Decision ‘08

The Mystery Pollster: RFK, Jr. Ignores Exit Poll Flaws

Much was made (mostly on the left side of the aisle, of course) of Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s assertion that Ohio was stolen in 2004, prominently made recently in Rolling Stone. Mark Blumenthal, otherwise known as the Mystery Pollster, is an expert (and a Democrat!) and he cries foul:

While it covers many topics involving alleged suppression and fraud in Ohio, the article disappoints in its discussion of the exit poll controversy, because on that aspect of the controversy Kennedy manages to dredge up nearly every long-ago discredited distortion or half-truth on this subject without any acknowledgement of contrary arguments or the weaknesses in his argument. It is as if the exit poll debate of the last eighteen months never happened. With this two-part post, I want to review the article’s discussion of the exit poll controversy in-depth, for it provides a good opportunity to learn something about what exit polls can tell us — and mostly what they cannot — about whether fraud was committed in the 2004 elections.

Blumenthal gives Kennedy props for discussing many important issues impacting minority voters, but he says, in so many words, that Kennedy has proven that the election could have gone the other way, not that it was stolen. An important distinction, that…