Reply #22: that seems more or less upside down

[OnTheOtherHand]

It is the folks who use the exit polls to assert vote miscount -- not the exit pollsters themselves -- who are affirming great confidence in the preliminary exit poll results. Right?? The exit pollsters have built their projection system to not rely upon the preliminary exit poll results in close races. It is the outsiders who are second-guessing the insiders' decision not to call the election for Kerry.

My head is starting to hurt trying to modify your analogy to deal with that. It as if a firm told you that its books were probably wrong, and you insisted on assuming that the books were actually right -- because, as we all know, company accounts are uncannily accurate, generally within a fraction of a percentage point!

We can discuss whether more exit poll info from 2004 should be released and why, but it doesn't have any bearing on what future exit polls are likely to prove (and to whom), so perhaps we can set that aside. (Or not, as you prefer.)

There was actually no propensity for exit poll results to 'swing' more in locales (precincts or states) that used DREs. So the exit polls do not seem to support DRE-based fraud, at least no more -- and probably less -- than lever-machine-based fraud. Again, this perhaps has little bearing on what future exit polls are likely to prove.