correct. They just took it for granted that the vote count was accurate (i.e. the election was fraud-free). After all, isn’t that why the exit poll results are always adjusted to match the vote count? But they never asked why the National Exit Poll had Kerry leading by a steady 51-48% at 4pm (8649 respondents), at 7:30pm (1107 respondents) and 12:22am (13047 respondents) only to see Bush win the 2pm Final (13660 respondents) by 51-48%. Of course, they never did an analysis which would have shown that the adjusted Final NEP weights were impossible and that the adjusted vote shares were implausible. And they would have come to the same conclusion as the spreadsheet-wielding bloggers: the election was stolen.
This is what Richard Morin , a Washington Post Staff Writer, wrote on Thursday, November 4, 2004:
“An Election Day filled with unexpected twists ended with a familiar question: What went wrong with the network exit polls?... In two previous national elections, the exit polls had behaved badly. Premature calls by the networks in Florida led to a congressional investigation in 2000. Two years later, a computer meltdown resulted in no release of data on Election Day…. Results based on the first few rounds of interviewing are usually only approximations of the final vote. Printouts warn that estimates of each candidate's support are unreliable and not for on-air use.….That is why the early leaks anger Joe Lenski of Edison Media Research, which conducted Tuesday's exit poll with Mitofsky International for the National Election Pool, a consortium of the major television networks and the Associated Press…. After the survey is completed and the votes are counted, the exit poll results are adjusted to reflect the actual vote, which in theory improves the accuracy of all the exit poll results, including the breakdown of the vote by age, gender and other characteristics”.
A dwindling number of naysayers continue to maintain that the comprehensive statistical analysis of 2004 pre-election/exit polls by a number of independent researchers does not provide convincing evidence that the election was stolen. To debunk the analysis, they have resorted to tortured explanations: Kerry voters were more likely to respond to exit pollsters; exit poll interviewers sought out Kerry voters; returning Gore voters lied or forgot when they told the exit pollsters that they voted for Bush in 2000; pre-election and exit polls are not pure random samples; exit polls are not designed to detect fraud in the United States; early exit poll results were misleading because women voted early and Republicans voted late; Gore voters defected to Bush at twice the rate that Bush voters defected to Kerry; the GOTV campaign headed by Karl Rove mobilized millions of Christian fundamentalists for Bush, etc. None of these explanations are supported by factual data and they have been thoroughly debunked.
They cited a post-election retrospective NES 600-sample survey as evidence that 7% of former Gore voters lied or forgot that they voted for him and told the 2004 exit pollsters that they voted for Bush in 2000. This was simply due to a long-term “bandwagon effect”: Gore voters wanted to associate with the previous “winner”- Bush. But the naysayers forget that Bush had a 48.5% approval rating on Election Day and that Gore won the election by 540,000 votes. Why would more Gore voters lie or forget than Bush voters? Why would they claim to have voted for Bush knowing that he stole the election from Gore, thus nullifying their vote? Or did they forgive Bush because of his sterling job performance and 48.5% approval? You decide.
They noted a built-in Democratic bias in the exit polls. But they dismiss the fact that in every election approximately 3% of total votes cast are uncounted, mostly in heavily Democratic minority districts. Although Bush “won” Florida in 2000 by an “official” 537 votes, there were 180,000 spoiled ballots (3% of the total cast) and thousands of other provisional and absentees which were never counted. Since more than 65% of the spoiled ballots were intended for Gore, he clearly won the state by at least 60,000 votes. Gore’s nationwide margin was two million if all the votes cast had been counted. But we know that in 2004 over 90% of reported electronic vote switching incidents were from Kerry to Bush and that an exhaustive statistical study indicated that 6.15% of Kerry votes were switched to Bush in Ohio’s Cuyahoga County. So it’s reasonable to assume that in addition to the uncounted votes, a certain percentage of Gore votes were switched to Bush. The 2000 election was not even close, although the 5-4 Supreme Court decision was.
They claimed that the vaunted 2004 Republican GOTV campaign brought Bush millions of new Christian fundamentalist votes. But they fail to note that according to the National Exit Poll, the Democrats have won first-time voters in the last four elections by an average 14% margin. Ruy Teixeira wrote about it in The Emerging Democratic Majority.
They rejected the assumption that late undecided voters would break for Kerry. But pollsters Zogby and Harris, who have a combined 60 years of polling experience, indicated they voted 67-75% for Kerry. The National Exit poll also reported that Kerry won a clear majority of undecided voters. But this was not unusual; historical evidence indicates that undecided voters break for the challenger over 80% of the time, especially when the incumbent is unpopular. Bush had a 48.5% average approval rating on Election Day.
They dismissed the significance of the Bush 48.5% approval rating on Election Day. But all presidential incumbents with approval below 50% lost re-election (Ford, Carter, Bush I) while all incumbents over 50% won (Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and Clinton). The near-perfect 0.87 correlation between Bush’s monthly approval rating and national poll average share is further evidence. The correlation was confirmed by the 12:22am National Exit Poll which Kerry won by 51-48%.
They insisted that Bush led the pre-election polls. But they failed to consider undecided voters. Final Zogby polls had Kerry leading by 50-45% in nine battleground states. Assuming that he would capture 75% of the undecided vote, Kerry was projected to win all 9 states by 53-46%. He won just 5 and his average margin was only 50-49%. The margin of error was exceeded in six states - a 1 in 52 million probability.
They also failed to use weighted averages in calculating national vote share based on state polling, claiming that Bush led the weekly state poll (unweighted) average. But except for the first two weeks in September, Kerry led the national weighted average based on state voting population from July to Election Day. Kerry also led the monthly unweighted national pre-election polls all year. The final weighted average of 51 state polls (Kerry 47.88-46.89%) was confirmed by the unweighted average of 18 national polls (Kerry 47.17- Bush 46.89%).
They refused to accept the fact that both state and national projections in the Nov.1, 2004 Election Model had Kerry winning the popular vote by 51-48%. But the projections were confirmed by the 12:22am National Exit Poll which Kerry won by 51-48%. A Monte Carlo Simulation (5000 election trials) forecast that Kerry would win 320-337 electoral votes with 60-75% of the undecided vote - which he did if you believe the National Exit Poll and pollsters Zogby and Harris. The pre-election projections were confirmed in the Interactive Election Simulation Model by the state and national exit polls.
They overlooked the fact that 41 states favored Bush from the final pre-election polls to the recorded vote. But none of the 10 states which favored Kerry was a battleground state. Forty-three state red-shifted to Bush from the 12:22am exit polls. Oregon was the only battleground state which blue-shifted to Kerry – by less than one percent. It was also the only state in which all voting is done by mail. Was this all just a coincidence, a case of bad polling or a powerful indication that fraud occurred? You decide.
They cited “false recall” and non-response bias as explanations for the exit poll discrepancies. But they failed to account for the deviations between final pre-election state and national polls and the recorded vote. Exit poll non-response and false recall are not applicable to pre-election polls – and yet the pre-election polls matched the exits. The best evidence indicates that the “pristine” state and national exit polls were close to the true vote, unlike the final exit polls which were forced to match a corrupt vote count. All they can say is that the polls were wrong.
They hypothesized that the Final NEP 43 Bush / 37 Gore weights were due to “false recall” on the part of Gore 2000 voters who claimed to have voted for Bush 4 years earlier. But the weights were irrelevant and misleading since they were mathematically impossible. What is relevant is who the 2004 exit poll respondents said they voted for just minutes before.
They claimed that exit poll non-responders were Bush voters. But they cannot logically explain why a linear regression analysis showed that exit poll non-response increased going from the strongest Bush states to the strongest Kerry states, indicating that non-responders were most likely Kerry voters.
They said that the margin of error used in calculating probabilities of the exit poll discrepancies was too low. But even assuming a 50% “cluster effect”, the probabilities were still near zero. The exit poll discrepancy exceeded the margin of error in 16 states - all in favor of Bush. The probability: 1 in 19 trillion. Not a single state deviated beyond the MoE for Kerry.
They ridiculed the near 100% probability of a Kerry popular vote victory, claiming that the exit poll “cluster effect” and response bias invalidates the theoretical 1.0% margin of error. But a probability sensitivity analysis showed that even assuming a 50% increase in MoE, Kerry still had a 98% probability of winning a majority of the popular vote.
They maintained that exit polls are not accurate indicators since they are not perfect random samples. But pollsters Edison-Mitofsky state in the noted to the National Exit Poll that respondents were randomly-selected and that the margin of error was 1%. The MoE was confirmed for various exit poll samples in their NEP Methods Statement.
They claimed that the early exit polls were off and imply that the Final National Exit Poll was accurate. But the Final was forced to match the recorded vote with impossible weights and implausible vote shares. This implies that the recorded vote was fraud-free – not exactly a reality-based assumption.
They failed to appreciate the Law of Large Numbers and find nothing unusual about the fact that Kerry led the National Exit Poll by 51-48% at 4pm (8649 respondents), 7:30pm (11027) and 12:22am (13047). But Bush won the 2pm Final NEP (13660) by 51-48% through the use of impossible weights and implausible vote shares which were required in order to match the recorded vote.
They ignored the astounding fact that all 22 Eastern Time Zone states red-shifted from the exit poll to Bush and 12 deviated beyond the exit poll margin of error! But the probability of this occurrence is 1 in 32 trillion. The East is a vote-rich Democratic region and the most fertile ground for fraud. Of the 28 states outside the Eastern Time Zone, “only” 20 deviated to Bush while the margin of error was exceeded in “just” 4 states.
They dismissed the 12:22am NEP timeline (13047 respondents) which indicated that 8% of Gore voters defected to Bush in 2004 while 10% of Bush 2000 voters defected to Kerry and claimed that twice as many Gore voters (14.6%) defected to Bush than Bush voters (7.2%) defected to Kerry. But this is not plausible if you believe that the Bush 48.5% Election Day approval rating means anything. This is just a last-ditch feeble attempt to justify the Bush recorded margin. And it means that they have no case.
They failed to explain how Bush found 16mm new voters (DNV2k) to reach 62mm in 2004. He had 50.5mm votes in 2000. But only about 46mm returned to vote in 2004. The decrease was due to two factors: 1) approximately 1.7mm Bush voters died (0.87% annual mortality rate) and 2) an estimated 2.5mm did not vote (95% turnout). According to the 12:22am National Exit Poll, Bush won 41% or 10.8 of 26.3mm new voters. He needed 60% or 15.8mm to reach 62. The 19% discrepancy was 11 times the 1.72% margin of error. The probability of the discrepancy is ZERO. It’s important to note that a solid majority of new voters were Democrats and Independents who gave Bush an approval rating much lower than his total 48.5% average on Election Day 2004. His approval rating has declined almost 1% monthly since Sept. 11, 2001 and is currently at 32%.
They need to explain how Kerry lost the popular vote in 2004, yet won a solid 57-41% share of new voters. Kerry won first-timer voters by 55-43% as well as others by 61-37%. Compare this to 2000: Gore won the popular vote, yet lost new voters by 52-44%. Gore won first-time voters by 52-43%, but Bush won others by a whopping 71-26%.
They claimed that 7% of returning Gore voters told the exit pollsters that they voted for Bush in 2000 because of a long-term “bandwagon effect”; they wanted to “associate with the winner”. But this was just a last-ditch attempt to explain the mathematically impossible “Voted in 2000” weights. Even if Gore voters they lied, it was irrelevant. What is relevant is who they said they voted for just a few minutes earlier. And 91% said they voted for Kerry.
They argued against the conclusion that the NEP “Voted in 2000” weights (Bush 43/Gore 37%) were impossible and claimed that it was standard operating procedure to re-weight demographics based on incoming votes. But how can 43% (52.6mm) of the 122.3mm who voted in 2004 have been Bush 2000 voters when he only had 50.5mm votes in 2000? Furthermore, since approximately 1.8mm Bush 2000 voters died prior to the 2004 election, the maximum number of Bush 2000 voters who could have voted in 2004 was 48.7 million, assuming an impossible 100% turnout. This physical, incontrovertible fact drove the naysayers wild. The longer they tried to refute the logic, the sillier they looked.
They had to accept an inconvenient truth: the Final National Exit Poll inflated the Bush vote by at least 4 million. The weights were contrived to force the exit poll to match the corrupted recorded vote. Even though the weights were mathematically impossible, the exit-pollsters had no choice but to use them. And they hoped no one would notice.
After months of denial, they finally agreed that the Final 2pm NEP “How Voted in 2000” weights were impossible. They agreed to derived a set of feasible weights. But they had to compensate for the weights by inflating the Final NEP Bush vote shares in order to match the recorded count. This was necessary despite the fact that Final NEP Bush vote shares were already inflated in order to match the recorded vote. With feasible weights applied to the “pristine” 12:22am NEP vote shares, Kerry won by 52.6-46.4% – a 7.7 million vote margin! Using feasible weights applied to the Final NEP vote shares, Kerry won by 51.2-48.4%. The 3.4 million vote margin more than reversed the Bush 3mm “mandate”!
They were forced to suggest this implausible Bush win scenario in the Democratic Underground Game thread:
1) 14.6% of Gore 2000 voters defected to Bush. But the 12:22am NEP reported 8%; it was increased to 10% in the Final in order match the vote.
2) Kerry won 52.9% of voters who did not vote in 2000. But the 12:22am NEP reported he won by 57-41%; it was reduced to 54-45% in the Final.
3) 7.2% of Bush 2000 voters defected to Kerry. But the 12:22am NEP reported 10%; it was reduced to 9% in the Final.
They belittled a comprehensive sensitivity analysis which indicated that Kerry won all plausible scenarios of voter turnout and new voter share. But assuming 12:22am NEP vote shares and 100% Bush 2000 voter turnout, Gore voter turnout had to be 73% for Bush to tie Kerry and 64% to match the recorded 62-59mm vote.
They need to explain these implausible changes in Bush NEP vote shares from 2000 to 2004:
-The Bush share of females increased by 4.2% while his share of males decreased by 0.2%
-His share of white females increased by 5.0% while his share of white males decreased by 0.9%
-His share of non-white females increased by 4.0% while his share of non-white males increased by only 0.76%
-His share of female independents increased by 1.8% while his share of male independents decreased by 5.6%
Didn’t females vote 54-45% for Kerry? Didn’t over 90% of blacks vote for him? Weren’t independents for Kerry by 52-44%? Why would independent males defect to Kerry at triple the rate that independent females defected to Bush? Didn’t Nader voters break 3-1 for Kerry?
They neglected to ask why six of the eight states which deviated to Kerry from the exit polls were strong Bush states: TN (1.63), TX (1.65), SD (1.67), ND (2.51), KS (2.37) and MT (0.22). The exit poll discrepancies (shown in parenthesis) were all within the exit poll margin of error. But only two competitive states deviated to Kerry: OR (0.75) and HI (1.25). Is it just a coincidence that Oregon is the only state which votes exclusively by mail (100% paper ballots), and that any discrepancy in that state would be small and could favor either Bush or Kerry? And is it just a coincidence that Hawaii was not exactly a critical state?
They agreed that the vote-rich battleground states would decide the election. But was it just a coincidence that six deep-red states deviated to Kerry and not a single blue state? Was it because Bushco did not want to explain the 50-state red-shift? Did they disregard the six states knowing that Kerry would not come close to winning them? Is that why they focused on thwarting a nationwide blue-shift in competitive states? The beast was in the East, the rest were in the West.
They claimed that the raw exit poll data which have not been made public indicates that there was no tendency for Bush to do better in 2004 relative to 2000 (“swing”) than he did in the 2004 exit poll (“red-shift”). They presented their analysis in a swing vs. red-shift scatter chart and concluded from the flat regression line that the exit poll discrepancies had little effect and therefore fraud was unlikely. But they did not considering the following factors: According to the 2004 National Exit Poll, Kerry won 71% of returning Nader voters compared to 21% for Bush. A similar split would have increased Gore’s margin by 1.4mm. Assuming that 75% of approximately 3 million uncounted votes were for Gore, his margin increases by another 1.5mm. When added to his recorded 540,000 vote majority, Gore’s adjusted margin becomes 3.4mm. And that does not consider the effects of vote-switching. Thanks to Ohio, we know a lot more about vote-switching than we did in 2000. It’s very likely that Gore votes were switched to Bush. If 3% (1.5 million) were switched, then his final adjusted margin is 6.4 million: 3mm switched + 1.5mm uncounted + 1.4mm Nader + 0.54mm recorded.
They never normalized the 2-party state votes in calculating “swing”. But adjusted state swing (before vote switching) exceeded red-shift in 24 of the 43 states which deviated to Bush. Adjusted national swing was 3.0 (51.24-48.24). Based on the NEP How Voted in 2000 demographic, red-shift was 3.15 (51.24-48.09); based on Gender, it was 2.53 (51.24-48.71). But red-shift was just 1.75 (51.24-49.49) based on the weighted average state poll. This clearly indicates that the naysayer swing vs. red-shift argument is just another ruse meant to divert, confuse and mislead. With 3% vote-switching, Bush’s adjusted vote swing exceeded red-shift in 34 of the 43 red-shift states. A realistic linear regression analysis of swing vs. redshift shows that for every 1% increase in adjusted swing, red-shift increased by 0.6%.
They still maintain that the Ohio exit poll does not indicate fraud. But they ignored the massive documented evidence of uncounted and switched votes, voter disenfranchisement. Not to mention that two election workers were convicted of rigging the recount. They criticized the 12:22am Ohio exit poll (1963 respondents) which Kerry won by 52-48%, yet believe the 2:06pm Final (2020 respondents) in which demographic category vote shares were changed in favor of Bush to match the miscounted recorded vote. This was just like the final NEP in which vote shares were also changed to match a miscounted national vote. If the original weights were used, it would have been necessary to inflate the Bush vote shares to implausible levels. How can they explain these Ohio exit poll anomalies?
-When Decided: Of the 14% who were first-time voters, 55% were for Kerry. Are we to believe that he won just 47% of the other 86%? Of the 21% who decided in the month prior to the election, 62% voted for Kerry. Are we to believe that he won just 45% of the other 79%? Were there any Ohio pre-election polls which showed Bush leading by 10% at the end of September?
-Party ID: Democrat/ Republican weights changed from 38/35 to 35/40, a 7.9% shift. With the original 38/35 weights, Bush needed 17% of Democrats to match the recorded vote, as opposed to his 8% at 12:22am.
-Ideology: Liberal/Conservative weights changed from 21/34 to 19/21, a 9.5% shift. With the original weights, Bush needed 23% of Liberals to match the recorded vote, as opposed to his 13% at 12:22am.
-Voted for Senate: Democratic/Republican weights changed from 43/57 to 36/64, a 16.3% shift. With the original weights, Bush needed 14% of those who voted for the Democratic candidate, as opposed to his 7% at 12:22am.
They ignored Florida’s implausible vote count by machine type and party registration. Bush supposedly “won” Florida by 52-47%, a 368,000 vote margin. But there was a 41- 37% Democratic registration advantage in Touch Screen (TS) machine counties and a 42-39% edge in Optical Scan (OS) counties. In 2000, Bush “won” Florida by 547 votes, but Kerry must have won by at least 60,000, given his 70% share of 180,000 uncounted under/over votes. Kerry won TS counties (3.86mm votes) by 51-47%, but Bush won OS counties (3.43mm votes) by a whopping 57-42%. Florida voter registration by party is consistent across TS and OS counties, so it’s not comparing apples and oranges. The total TS county vote share matched the 12:22am NEP to within 0.43% for Bush (17,000 votes) and 0.31% for Kerry (12,000). But the Bush OS county share deviated by 9.0% (307,000) while Kerry’s discrepancy was 8.1% (278,000). The final Zogby pre-election poll had Kerry winning by 50-47%.
Why was there such a large vote share discrepancy in OS counties? Party ID weights for OS and TS counties were virtually the same. There was massive fraud in OS counties, but TS counties were hardly fraud-free. Assuming a 1.0% margin of error, the probability is 1 in 12.7 trillion that Kerry's total TS county vote share would exceed his total Florida share by 4.2%. Three distinct models indicate that Kerry won Florida by 221,000 votes. Two were based on voting machine type (optical scanners and touch screens). The models assume 2004 NEP “How Voted in 2000” vote shares with weights set to party registration percentage. Kerry won both scenarios by a total of … 221,000 votes. The third model was based on uncounted and switched votes applied to the 2004 recorded vote. Kerry wins by…. 221,000 votes. Considering that Kerry probably won 70,000 of 96,000 Nader 2000 votes (based on his 71% NEP share), he had a built-in 100,000 advantage on Election Day …assuming that all the votes were going to be counted.
They cited the final NY pre-election poll which Kerry won by 59-40 (matching the recorded vote) to support their argument that the pre-election polls did not match the exits (the NY exit poll was 64-35). But they failed to mention that the typical pre-election state poll has a 4% margin of error (600 respondents) while the corresponding exit poll has a 2-3% MoE, depending on the number of respondents so a 5% discrepancy between a given state pre-election and the corresponding exit poll is not unusual. In fact, the weighted average vote share of 51 state pre-election polls, adjusted for undecided voters, matched the weighted average exit poll vote share to within 1%.
They implied that the NY pre-election poll was accurate since it matched the recorded vote. But this is not plausible since the 2000 recorded vote was Gore 60-Bush 35-Nader 5 and the 2004 NEP reported that 10% of Bush2000 voters defected to Kerry while just 8% of Gore voters defected to Bush. Assuming conservatively that the Bush/Gore defection rates were equal, the 59-40 recorded vote implies that 100% of returning Nader 2000 voters defected to Bush - an absolute impossibility. The NEP indicated that Kerry won Nader voters by 71-21. Allocating Nader 2000 votes and assuming equal defection rates, the 2004 recorded vote is Kerry 63-Bush 36. Allocating the 3% uncounted votes (75% Kerry/ 25% Bush) widens the vote split to 64-35, matching the exit poll. The True Vote Model determined that 7% of Kerry’s national votes were switched to Bush while a comprehensive analysis of total votes cast in Cuyahoga County (Ohio) showed that 6.15% were switched. Assuming that 4% of Kerry’s NY votes were switched, he won the state by 66-33%.
They have never explained why the Exit Poll Response Optimizer confirmed the USCV simulation. Both models analyzed summary exit poll data for 1250 precincts supplied by Edison-Mitofsky and independently debunked the reluctant Bush responder (rBr) hypothesis. The Optimizer employed the Excel Solver algorithm to obtain a feasible 2-party vote share solution (Kerry 52.15-Bush 47.85%). The constraints included the actual recorded vote (Bush 51.24-Kerry 48.76%), along with response rates and within precinct error (WPE) categorized into five partisanship groupings: Strong Bush, Bush, Even, Kerry, Strong Kerry. The robust solution exactly matched the 12:22am National Exit Poll “Voted in 2000” demographic. Two independent mathematical methods applied to two distinct sets of national and precinct summary exit poll data produced the identical result.
They can try to refute the True Vote Model. The base case scenario determined that Kerry won by 66.1-58.4mm. The model was based on the 12:22am NEP vote shares, with feasible weights adjusted for 1) the 2000 recorded vote, 2) 3.5% mortality, 3) 95% turnout of 2000 voters in 2004. It assumed that 2.74% of total votes cast were uncounted, based on the 2004 Election Census which reported that 125.7mm votes were cast. Only 122.3mm were recorded, therefore 3.4mm were uncounted. Assuming that Kerry won 2.6mm of the uncounted votes (a 75% share), then 4.5mm (6.8%) of total votes cast for Kerry must have been switched to Bush to match his 66.1-58.4mm margin. By allocating the 3.4mm uncounted votes to each state based on its racial mix, the model also determined that Kerry won 336 electoral votes. This matched the Election Model Monte Carlo Simulation which was based on final state polling and 5000 election trials.
Except for the notorious 2006 FL-13 congressional race in which 18,000 mostly Democratic votes were mysteriously missing, the evidence of massive fraud in the midterm elections is hardly mentioned in the corporate media. But a Pew 2006 Election Analysis describes voting “anomalies” and computer “glitches” that occurred in virtually every state. The fraud probably cost the Democrats 10-20 congressional seats.
The 2006 National Exit Poll “How Voted in 2004” weights were changed from 47 Bush / 45 Kerry at 7pm on Election Day to 49/43 in the Final NEP at 1pm on the following day. Once again, just like in 2004, the exit pollsters had to match the vote count by expanding the weight spread from 2% to 6%! This had a major effect in cutting the Democratic margin in half - from 55-43% to 52-46%. As noted earlier, the 2004 12:22am NEP “How Voted in 2000” Bush/Gore 41/39 weights were changed to 43/37 in the 2pm Final, turning a 51-48% Kerry victory into a 51-48% loss.
If plausible 49 Kerry/ 46 Bush weights based on the 2004 NEP were used, the TRUE Democratic margin becomes 56.7-42.1%, exactly matching the 120 pre-election Generic Poll trend line. Was this just a coincidence or another confirmation that the pre-election polls matched the 7pm National Exit Poll? You decide.