The 7-Hour Presidency of JFK2
Let the vicious backbiting begin.
By Mickey Kaus
Updated Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2004, at 3:12 AM PT
Bush 51, Kerry 48: Pollster Ruy Teixeira demands that these raw numbers be weighted to reflect party I.D.! ... 3:04 A.M.
The Seven Hour Presidency: The following email from an anonymous but very knowledgeable source seems to summarize yesterday quite effectively:
[T]he VNS [leadership] from 2000 (disaster) and 2002 (complete collapse of VNS) must be overjoyed with the utterly dreadful performance of the much ballyhooed National Election Pool [which conducted the 2004 exit polls]. They f*** up the national poll, countless state polls (Virginia is a toss-up, I don't think so!) and God knows what else. The entire news media goes off on a completelymisguided goose chase (or goose hunt!) for SEVEN HOURS (from 2-9pm), and since few of them have any idea how to read a county vote table, many of them keep pumping the Kerry wins fable.
It's an unbelievable f***-up.
I fell for it myself--emailing several Democratic friends to assure them that Kerry was looking good (though mainly I fell for that Ipsos weekend telephone poll). [More: see also RealClearPolitics's report--search for "Sabato."] ... Why were the exit polls so off? My nominee is Reason 3 from Mystery Pollster's list--"Voting patterns may be different early in the day." Specifically, angrier voters vote earlier. This year, Kerry voters were angrier, so angry that they lined up at the polls as soon as they could in the morning and got disproportionately counted by the NEP survey-takers. Unfortunately, they could only vote once, and their vote was cancelled by the less angry Republicans who sauntered in later in the day. Just a theory. ... Next question: Was the Incumbent Rule disproved? On first glance, yes. Look at Slate's average of Bush's vote share in the last Florida polls: 47.7%. Yet in the event Bush got a much bigger share--52.1%. The Incumbent Rule says that is not supposed to happen. Chris Suellentrop's explanation--that the anti-Bush vote went to Nader--won't do the job. Nader got only 0.4% of the vote in Florida. ... 1:55 A.M
Is Zogby Nailed to the Perch? He waits until 5:00 P.M. on Election Day to make his "2004 Predictions," and still gets it all wrong! ... Update: Zogby International has issued a statement. ("I thought we captured a trend, but apparently that result didn't materialize.") 12:49 A.M.
I was right! Kerry should have dropped out in New Hampshire. |
