Richard Charnin: 25 Questions for Nate Silver

In December 2009, you posted 20 questions for bill killers. Now I have 25 polling/math questions for you. Most are on election killers, but for variety, I included one about baseball (the 1951 Miracle of Coogan’s Bluff) and another on the JFK assassination.

The questions are in multiple-choice format. Many election activists are interested in your answers. Take your time and respond at your convenience. And it’s open book. You will find most, but not all of the answers in my book Proving Election Fraud: Phantom Voters, Uncounted Votes, and The National Exit Poll.

1) Approximately how many votes have been uncounted in the 11 presidential elections since 1968?
a) 10 million; b) 30 million; c) 80 million

2) According to the Edison-Mitofsky 2004 Evaluation Report, in the five presidential elections from 1988 to 2004, 65 of 238 State Exit Polls had a Within Precinct Discrepancy (WPD) which exceeded 6.0% (i.e. exceeded the 3% margin of error). How many of the 65 favored the Republican?
a) 30; b) 40; c) 64

3) In 2004, at the 12:40am exit poll timeline, the already adjusted state exit polls indicated that 16 states exceeded the state exit poll margin of error in favor of Bush. How would you compute the probability and what was it?
a) 1 in 1000; b) 1 in 1 million; c) 1 in 19 trillion

4) 29 state unadjusted exit polls exceeded the margin of error in favor of Bush. What is the probability?
a) 1 in 10 million; b) 1 in 100 trillion; c) less than 1 in 1000 trillion

5) Kerry’s aggregate unadjusted state exit poll share was
a) 48%; b) 50%; c) 52%

6) In 2000, Al Gore won the recorded vote by 540,000. Gore won Florida easily. But according to the Census, approximately 6 million votes were uncounted. Therefore, a reasonable estimate of Gore’s True Margin is
a) 1 million; b) 2 million; c) 3 million

7) According to the 1992 National Exit Poll, the percentage of living Bush 1988 voters who turned out to vote in 1992 was
a) 95%; b) 98%; c) 119%

8) According to the 2004 National Exit Poll, the percentage of living Bush 2000 voters who turned out to vote in 2004 was
a) 95%; b) 98%; c) 110%

9) Bush had 50.46 million recorded votes in 2000. The Final 2004 National Exit Poll indicated that returning Bush 2000 voters comprised 43% (52.6 million) of the 122.3 million recorded in 2004. Given the 1.25% annual voter mortality rate, 2.5 million Bush 2000 voters died prior to 2004. Assuming that 47 of 48 million living Bush voters turned out in 2004, the National Exit Poll overstated the number of Bush voters by
a) 2 million; b) 4.6 million; c) 5.6 million

10) According to the 2008 National Exit Poll, 46% (60.3 million) of the 131.4 million who voted in 2008 were returning Bush 2004 voters and 37% (48.6 million) were returning Kerry voters. In other words, even assuming that Bush won by the recorded 3 million margin (very unlikely), the NEP required 12 million more returning Bush than Kerry voters in order to match the 2008 recorded vote. That is
a) plausible; b) unlikely; c) virtually impossible

11) The 2008 Election Analysis shows that Obama had 52% of 121 million votes recorded on Election Day. What was his share of the 10 million late votes recorded after Election Day?
a) 52%; b) 54%; c) 59%

12) According to the 2004 Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS), of 88 reported vote-switching incidents, 86 were from Kerry to Bush, 2 from Bush to Kerry. What are the odds of this?
a) 1 in 1 million; b) 1 in 100 million; c) 1 in 79,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

13) In the 2006 midterms, the Final National Exit Poll was forced to match the recorded vote (52-46% in favor of the Democrats). What was the Democratic share in the unadjusted exit poll?
a) 52%; b) 54%; c) 56.4%

14) The 2008 Gallup tracking poll had Obama winning by 53-40%. Giving 1.5% to third-parties and allocating the undecided vote, Obama was projected to get
a) 53%; b) 54%; c) 57%

15) The Census indicates that 110.8 million votes were cast in 2000 and 125.7 million in 2004. Given the 1.25% annual voter mortality rate, an estimated 98% turnout of living 2000 voters in 2004 and the National Exit Poll vote shares, what was the True Vote?
a) Kerry by 67-57 million; b) Kerry by 63-61 million; c) Bush by 63-61 million

16) Final state and national exit polls are always forced to match the recorded vote. Do you believe this is justified statistically?
a) Yes; b) No

17) Given that Bush won the recorded vote by 50.7-48.3 million and John Kerry won the unadjusted aggregate state exit poll (100,000 respondents) by 52-47%. Rasmussen predicted the recorded vote. Zogby closely matched the exit poll. Who was the better pollster?
a) Rasmussen; b) Zogby

18) In the final 2008 tracking polls, Zogby had Obama leading by 54-43%; Gallup 53-40 and Rasmussen 51-46. Which do you believe was the best pollster?
a) Zogby; b) Gallup; c) Rasmussen

19) Comparing the Gallup and Research 2000 volatilities in their respective tracking polls, the Gallup standard deviations were 2.02% for Obama and 1.74% for McCain. The corresponding R2K deviations were 1.59% and 1.86%. Based on these numbers, which poll was the most volatile?
a) Gallup; b) R2K; c) basically equal

20) The final 2004 national pre-election polls were essentially tied at 47%. Since 5% were undecided and given that the undecided vote virtually always goes to the challenger (Gallup allocated 90% to Kerry) what would have been your projection?
a) Kerry by 51-48; b) Bush by 51-48; c) too close to call

21) Do you believe that in 2004 realclearpolitics.com was correct in listing the15 final likely voter (LV) polls but not one registered voter (RV) poll? All indications were that the Democrats registered millions more new voters than the Republicans. In fact, Kerry won 22 million new voters by nearly 60-40%.
a) Yes, b) No

22) Given that 15 witnesses to the JFK murder died unnaturally within one year of the assassination, how would you compute the probability assuming there were 1000, 5000, or 10000 witnesses?
a) 100,000 simulation trials; b) Normal Distribution; c) Poisson Distribution

23) Given that on Aug. 12, 1951 the Brooklyn Dodgers (73W-38L) held a 13.5 game lead over the NY Giants (59-51), what is the probability that the Giants would rally to force a playoff and tie the Dodgers at 96-58?
a) 1 in 1,111,000 b) 1 in 716,000; c) 1 in 587,000

24) Now that you know that Zogby final polls closely matched the True Vote in 2000,2004 and 2008, do you feel that you owe him an apology?
a) Yes; b) No

25) Will you discuss the fact that The National Exit Poll is always forced to match the recorded vote (even if the vote is fraudulent) in the NY Times or when you next appear on Maddow or Olbermann?
a) Yes; b) No

ENDS

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