OK, so this isn’t exactly breaking news because this report was published about two weeks ago, but it’s worth a full read. A Utah based not for profit, US Count Votes, has put forth a detailed statistical analysis of the discrepancies between exit polling data and the actual results from the presidential election. The report is skeptical of some of the explanations provided by Edison/Mitofsky, the exit polling group, that showed Kerry with a 3% lead over Bush throughout the day on November 2nd. US Count Votes enlists a slew of PhDed economists and mathematicians to look at the numbers. They conclude:

The recent and ongoing proliferation of sophisticated computerized vote recording and tallying equipment, much of it unverifiable and hence “faith-based”, dramatically augments the opportunities for wholesale and outcome-determinative distortions of the vote counting process. That the lion’s share of this equipment is developed, provided, and serviced by partisan private corporations only amplifies these serious concerns. The fact that, in the 2004 election, all voting equipment technologies except paper ballots were associated with large unexplained exit poll discrepancies all favoring the same party certainly warrants further inquiry. The absence of any statistically-plausible explanation for the discrepancy between Edison/Mitofsky’s exit poll data and the official presidential vote tally is an unanswered question of vital national importance that demands a thorough and unflinching investigation [Their emphasis].

The report rejects every one of the weak explanations Edison/Mitofsky put forward. It isn’t a partisan report, so there aren’t any unfounded accusations, such as Bush stole the election with the help of Diebold et al. But they push for a full investigation into what did occur and how exit polling data was so dramatically different from the final tally’s. It’s interesting to note that E/M’s polls were accurate in predicting Senate races in the same places that they failed to predict the presidential leads, meaning talking to the same people got correct results on Senate races, but incorrectly showed Kerry leading in a precinct. Hmmm.

Well, anyways, I’m with US Count Votes. We should find out what happens and while this report doesn’t tell us, it gives us some good reasons to keep looking.

Philo