I’ve been keeping an eye on The Huffington Post and so far I’m liking it — they have a pretty good mix of issues, ideas, perspectives. There are some liberals running around but also some conservatives. It seems like more libs than conservatives, but that happens.
Anyway, I really thought the exit poll conspiracy meme was dead. It’s been pretty thoroughly debunked, but some folks don’t want to see that. One of them is Jim Lampley (at The Huffington Post):
At 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on Election Day, I checked the sportsbook odds in Las Vegas and via the offshore bookmakers to see the odds as of that moment on the Presidential election. John Kerry was a two-to-one favorite. You can look it up.
People who have lived in the sports world as I have, bettors in particular, have a feel for what I am about to say about this: these people are extremely scientific in their assessments. These people understand which information to trust and which indicators to consult in determining where to place a dividing line to influence bets, and they are not in the business of being completely wrong. Oddsmakers consulted exit polling and knew what it meant and acknowledged in their oddsmaking at that moment that John Kerry was winning the election.
And he most certainly was, at least if the votes had been fairly and legally counted. What happened instead was the biggest crime in the history of the nation, and the collective media silence which has followed is the greatest fourth-estate failure ever on our soil.
So, the first problem is that the bookies are wrong sometimes. They’re gambling. Yes, they’re very good at picking the odds, but they do occasionally screw up. This was one of those times. Further, they’re using exit polls which, contrary to Mr. Lampley’s insinuation, are highly subject to a wide range of statistical anomalies. The most common is over-participation. In the 2004 Election Exit Polls, Democrats participated at a markedly higher rate than republicans.
Specifically, have a look here.
I think Mr. Lampley needs to MoveOn(.org).
UPDATE: Byron York rephrases Mr. Lampley’s post in terms of The Derby. Funny stuff.
Two-to-one odds… so doesn’t that mean they expected Kerry should have beat Bush with by earning approximately 67% of the votes (assuming no third parties counted)?
Now, call me crazy, but that is the only mention I heard of either candidate not being relatively neck-and-neck. And if Kerry beat Bush by that popular majority, it would have been the largest victory of any Presidential candidate since before John Quincy Adams, when the first popular vote results were released with reasonable accuracy.
That’s not really what it means.
Given how close the vote totals usually are, a close election could also produce 2-to-1 odds… all that’s saying is that 2 times out of every 3 that this data is seen, Kerry will win.