Former Komen exec. who pushed to defund Planned Parenthood weighing Senate bid

[Overseas]

51. I agree. Exit polling used to track well. Then it diverged and oddly, with a strong red shift

One of my favorite mathematicians is Richard Charnin, who on his website, using readily available public information, calculates the odds of the so-called ‘red shift” occurring from the 1988 to 2008 presidential elections. The red shift refers to the overwhelming pick up of votes by the Republican Party in recorded votes over what actual voters report to exit pollsters.

In Charnin’s analysis of exit poll data, we can say with a 95% confidence level – that means in 95 out of 100 elections – that the exit polls will fall within an statistically predictable margin of error. Charnin looked at 300 presidential state exit polls from 1988 to 2008, 15 elections would be expected to fall outside the margin of error. Shockingly, 137 of the 300 presidential exit polls fell outside the margin of error.

What is the probability of this happening? “One in one million trillion trillion trlllion trillion trillion trillion,” said Charnin....132 of the elections fell outside the margin in favor of the GOP. We would expect eight.

-Bob Fitzrakis in The Free Press, 6/13/12

More: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/17/1100706/-Red-Shift-why-it-s-important