Decision ‘08

Krugman Needs a Correction of His Correction

In a rarity by any standards, Paul Krugman has admitted a mistake! Well, sort of…he has admitted he was wrong, then to correct himself, he issued the same wrong statement. We took the fact-challenged pundit to task on two occasions already regarding election 2000, but he keeps on digging:

In my column last Friday, I cited an inaccurate number (given by the Conyers report) for turnout in Ohio’s Miami County last year: 98.5 percent. I should have checked the official state site, which reports a reasonable 72.2 percent. Also, the public editor says, rightly, that I should acknowledge initially misstating the results of the 2000 Florida election study by a media consortium led by The Miami Herald. Unlike a more definitive study by a larger consortium that included The New York Times, an analysis that showed Al Gore winning all statewide manual recounts, the earlier study showed him winning two out of three.

Michelle Malkin, in reporting this, seems to buy into the Mickey Kaus assertion that Gore WOULD have won if the Supreme Court hadn’t stopped the recount, an analysis I reject because it relies on hypotheticals (not only regarding the Supreme Court decision, but regarding the ’smoking gun’ that the presiding judge PROBABLY would have allowed overvotes to be counted - that’s a lot of ifs). Donald Luskin gets it right:

…[T]he truth is that the study Krugman is talking about involved four methods for statewide recounts, and Bush won in three of them. Here’s the way USA Today tells it (emphasis added):

USA TODAY, The Miami Herald and Knight Ridder newspapers hired the national accounting firm BDO Seidman to examine undervote ballots in Florida’s 67 counties. The accountants provided a report on what they found on each of the ballots.

The newspapers then applied the accounting firm’s findings to four standards used in Florida and elsewhere to determine when an undervote ballot becomes a legal vote. By three of the standards, Bush holds the lead. The fourth standard gives Gore a razor-thin win.

The ridiculous thing is this could all be avoided if Krugman gave us chapter and verse of what aspects of which study he was using; obviously, he prefers the deviousness of obfuscation, knowing full well that most people (but not the bloggers!) won’t question a statement they see in the New York Times…

UPDATE 2:44 p.m. central: The MinuteMan boldly strolls into the fray here…

3 Responses to “Krugman Needs a Correction of His Correction”

1 too many steves Says:
August 26th, 2005 at 11:52 am
Personally, I’m just, um, well, stunned (?), that this is still considered, by some, a legitimate topic of discussion in 2005.
2 fatman Says:
August 26th, 2005 at 12:16 pm
too many steves:

I’m not.
3 Mark Says:
August 26th, 2005 at 12:48 pm
too many steves, it would be interesting to somehow know whether Republicans would still be crying 4-5 years later had Gore won; I suspect most of us would have gotten over it by now…