Mitofsky will debate exit poll discrepancies at Penn on 14 October

international | politics / elections | news report Monday October 03, 2005 01:57 by Coilín Oscar ÓhAiseadha - Spider Force Máigh Nuad, Co. Cill Dara

Debate between pollster and statistician may shed light on exit poll discrepancies

Warren Mitofsky, founder-president of one of the two polling firms that conducted the exit polls in the US presidential elections of November 2004, has agreed to debate the likely cause of the significant discrepancies between the exit poll data, which predicted that John Kerry would win with a margin of 3% of the popular vote, and the final vote tallies, which returned George Bush to the White House with a margin of 2.5%.

The debate will be sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Organizational Dynamics and Department of Political Science, and will take place at lunchtime in Logan Hall, 249 South 36th Street, Philadelphia, on 14 October. For further details, please see the university's announcement below.

Statisticians and other researchers at American universities have published a series of scholarly analyses in which they conclude that they cannot reject the hypothesis that the discrepancies are due to “errors” in the vote tallies. Economist/statistician Ron Baiman has drawn a comparison with the Ukrainian presidential elections last December, where exit poll data also gave rise to suspicions of fraud.

But, paradoxically, the two firms that conducted the polls, Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International, insist that the discrepancies are due to flaws in the way they conducted their polls.

Speaking to a staff writer on the Washington Post in April, Warren Mitofsky dismissed the allegations of a group of researchers collaborating under the name of US Count Votes:
“I think they're wasting everybody's time, frankly," Mitofsky said. "I know they're very serious about believing that there was fraud, but I don't happen to share their view. I find myself in the awkward position of having to argue that the exit polls were wrong.”

(Vote Fraud Theorists Battle Over Plausibility: http://tinyurl.com/akkvt)

“I think fraud on a massive scale that their conclusion essentially requires is totally implausible,” Mitofsky continues. “To make it plausible it would have a lot of people working together, and you know from being in the news business how hard it is to keep something secret. I just think their whole explanation is implausible.”

But, in US Count Votes’ latest analysis, published on 8 September, the independent researchers insist that Edison and Mitofsky’s explanations fail to stand up to scrutiny:
“Ten months after the election, no plausible explanation of the 2004 exit poll discrepancy, based on exit polling error, has been provided by E/M. ... Perhaps an exit poll explanation for the discrepancy does exist. However, a cloud of suspicion is cast on the 2004 presidential election results because the possibility that a ‘vote miscounts’ explanation is required to generate the reported exit poll discrepancies is still open.”

(The 2004 Presidential Election: Exit Poll Error or Vote Miscount? http://tinyurl.com/8hh3p)

Perhaps this debate will provide an opportunity for the Irish media to consider the arguments from two of the strongest parties to the debate and report back to their readers, listeners and viewers back home?

*****

Please read the university's own announcement of the debate:

What's New
Updated September 22, 2005
Announcements
Friday, October 14 - Special Meeting Announcement

The Organizational Dynamics Graduate Program and the Department of Political Science are pleased to sponsor the fall meeting of the American Statistical Association, Philadelphia Chapter (ASAP). The luncheon meeting will begin on Friday, October 14 at 11:30 a.m. in Logan Hall (Terrace Room), 249 South 36th Street. The meeting will be opened to the public after lunch with free admission beginning at 12:45 p.m. See the RSVP instructions, below.

At 1:05 p.m., Steven Freeman, Affiliated Faculty and Visiting Scholar, Center for Organizational Dynamics, will speak on "Polling Bias or Election Fraud? An Examination of State-Level Discrepancies between the Official Count and Exit Poll Results in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election." Dr. Freeman's book, Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count will be published later this year by Seven Stories Press.

At 1:50 p.m., Warren Mitofsky, founder and President of Mitofsky International, will counter with "2004 Exit Polls: What Bloggers and Others Got Wrong." Mitofsky is a superstar in the world of pollsters. His website says, "Mitofsky International['s]. . . primary business is conducting exit polls for major elections around the world. It does this work exclusively for news organizations. Mitofsky has directed exit polls and quick counts since 1967 for almost 3,000 electoral contests in United States, Mexico, Russia and the Philippines."

http://organizationaldynamics.sas.upenn.edu/center/nav.cgi?page=whatsnew
OR
http://tinyurl.com/auj2h