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Farhad Manjoo, replying to my comment on his article, asks, " I'd honestly like to know if you can tell me what about this explanation doesn't work for you."
What doesn't work is that your explanation falls short of any standard of "proof".
First of all, you don't answer my main objection to your article, that the 2000 elections were flawed as well. That was another instance where the best polling minds in the world called the election for Al Gore. When the dust settled, the guy with fewer votes managed to get into office. After that, the pollsters got together and tightened the procedures. Remember the Voter News Service? It's one thing to blow a prediction. It's another to be off by "as much as 9.5 percent " (according to the Kennedy article). You're comparing rotten apples to rotten apples.
Two election cycles after they went to work, the people who make their living on polls can't predict the outcome of an election after it's happened? One election? Maybe. A string of predictions over six years? Highly unlikely. (I don't believe Elizabeth Dole won either, but that's a different story.)
Second, you don't seem to counter Kennedy's high-level sources with anyone I trust. Kennedy cites Lou Harris -- 'Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen,'' -- and John Zogby, who specifically answers your point about Mitofsky.
Third, your response isn't "proof", it's speculation. Your Mark Lindeman keeps saying things like, "it's possible" that Kerry voters in Bush strongholds "would" have been more likely to respond. The data, as reported by Kennedy, is that of a "careful examination of Mitofsky's own data by Freeman and a team of eight researchers." Exit polls are not "gospel", as Mitofsky points out, but surveys are used in almost all aspects of American life, and we're good at it.
To sum up my objections to the methodology in your article: You speculate about flaws in research but offer no proof, and the part of your analysis is to compare 2004 with the equally dirty 2000 and show how the exit polls were similarly wrong. We know Bush has no moral compass, and this is just one more disgrace.
