News Intelligence Analysis
From Salon.com
Illegitimate Election
A key source for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responds to criticism
of his analysis of the 2004 election
By Steven F. Freeman
Jun. 12, 2006 | Because Robert F Kennedy Jr. based much of
the discussion in his Rolling Stone article on interviews with
me and on a close reading of my new book, coauthored with Joel
Bleifuss, "Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit
Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count," and because
Kennedy cites in his thorough footnotes many of the same key
sources we worked from, I feel compelled to address directly
several statements that Farhad Manjoo makes about the exit polls,
both in his original Salon article and in his response to Kennedy's
response to that article -- statements that are either incorrect
or based on misunderstandings about exit polls and the 2004 results.
We regret that Manjoo did not request an advance copy of our
book before writing his article. Had he done so, I'm confident
that many of the basic errors he made could have been avoided.
Are exit polls usually accurate?
Yes, they are. On Nov. 2, 2004, Manjoo's source Mark Blumenthal,
the Mystery Pollster, had this to say: "I have always been
a fan of exit polls. Despite the occasional controversies, exit
polls remain among the most sophisticated and reliable political
surveys available." Properly done exit polls are highly
accurate. Given the large sample size in U.S. exit polls, they
ought to be accurate within 1 to 2 percentage points of the official
count.
The 2004 Election Day exit poll was a well-funded effort conducted
by the most experienced pollsters in the business, and it represented
a broad spectrum of media interests, from Fox to CBS. The sample
included 114,559 respondents in the 50 state exit polls, conducted
at 1,480 precincts throughout the nation. A subsample of these
was selected to provide a sample representative of the U.S. electorate
for the national exit poll: 11,719 Election Day voters and 500
absentee and early voters. The National Election Pool, NEP, a
consortium of six news organizations (ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, Fox
and NBC) pooled resources to conduct a thorough survey of each
state and the nation. NEP in turn contracted two respected firms,
Joe Lenski's Edison Media research and Warren Mitofsky's Mitofsky
International, to conduct the polls.
Prior to 2000, no one even debated the accuracy of exit polls.
Scholars, practitioners and critics all agreed. In 1987, Washington
Post columnist David Broder wrote that exit polls "are the
most useful analytic tool developed in my working life."
Political scientists George Edwards and Stephen Wayne, in their
book "Presidential Leadership: Politics and Policy,"
put it this way: "The problems with exit polls lie in their
accuracy (rather than inaccuracy). They give the press access
to predict the outcome before the elections have been concluded."
An exit pollster himself for more than 20 years, St. Louis
University professor of political science Ken Warren has never
had an error greater than 2 percent, except one time -- in a
1982 St. Louis primary. In that election, massive voter fraud
was subsequently uncovered.
Do the exit polls indicate a Kerry electoral victory?
Yes, as Kennedy reported, they do. Manjoo references a report
I had written shortly after the election to refute Kennedy's
claim that exit poll data indicated a Kerry victory in Nevada,
New Mexico and Ohio.
At that time, the only data available (and these were hard
to come by!) were screen shots preserved from the CNN Web site
on Election Night (before the data were "corrected"
so as to conform to the count). Whether these data indicate a
Kerry victory was a matter of debate, but as any of Manjoo's
experts should have known, these data have been superseded by
the more detailed data released later by the National Election
Pool exit pollsters. The detailed 77-page report was released
on Jan. 19, 2005, Bush's Inauguration Eve. Reporters who filed
stories on it that night had no time to review it properly; they
could only summarize the report's conclusion. Their stories appeared
under misleading headlines such as MSNBC's "Exit Polls Prove
That Bush Won." In fact, the report makes no such claim.
Manjoo -- though not his triumvirate of expert sources --
may be partly excused for his ignorance on this matter. The National
Exit Pool unnecessarily complicates the data through secretive
processes and misleading terminology. Despite requests from U.S.
Congress members and faculty at leading research universities,
the National Exit Pool has refused to release or even permit
independent inspection of these data that would allow an investigation
of suspected fraud. We only had access to "uncorrected"
"early" exit poll data because of blogger leaks and
a computer glitch. The National Exit Pool intended to, and eventually
did, replace these CNN.com numbers with data "corrected"
so as to conform to the official count, and implied that the
Election Night CNN numbers were merely "early" results,
rather than what they really were: end-of-day data reflecting
the entire surveyed population.
Could the discrepancy between the exit poll results and
the official count have been due to chance or random error?
No, the discrepancy could not have occurred by chance.
The likelihood of the three most significant anomalies --
the dramatic differences between the official count and the exit-poll
projections posted on Election Night in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania,
the three critical swing states -- occurring together and all
favoring the incumbent, Bush, is about one in 660,000. These
odds are calculated by multiplying the individual likelihoods
from each state, which I have calculated from the exit poll data
and which we explain much more thoroughly in the book. This is
quite relevant, because it means that there must be an explanation
for these irrefutable differences between the vote count and
the exit polls.
Are we saying that this means that Kerry must have really
won the election?
The evidence that Kennedy cites to cast doubts on the election
results come from diverse sources. The exit polls have never
been cited as primary evidence of fraud, but only as a reason
to take that primary evidence to heart. The title of our book
is posed as a question: "Was the 2004 Presidential Election
Stolen?" In the book, we treat the exit poll discrepancy
as, in the words of Rep. John Conyers, "but one indicia
or warning that something may have gone wrong -- either with
the polling or with the election." We agree with Conyers
that the election results should bear greater scrutiny. The discrepancy
is an undisputed fact. The question is, What caused it?
There are only two possible explanations for the discrepancy:
1) far more Kerry voters than Bush voters agreed to fill out
the questionnaires offered by pollsters, or 2) the votes were
counted incorrectly. In our book, we examine these two possible
scenarios as thoroughly as possible.
How significant is the discrepancy?
Manjoo, like Blumenthal and Mitofsky, consistently understate
the magnitude and improbability of the discrepancy. A close look
at the Ohio results proves this. The official count in the 2004
Ohio election credited Kerry with 48.7 percent of the vote. The
10.9 percentage point disparity between the official count and
the exit poll results in those same precincts indicates that
Bush's exit poll results was 5.45 percentage points lower than
his official numbers and that Kerry's exit poll result was 5.45
percentage points higher, or 54.2 percent. A layman's intuition
may tell you that the difference between 48.7 percent and 54.2
percent is not large and you might be tempted to write it off
"to chance."
But bell-curve mathematics tells us that the expected range,
the polling margin of error, should have been within 47.1 percent
to 50.3 percent; 95 percent of the area under the bell curve
-- 95 percent of the possible results -- is within this range.
And 99 percent of the time the result would fall between 46.6
percent and 50.8 percent. If, in fact, 48.7 percent of the voters
in the surveyed Ohio precincts had cast their ballots for Kerry,
there should be an even probability of his receiving 48.7 percent
or less in the exit poll survey.
Yet the exit poll result falls at the 54.2 percent mark. This
is well outside the area where all the probability is located.
In fact there is virtually no chance that such a survey would
produce a result higher than around 51.9 percent. And this is
just one state. All told, 26 states had similar anomalous results.
The odds are astronomical that the exit poll results could have
been so far off in the same direction in so many states.
We reiterate that this does not prove that the official vote
count was fraudulent. What it does say is that the discrepancy
between the official count and the exit polls can't be just a
statistical fluke, but commands some kind of systematic explanation:
Either the exit poll was deeply flawed or else the vote count
was corrupted.
How do we measure the discrepancy?
This is the most technical part of the analysis, and it is
explained at some length in our book. The Edison/Mitofsky report
includes a particularly useful statistic, what the pollsters
called "Within Precinct Error" and what we called "Within
Precinct Disparity," as "error" implies "mistake"
rather than "difference." In order to understand the
discrepancy between the exit poll results and the official count,
the best measure is the rendering of the discrepancy within the
precinct itself.
In the book, we compare 1) the exit poll results by state
for Bush and Kerry, 2) each state's official vote tally for Bush
and Kerry, and 3) their differential. For example, in Nevada,
the official count for Bush is 50.5 percent. The official count
for Kerry is 47.9 percent. The difference between the two, the
official margin of victory for Bush, is 2.6 percent of the vote.
In Nevada, the exit poll result calculated for Bush was 45.4
percent. The exit poll result calculated for Kerry was 52.9 percent.
The difference in these exit poll results is a 7.5 percent margin
of victory for Kerry. The Nevada differential -- the shift between
the official count result, a 2.6 percentage point win for Bush,
and the exit poll result, a 7.5 percentage point win for Kerry,
was a huge 10.1 percentage points, as reported by the pollsters.
Because it is based on the precinct-level exit poll results,
we call this the "Within Precinct Disparity." This
is the difference between how people said they voted as they
walked out of the voting booth, and the way those votes were
officially recorded.
In New Mexico, there was a 7.8 percentage point disparity;
and in Ohio, 10.9 percentage point disparity. Given respective
official victory margins of 2.6, 0.8, and 2.1 percentage points
in these states, we can say with a very high degree of certainty
that exit poll results indicate a Kerry victory. Had Kerry won
these states (or even just Ohio), he would have won the presidency.
Have the exit pollsters provided a "clear and convincing
explanation" for the exit poll discrepancy?
No, they have not. Manjoo relies on a "hypothetical completion
rate of 50 percent for Bush voters and 56 percent for Kerry voters"
mentioned in the Edison/Mitofsky report to "explain"
the discrepancy. Unfortunately, what I said to Kennedy is absolutely
true: "The data presented to support the claim not only
fails to substantiate it, but actually contradicts it."
All independent indicators on poll participation suggest not
lower, but higher response rates among Bush voters. One of these
is that response rates are higher, not lower, in precincts where
Bush voters predominated as compared to precincts where Kerry
voters predominated. In precincts where Bush got 80 percent or
more of the vote, an average of 56 percent of people who were
approached volunteered to take part in the poll, while in precincts
where Kerry got 80 percent or more of the vote, a lower average
of 53 percent of people were willing to be surveyed.
Manjoo and the pollsters feel justified in ignoring these
indicators based on fanciful possibilities put forward by a aggressive
defender of the election, political scientist Mark Lindeman.
Manjoo writes:
"For instance, in the Bush strongholds -- where the average
completion rate was 56 percent -- it's possible that only 53
percent of those who voted for Bush were willing to be polled,
while people who voted for Kerry participated at a higher 59
percent rate. Meanwhile, in the Kerry strongholds, where Mitofsky
found a 53 percent average completion rate, it's possible that
Bush voters participated 50 percent of the time, while Kerry
voters were willing to be interviewed 56 percent of the time.
In this scenario, the averages work out to the same ones Kennedy
cited."
Unfortunately, even beyond the fact that there is no evidence
at all to support the suppositions, Lindeman is flat-out wrong
in his calculations. Claiming that the average of a 59 percent
response rate for Democratic voters and a 53 percent response
rate for Republican voters is 56 percent (59 plus 53, divided
by two) neglects the fact that we know that there are at least
four times as many Republican voters as Democratic voters in
this sample -- because it comes from the set of precincts identified
by the pollsters as precincts where 80 percent or more of the
voters voted for Bush.
The correct calculation would be that the response rate among
Kerry voters had to be at least 68 percent to balance out four
times as many Bush voters responding at a 53 percent rate.
Data in the Edison/Mitofsky report informs us of the WPD rates
by precinct partisanship is a whopping 10.0 percentage points
in these Bush strongholds (as compared to virtually zero in the
Kerry strongholds). US CountVotes analysts reconciled these two
sets of numbers (the math is not difficult, but more than I'll
take on here, although I do explore this in the book), and calculated
that response rate among Kerry supporters would have to be about
84 percent in Bush strongholds to reconcile the numbers.
All of which might leave you wondering why so many Democrats
would be willing to stick out their necks when they're in enemy
territory, surrounded by Republicans, but not willing to respond
to the poll in friendlier territory, where their response rate
is only 56 percent. Of course, the converse dilemma presents
itself in Kerry strongholds.
What about the historic overrepresentation of Democrats
in the exit polls?
Democratic overrepresentation, or overstatement, in the exit
polls is the same thing as Democratic undercount in the vote
tallies. And, as we point out in the book, a Democratic undercount
is historically established. The undercount is the votes that
are discarded, such as overvotes, undervotes and uncounted provisional
ballots. In each presidential election a documented 2 to 3 percent
of total votes are discarded.
What about flaws in the exit polls?
The pollsters do say in their report that the exit poll results
were not due to "sampling error," which means that
they did choose the right representative precincts for the state
and national surveys. Manjoo cites the "interviewer characteristics"
the report examines as another source of exit poll error. The
report sorts and evaluates poll results by examining interviewer
characteristics of the poll-takers: completion rates, age, gender,
level of education, date of hire, amount of training, and interactions
between poll-takers. The pollsters conclude that the disparity
is greater under four conditions:
when
interviewers are more than 25 feet away from the polling place
among
with younger interviewers
among
interviewers with advanced degrees
among
interviewers in large precincts
Now, in no way can we rule out the possibility of interviewer
effects, but we do point out, first, that this explanation is
at best unlikely to provide a complete explanation for the discrepancy.
It is significant to note that discrepancies were high for all
interviewer characteristics (for example, the disparity is higher
when the interviewer is farthest away, but even when the interviewer
was inside the polling place there was a 5.3 percentage point
disparity). So even if it is right to attribute polling error
to interviewer characteristics, it is unlikely that such error
could account for all of the discrepancy.
But none of these correlations explain the disparity between
the exit polls and the official count. It's understandable that
there might be more errors when the interviewer is farther away
from the polls, but these errors should balance out, sometimes
favoring Kerry, sometimes Bush.
The exit pollsters assume that groups with lower mean Within
Precinct Disparities (WPDs) are most accurate. But the data belie
that assumption. In fact, interviewers with advanced degrees
had lowest miss rates and lowest refusal rates, suggesting that
their results are likely the most accurate. And those with the
least education had the highest absolute error, meaning that
their results were all over the place. Their results were the
least accurate.
The flip side to this lack of a "clear and convincing"
polling explanation is that the exit pollsters have failed to
explain or even consider many indicators highly suggestive of
fraud: The 10.0 percentage point WPD in Bush strongholds is an
astounding number in and of itself. It means that in precincts
where according to the official count Bush received 90 percent
and Kerry 10 percent, exit polls indicated that, on average,
Bush would get 85 percent and Kerry 15 percent. In other words,
in Bush strongholds across the country, Kerry, on average, received
only about two-thirds of the votes that exit polls predicted.
In contrast, in Kerry strongholds, exit polls matched the official
count almost exactly.
And this is just one in a series of indicators of fraud. An
analysis of state-by-state differentials in WPD indicates that
discrepancies are higher in battleground states, higher where
there were Republican governors, higher in states with greater
proportions of African-American communities, and higher in states
where there were the most Election Day complaints.
* * * *
I appreciate the efforts of Rolling Stone and Salon
to bring this issue to public attention. Given the many transgressions
and statistical improbabilities in the 2004 presidential election,
we have an obligation to question it. And those responsible have
an obligation to investigate.
Absence of scrutiny does not make a democracy function; democratic
processes do. In the case of the 2004 presidential election,
the absence of reporting on the election controversy has left
the public highly suspicious. A Zogby Interactive online poll
one month after the election revealed that 28.5 percent of respondents
thought that questions about the accuracy of the official count
in the election were "very valid," and another 14 percent
thought that concerns were "somewhat valid." In other
words, 42 percent of all Americans had immediate concerns about
what had happened on Nov. 2, 2004. So long as the suspicions
are left to fester, the role of elections to confer legitimacy
on elected officials has already been lost.
-- By Steven F. Freeman
Send a letter
to the editor
about this exhibit
Related Articles:
A Vast Political Misfortune
Or Why Robert F. Kennedy,
Jr. is Correct
in His Assessment of the Late 2004 Election
(which was sadly murdered by the G.O.P.,
may it rest in peace). And Why Salon.com’s
Article Attacking Kennedy is Wrong.
By
Katherine Yurica
Was the 2004 Election Stolen?
Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in
Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted --
enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.
BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR
Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004
election watching the returns on television and wondering
how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory
for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the
official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush --
and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to
contest the results, Kerry
conceded.
Battle for Ohio:
Part II. Articles Revealing Election Wrongdoing
Part IV. Articles Analyzing Voting Machine Election Fraud
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