Who REALLY won the election ???? ( OT)

[Sarah Fox]

Hi Thump,

WOW!  Fascinating data!  OK, *this* is new....

Now, I'm a statistics sort of person (live and breathe the stuff), so I put
these figures to a quick t-test to see whether they could possibly be due to
chance alone.

These figures show exit polling results vs. "actual" vote count for 10 paper
ballot states and 8 non-paper ballot states.  Among the paper ballot states,
the differential between exit count and final count averaged 0.2% +/- 1.5%
(better outcome than estimated for Kerry), while the differential for the
non-paper-ballot states averaged -6.0% +/- 5.0% (worse outcome than
estimated for Kerry).  Using the most conservative possible statistical
assumptions (and I am generally a rather conservative statitician) of
2-tails and a heteroscedastic model, I find that the probability is less
than 1% that these results are due to chance alone.

Breaking this down further, there is greater than a 50% chance that the
differential in paper-balloting states is random and neither helped nor hurt
Kerry.  However, there is less than a 1% probability that non-paper
balloting didn hurt Kerry.  Scientists base their conclusions on a
convention of 5% or less.  So any scientist would conclude that non-paper
balloting reliably hurt Kerry and, further, that there would be some reason
that this balloting came out hurting him.  <insert election fraud theories>

As I said, I'm pretty statistically conservative.  (You Republicans should
like that about me! ;-)  So I pose the following questions to you, Thump.
They are pretty important, and they represent the last remaining assumptions
of a valid test:

(1)  Obviously not all 50 states are represented in this sample.  On the
surface, they do not appear "loaded" to support an argument of universal
election fraud, as the electronic vote in Colorado came out 1% better for
Kerry than exit polling predicted.  However, I still wonder.  Is there some
reason the remaining 32 states were not shown?  What criteria were used to
determine which states were included in the sample and which weren't?

(2)  Were the exit polls done the same way for all the states sampled?
Also, whose exit polls are these?

Oh, in case y'all are interested, I played around with the above data, with
the assumption that 10 out of 18 states do paper ballots and 8 out of 18 do
non-paper.  If the outcome were determined by popular vote, Kerry would have
had around a 90% chance of winning, if the little problem with non-paper
ballots were corrected (according to these figures, assuming a 1.75%
standard error of the mean and therefore a minimum of a 3.4% mean
non-paper-ballot error in Bush's favor).  If I'm not mistaken, a correction
of the vote from a few of the states in the graphs would have resulted in an
electoral victory for Kerry.  Hmmmmm....  Of course this is only a rough
estimate, but my tentative conclusion would be that George Bush is the only
2-term US president never to have been elected.  That'll be a great Trivial
Pursuit question in the year 2052 (a presidential election year, assuming
our government lasts that long).

In follow-up, I had a long chat with a very, VERY radically conservative
friend, and she is of the opinion that the Democrats have carved out a much
closer election outcome than they would have gotten had they not cheated
(!!).  Of course this assertion makes me chuckle, but it brings one thing to
light for me.  Neither side trusts the other not to cheat.  I think that
means this non-paper, non-recountable, electronic mess is a nightmare for
both sides.  We should ALL be screaming to the government either to FIX it
(i.e. with full paper acountability) or TRASH it.  Even if you don't buy my
conclusions, you should at least be concerned that non-paper balloting
creates almost four times the "error," irrespective of who benefits from it.

Peace,
Sarah