How were Mitofsky's Exit Polls adjusted to show a Bush victory?

[Bill Bored]

The question has been raised: How did Bush get 63.6% of the final 623 polled?

We know the final poll was adjusted.
This is old news (yawn).
Why do we keep rehashing this?
We have enough threads about this to knit a sweater!

The question should be: HOW was the final poll adjusted?

Here's how:

According to the unadjusted 80% poll (Scoop):
________ K _ B
DEM 38% 90 9
REP 36% 7 92
IND/
Othr 26 52 45
with 95% of the 11,027 sample responding,
Kerry beat Bush 51-48.

According to the final unadjusted ~100% poll (Washington Post):
________ K _ B
DEM 38% 90 9
REP 35% 7 92
IND/
Othr 26 52 44
with ~95% of the 13,047 sample responding,
Kerry beat Bush 51-48.

According to the adjusted 100% poll (Available EVERYWHERE):
________ K _ B
DEM 37% 89 11
REP 37% 6 93
IND/
Othr 26 49 48
with 96% of the 13,660 sample responding,
Bush beat Kerry 51-48.

What does this tell us?

It tells us that the adjustments were as follows:

1. Weight Dems and Republicans equally.

2. Give Bush a higher percentage of the Independent/other-party vote, but still less than Kerry.

3. Give Bush a higher percentage of Democratic voters and a slightly higher percentage of Republicans.

Now, the next question is: Out of these 3 adjustments, which one(s) is actually enough to swing the popular vote?

Answers:

1. Weighting Dems and Republicans equally still results in a Kerry victory, albeit by a very narrow margin of about 0.6% instead of 3%.

2. Giving Bush a higher percentage of the Independent/other-party vote results in a Kerry victory of 1.3%.

3. Giving Bush a higher percentage of Democratic voters results in a Kerry victory of 2%. Even if you throw Bush 1% more Republicans (93% vs. 92%), Kerry still wins by 1.3%.

So no one adjustment is enough to change the outcome.

4. Let's say we combine 1 and 2 above: Bush wins by 1.2%.

5. Combine 1 and 3 above: Bush wins by 1.3%.

6. Combine 2 and 3 above: Bush wins by 0.6%.

So, what does all this mean?

It means that to get enough of a swing to give Kerry's entire 3% popular vote margin to Bush, you had to make three separate adjustments to the exit polls.

Now could any or all of these be applied to hack the actual popular vote? Only 2 are needed for Bush to win it. Or is it possible that the polls really were off in these weightings?

Well, we could just start ANOTHER thread to discuss this further, but it MIGHT be nice to keep this one kicking around a for a while if it's not too much trouble.