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March 31, 2005

Group of University Professors Urge Investigation of 2004 Election

PSoTD first allerted me yesterday to a new study that was to be released today, via Scoop, on the 2004 Presidential Election. Analysis of the study, which focused strictly on the discrepancies between exit polling data (which favored Kerry by 3%) and the official election results (which favored Bush by 2.5%), has just been posted by Scoop.

Scientific Analysis Suggests Presidential Vote Counts May Have Been Altered

Officially, President Bush won November's election by 2.5%, yet exit polls showed Kerry winning by 3% [1] . According to a report to be released today by a group of university statisticians, the odds of a discrepancy this large between the national exit poll and election results happening by accident are close to 1 in a million.

In other words, by random chance alone, it could not have happened. But it did.

Two alternatives remain. Either something was wrong with the exit polling, or something was wrong with the vote count.

We've all heard the hypothesis first floated immediately following the election which asserted that the discrepancy is nothing more serious than a reflection of Bush voters being hesitant to respond to exit polling questions. But according to the authors of this new study that hypothesis is virtually a statistical impossibility. “The required pattern of exit poll participation by Kerry and Bush voters to satisfy the exit poll data defies empirical experience and common sense under any assumed scenario.”

You can read the report online (PDF): Here

An executive summary (also PDF) can be found here.

Posted by Kevin at March 31, 2005 12:37 PM