Reply #19: Thanks Bill [View All]

Actually I was responding to one of the other posts in the thread and I failed to post it under that one.

What you did is sound. What I think is the great unknown is what other weighting was done during the day- were precincts weighted because of perceptions of turnout, were there initial turnout weights used that mirrored 2000 that were dropped or modified during the day, were there assumptions made about party breakdown in the turnout weighting and were those correct? Everyone seems to agree that the exit polls had a 1.9% Kerry skew and without the internal processes (which Mitofsky hasn't released) used on the data through election day I think we are completely in the dark about where it came from. It could be poor design or implementation, fraud or something systemic about Americans and polls and you're right without Mitofsky's info we can't prove any of the three.