2004-2006 Election Fraud Analytics

http://www.geocities.com/electionmodel/TruthIsAllFAQResponse.htm

2004/2006 Election Fraud Analytics: Response to the TruthIsAll FAQ
Last Update: May 15, 2007 by TruthIsAll

Part I contains a comprehensive statistical analysis of 2004/2006 pre-election and exit polls. The 2004 National Exit Poll had Kerry winning by a steady 51-48% from 4pm (8649 respondents) to 12:22am (13047 respondents). But Bush won the 2pm Final NEP (13660 respondents) by 51-48%. In the Final, impossible weights and implausible vote shares were required to force a match to the recorded vote count. The True Vote Model determined that Kerry won the popular vote by 66.1-58.4 million (52.6-46.4%) and the electoral vote by 336-202.

In the 2006 midterms, the Democrats gained 31 congressional seats – a solid victory. But they actually did much better than that. A regression trend analysis of 120 pre-election Generic polls (all won by the Democrats) projected they would win by 56-42% – and gain more than 40 seats. The National Exit Poll at 7pm (55D-43R) confirmed the pre-election trend: a Democratic tsunami was taking place. But at 1pm the next day, the Final NEP used implausible weights and vote shares in order to once again force a match to the recorded vote count. The Democratic margin was cut in half to 52-46%. The fraud resulted in the loss of 10-20 additional seats.

To test the robustness of the models, a comprehensive set of sensitivity analysis tables display the effects of incremental changes in input assumptions on the true popular/electoral vote (i.e. pre-election polls: undecided voter allocation; post-election exit polls: timelines, demographic weights/vote shares; voter turnout; cluster effect, uncounted vote shares, etc.) Links to several Excel-based models are included for readers interested in entering their own scenario input assumptions in order to estimate the true vote by asking “what-if”.

Part II contains the original “Truth Is All FAQ” with my responses included. The author of the FAQ, Mark Lindeman, has tried to debunk the work of a number of independent researchers involved in the analysis of election fraud in 2004 and 2006. Mark has posted on the Democratic Underground as "On the Other Hand", on Daily KOS as “Hudson Valley Mark” and numerous other forums whenever 2004/2006 pre-election and exit polls are discussed.

The TruthIsAll.pdf contains Nov. 1 2004 Election Model reports, analysis, graphs and methodology with links to relevant Democratic Underground posts. Since Sept. 2005, I have posted on the following forums: Progressive Independent, Thom Hartmann, Mark C. Miller, Bradblog, Buzzflash, RFK Jr. (Ring of Fire), Huffington Post, Pollster.com.

Introduction

Dec.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”.

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”.

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.

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 noted a built-in Democratic bias in the exit polls, but they ignored the underlying cause. In each election, the exit poll overstated the recorded Democratic vote, confirming the well-established fact that uncounted votes are heavily Democratic. In fact, all of the 1988-2006 “pristine” National Exit Polls closely matched the recorded vote, after being adjusted for uncounted and switched votes. A 3% uncounted vote rate was assumed (2.74% in 2004). But uncounted votes did not account for the full exit poll discrepancy; vote-switching was the primary component.

They need to look closely at Florida. In 2000 Bush “won” by 537 “official” votes - and then the recount was aborted. But 185,000 spoiled (under and over-punched) ballots were never counted. Since approximately 65% of them were intended for Gore, he must have won the state by at least 60,000 votes. Extrapolating this result nationwide, and assuming that 3 million votes were uncounted, he must have won by at least two million votes. And it’s very likely that an unknown number of Gore votes were switched to Bush. Therefore, the 2000 election was nowhere as close as the media would like us to believe. Only the 5-4 Supreme Court decision was close.

They claimed that the vaunted 2004 Republican GOTV campaign brought Bush millions of new Christian fundamentalist votes. But they failed 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 never explained the discrepancies in the recorded state vote shares. A total of 121.06 million votes were recorded for Bush and Kerry. Bush won 51.5% of the initial 115.81mm. But Kerry won 54.6% of the final 5.26mm. The probability of this discrepancy occurring due to chance is virtually ZERO. Kerry exceeded his initial vote share in 38 states, including 15 of 19 battleground states. The state vote discrepancies were significant in the East but were near zero in the Far West, strongly suggesting election fraud in the vote-rich battleground states. A false impression that Bush was winning the popular vote was created as the first votes came in from the East. At the same time, state and national exit polls indicated that Bush was losing. The vote-rigging apparently ended before the final 5 million votes were recorded; there was no need to steal more votes. Bush had already “won” the electoral vote and had a 3.5mm lead in the popular vote. After the final 5mm votes were recorded, the Bush “mandate” declined by 0.5mm to 3.0mm: 62-59mm.

They rejected the assumption that late undecided voters would break for the challenger, Kerry. But world-class pollsters Zogby and Harris, who have a combined 60 years of polling experience, indicated that their Election Day polling Kerry won undecided voters by 67-75%. The National Exit Poll also reported that Kerry won a clear majority of undecided voters. 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 - and Bush had a 48.5% average approval ratting on Election Day. Final Zogby polls in nine battleground states had Kerry leading by an average of 50-45%. He was projected to win all nine by 53-46%, but only won five by 50-49%. The margin of error was exceeded in six states - a 1 in 52 million probability.

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 failed to distinguish between weighted and unweighted averages, claiming Bush led the pre-election state polls. But the national shares must be calculated as a weighted average based on voting population. Kerry led the weighted average state polls from July to Election Day, except for a brief period in September. Kerry also led the national pre-election polls all year.

They disputed the fact that the final national pre-election polls were confirmed by weighted average of the state polls. But the final weighted average of 51 state polls (Kerry 47.88-46.89%) matched the average of 18 national polls (Kerry 47.17- Bush 46.89%). And assuming that Kerry would capture 75% of the undecided vote, the consolidated state and national projections were confirmed by his 51-48% win in the 12:22am National Exit Poll.

They refused to accept the Nov.1, 2004 Election Model projections. But both state and national models projected Kerry as the 51-48% winner. The 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 switched to Bush from the final pre-election polls to the recorded vote. But none of the 10 states which switched to Kerry was a battleground state. Forty-three states red-shifted to Bush from the 12:22am exit polls. Oregon was the only battleground state which shifted to Kerry – by less than one percent. It’s also the only state in which voting is done by mail. Was this all just a coincidence, a case of bad polling or an indication that fraud occurred?

They dismissed the accuracy of the early exit polls. But the Final exit polls were 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. The 12:22am “pristine” state and national exit polls were close to the true vote, but were “contaminated” in the final polls when they were forced to match a corrupt vote count.

They forgot about the Law of Large Numbers when they saw 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 said that the margins of error used in calculating the probabilities of the exit poll discrepancies were 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. Not a single state deviated beyond the MoE for Kerry. Assuming a zero cluster effect, the probability that the MoE would be exceeded in 16 states by Bush is 1 in 19 trillion. A probability sensitivity analysis gave Kerry a 98% probability of winning a popular vote majority - assuming a 50% cluster effect.

They declared that exit polls were not true random samples. But Edison-Mitofsky state in the notes to the National Exit Poll and in the NEP Methods Statement that respondents were randomly-selected with a 1% overall margin of error. And the pre-election polls all provide a margin of error based on the number of respondents.

They cannot reasonably explain away 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 East is a vote-rich Democratic region and is the most fertile ground vote stealing. The probability is 1 in 32 trillion that the exit poll margin of error would be exceeded in 12 of 22 states. 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 hypothesized that Bush voters were reluctant to respond to exit pollsters. But the rBr theory was contradicted by the 2004 Final Exit Poll. In the Final, Bush 2000 voters comprised 43% of the respondents, compared to 37% for Gore voters. And rBr was also contradicted by a linear regression analysis: exit poll non-response rates increased going from the strongest Bush states to the strongest Kerry states, which suggests that non-responders were Kerry voters. So they had to come up with another explanation. It was a perfect Hobson’s choice. If they believed the final Exit Poll (which Bush won by 51-48%), they would have to accept the weights which indicated that Bush voters were over-represented. But then they could not claim the rBr theory.

They claimed that it was standard operating procedure to re-weight the National Exit Poll based on the recorded vote. But the Final NEP “Voted in 2000” weights (Bush 43/Gore 37%) were mathematically impossible. Bush 2000 voters could not have comprised 43% of the 122.3mm votes recorded in 2004, since 43% of 122.3 is 52.6mm and Bush only had 50.5mm votes in 2000. The 43/37 weights were irrelevant and misleading since they were mathematically impossible. Furthermore, since approximately 1.8mm Bush 2000 voters died prior to the 2004 election, the maximum number who could have voted in 2004 was 48.7 million, even assuming an impossible 100% turnout. This physical, incontrovertible mathematical fact totally confounded the naysayers. And the longer they tried to refute the facts, the sillier they looked.

They finally agreed (in the Democratic Underground Game thread) that the Final NEP Bush/Gore weights were impossible and came up with a new set of feasible weights. But they had to compensate for the change to feasible weights in order to match the recorded vote by inflating the Bush vote shares to implausible levels. This was necessary even though the shares were previously inflated in the Final with impossible weights in order to match the recorded vote. It was a feeble, last-ditch Hail Mary pass to justify the Bush “mandate”. They had to deal with an inconvenient truth: the Final National Exit Poll inflated the Bush tally by more than 4 million votes. But even though the weights were mathematically impossible, the exit-pollsters had no choice but to use them hoping that no one would notice. And so they lost the “Game”. Their use of implausible vote shares meant that they could not come up with one believable Bush win scenario.

To match the recorded vote, they were forced to make the following implausible assumptions:

1) 14.6% of Gore 2000 voters defected to Bush. The 12:22am NEP reported that 8% defected; it was changed to 10% in the 2pm Final. The probability of a 6.6% error is ZERO.

2) Kerry won 52.9% of new voters who did not vote (DNV) in 2000. The NEP reported a 57-41% spread; it was changed to 54-45% in the Final.

3) 7.2% of Bush 2000 voters defected to Kerry. The NEP reported that 10% defected; it was changed to 9% in the Final.

They knew that every theory they had proposed to explain the exit poll discrepancies was refuted. So they were forced to suggest “false recall” as a last-ditch explanation and cited a post-election NES 600-sample survey to account for the impossible Final 43 Bush/37% Gore weights. This was the basis for their claim that 14.6% of Gore 2000 voters defected to Bush in 2004. It was a very thin reed. They implied that approximately 6.6% of Gore 2000 voters (8.6% higher than the 12:22am NEP defection rate) misrepresented their vote and told the exit pollsters they voted for Bush in 2000. The reason: a long-term bandwagon effect: Gore voters wanted to associate with the “winner”.

But “false recall” is not a plausible explanation since a) Gore won by 540,000 votes, b) according to the pristine 12:22am NEP, Kerry captured 91% of Gore voters and 10% of Bush voters, c) Bush had a 48.5% approval rating on Election Day 2004, d) false recall is not applicable to pre-election polls and e) the pre-election polls matched the exit polls. Why would Gore voters want to be associated with Bush? Even if returning Gore voters lied about their vote in 2000, it’s irrelevant. What is relevant is a) their factual 2000 recorded Gore vote and b) that 91% said they just voted for Kerry. We use this factual data to compute feasible and plausible weights by adjusting the 2000 recorded vote for mortality and estimated 2004 turnout.

They need to explain why the base case assumptions in the True Vote Model are not feasible and plausible. But the assumptions were based on feasible weights applied to plausible 12:22am NEP vote shares. The model determined that Kerry won by 66.1 - 58.4mm (52.6 - 46.4%). Applying the weights to the <2pm Final NEP (which used inflated Bush vote shares to match the vote count) Kerry was still the winner by 3.4 million (51.2 - 48.4%). The True Vote Model input consists of the following: 1) feasible “Voted 2000” weights (ratio of Kerry, Bush, Nader/other and new voters). The 2000 recorded vote was reduced by 3.5% for mortality and 95% turnout of 2000 voters in 2004; 2) 12:22am NEP vote shares; 3) 3.4mm uncounted votes: 125.7mm reported by the 2004 Census Bureau less 122.3mm recorded; 4) 2.6mm (75%) of the uncounted votes were for Kerry; historically, the majority of uncounted votes have been in Democratic minority districts.

The True Vote model also determined that 4.5mm (6.8%) of Kerry’s true vote must have been switched to Bush. The simple formula is True Vote = Recorded + Uncounted + Switched. Kerry’s True Vote was 66.1mm, his recorded vote 59.0mm and 2.6mm votes were uncounted. The model also concluded that Kerry won 336 electoral votes. This result matched the Nov.1 Election Model which used Monte Carlo Simulation to calculate Kerry’s expected electoral vote. According to the 2004 EIRS (Election Incident Reporting System), 86 of 88 touch screen vote switching incidents were from Kerry to Bush, a 1 in 79 sextillion probability.

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, a 1% monthly decline from Sept. 2001.

They need to explain how Kerry lost the popular vote in 2004, even though he won a solid 57-41% share of new (DNV2k) voters. Of the DNV2k voters, Kerry won first-time voters by 55-43% and other new voters by 61-37%. Gore won the popular vote in 2000 even though Bush captured new (DNV96) voters by 52-44%. But this is quite strange, especially since Gore won first-timers (52-43%) and Bush won others (71-26%). How could there have been such a wide discrepancy in vote share between first-timers and others? Did Bush really win 71% of other new voters?

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? Or was it because BushCo did not want to explain how 50 states red-shifted? 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 vote shares in calculating “swing”. Assuming 3% vote switching from Gore to Bush, swing exceeded red-shift in 43 states. Average adjusted state swing was 4.0%; average red-shift, 1.5%. Weighted average adjusted swing was 3.74%; weighted average red-shift, 1.41%. Assuming zero vote-switching, adjusted swing exceeded red-shift in 32 states. Average adjusted swing was 2.58%; weighted average swing was 2.39%. An adjusted swing vs. red-shift bar graph displays the deviations. Another scatter chart shows that adjusted swing exceeded 4% in 18 states while red-shift exceeded 4% in only 2 states. The naysayer swing vs. red-shift argument is just another ruse meant to divert, confuse and mislead.

They argued that the Final Ohio exit poll does not indicate fraud. But they ignored the massive documented evidence of uncounted and switched votes, apart from voter disenfranchisement. And two election workers were convicted of rigging the recount. Kerry won the 12:22am Ohio exit poll Gender demographic (1963 respondents) by 52.06-47.94%, but lost the 2:06pm Final (2020) by 50.94-49.06%. In the Final, the vote shares and weights were changed in favor of Bush to match the miscounted Ohio recorded vote. This was just like the final 2pm NEP in which vote shares and weights were changed from the 12:22am timeline to match the miscounted National vote. Two models confirmed that Kerry won Ohio. The first was based on 12:22am NEP vote shares with weights adjusted to the Ohio 2000 recorded vote. Kerry was the 51.74-48.26% winner, within 0.32% of the exit poll. The second was based on uncounted (3%) and switched vote (6.15%) assumptions applied to the recorded vote. Kerry was the 52.6-47.4% winner. An exhaustive statistical study of actual ballots in Ohio’s Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) indicated that 6.15% of Kerry’s votes were switched.

Using the original 12:22am Ohio exit poll weights for the following demographics, it would have been necessary to inflate the Bush vote shares to implausible levels to match the recorded vote. So the weights were changed in favor of Bush to minimize the change.

-First-time voters: 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%?

-When Decided: 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 79% who decided earlier? Did Bush lead by 10% in any of the early polls?

-Party ID: The weights changed from 38D/35R to 35D/40R, a 7.9% shift. With the original weights, Bush needed 17% of Democrats to match the recorded vote. He had 8%.

-Ideology: Liberal/Conservative weights changed from 21/32 to 19/34, a 9.5% shift. With the original weights, Bush needed 23% of Liberals to match the recorded vote. He had 13%.

-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. He had 7%.

They ignored Florida’s implausible vote count by machine type and party registration. In 2000, Bush supposedly “won” by 547 official votes. Given Gore’s 70% share of 180,000 uncounted under/over votes, he would have won by at least 60,000 votes had they been counted. In 2004, Bush supposedly “won” by 52-47%, a 368,000 vote margin. But the Democrats had a 41- 37% registration advantage in Touch Screen (TS) counties and a 42-39% edge in Optical Scan (OS) counties. Kerry won the TS counties (3.86mm votes) by 51-47%, but Bush won the OS counties (3.43mm votes) by a whopping 57-42%. Kerry’s low vote shares in the three most heavily populated (and Democratic) TS counties (Palm Beach, Broward, Dade) are highly suspect. Florida voter registration by party is the same in TS and OS counties, so we aren’t comparing apples and oranges. The TS county vote share matched the 12:22am NEP to within 0.43% for Bush and 0.31% for Kerry. The OS county share deviated by 9.0% for Bush (307,000 votes) while the Kerry discrepancy was -8.1% (278,000).

Several models indicate that Kerry won Florida. The first was based on voting machine type (optical scanners and touch screens) and used 2004 NEP “Party ID” vote shares with party registration percentage weights. Kerry won by 50.7-47.7%, a 221,000 vote margin. The second was based on uncounted (1%) and switched vote (6.9%) assumptions applied to the 2004 recorded vote. Kerry won by an identical 221,000 votes. In a third calculation based on 12:22am NEP vote shares with weights adjusted to the Florida 2000 recorded vote, Kerry is a 52.6-46.7% winner. In a fourth calculation, based on uncounted (3%) and switched vote (7%) assumptions applied to the recorded vote, Kerry is a 51.3-48.2% winner. Assuming that Kerry won 70,000 of 96,000 Nader 2000 votes (based on his 71% NEP share), he had a built-in 100,000 vote advantage on Election Day … assuming all the votes would be counted. The final Zogby pre-election poll had Kerry winning by 50-47%. 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%.

They cherry-picked the final NY pre-election poll (Kerry won by 59-40) which closely matched the 58.5-40.2 recorded vote to support their argument that the pre-election polls did not match the exit polls. They claimed that the NY pre-election poll was more accurate than the exit poll (Kerry 62.75-Bush 35.35- Other 1.9). But this implies that the recorded vote was not miscounted and that 100% of returning Nader 2000 voters defected to Bush- clearly impossible. The 2000 recorded vote was Gore 60.5 - Bush 35.4 - Nader 4.1. According to the 12:22am NEP, Kerry won Nader 2000 voters by 71-21%; 10% of Bush 2000 voters defected to Kerry while just 8% of Gore voters defected.

Adjusting the NEP weights based on the NY 2000 recorded vote and assuming 12:22am NEP vote shares, Kerry wins the adjusted exit poll by 60.8-Bush 38.1%. This is well within the 2.6% NY exit poll margin of error for 1452 respondents. But Kerry’s vote share was 10% higher in NY than it was nationally. Adjusting the NEP Voted 2000 vote shares to plausible NY levels increases Kerry’s margin to 62.7-36.3% - matching the exit poll. The assumption is that Kerry won 93% of Gore voters, 11% of Bush voters and 62% of DNV. A sensitivity analysis indicates that if Kerry won 91-95% of returning NY Gore voters and 54-62% of those who did not vote in 2000, his NY vote share ranges incrementally from 60.5% to 63.7%.

A third analysis, based on uncounted and switched votes added to the recorded vote, indicates that Kerry won NY by 62.8-35.8%. It assumes that 2% of total votes cast were uncounted (75% to Kerry) and that 7% of Kerry’s recorded vote was switched to Bush. The uncounted vote assumption is lower than the 2.74% national average since NY uses lever voting machines. The 7% switched vote assumption reflects the national result based on the 12:22am Exit poll adjusted for feasible weights.

The NY analysis illustrates another flaw in the naysayer argument. The typical pre-election state poll has a 4% margin of error (600 respondents); the corresponding exit poll has a 2-3% MoE, depending on the number of respondents. Therefore, a 4% discrepancy between the pre-election and exit poll is not unusual. It’s also an established fact that exit polls are more accurate than pre-election polls. But as we have shown, it’s a moot point since the true NY vote, adjusted for plausible weights and vote shares, matched the exit poll. Furthermore, the weighted average of 51 state pre-election polls, adjusted for undecided voters, also matched the weighted average exit poll to within 1%. Once again: It’s the Law of Large Numbers taking effect.

They have never explained why the Exit Poll Response Optimizer confirmed the USCV simulation. But 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 data constraints include 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 vote share 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.

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) are 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.