Et tu, Al Gore? « Richard Charnin's Blog
Michael Green
Et tu, Al Gore?
11 JanJan. 11, 2012
Et tu, Al Gore?
Watching The Young Turks covering the NH primary last night on Al Gore’s Current TV, I was struck by the comments made by Gore and Jennifer Granholm. Cenk, who appears to be one honest, smart reporter dedicated to the truth, brought up the topic of exit polls. Gore and Granholm immediately reverted to the media canard that they are not to be trusted.
Al Gore KNOWS he won in 2000 and that the exit polls indicated just that in Florida until 16,000 votes were DEDUCTED from Gore’s total in Volusia county. At that point, Fox News called Florida for Bush and the other networks immediately did likewise. Al Gore KNOWS that exit polls are very accurate; his comment was a real letdown to this analyst who has always been a fan.
For Gore and Granholm to dismiss the “unreliable” exit polls, they would also have to dismiss the following 2000 election facts.
Gore beat Bush by 540,000 recorded votes(48.4-47.9%). But he won the aggregate unadjusted state exit polls (56,000 respondents) by 50.8-44.5% – a 6 million vote margin. Coincidentally, according to the Census, there were nearly 6 million uncounted votes (spoiled, provisional, absentee), of which 75-80% were Gore votes. Therefore, uncounted votes account for approximately one half of the 6 million exit poll discrepancy.
Now consider Florida which Bush “won” by 537 recorded votes. But there were nearly 200,000 spoiled ballots, of which 70% were Gore votes – a combination of underpunched, overpunched and “butterfly” ballots. That’s a net loss to Gore of 80,000 votes right there. But how many TOTAL ballots (spoiled, provisional, absentee, etc.) were never counted?
Gore won the unadjusted Florida exit poll in a landslide 53.4-43.6%. There were 1816 respondents, a conservative 3% margin of error. Even assuming Gore’s share was overstated by 3%, he won by 50.4-46.6%, a 230,000 vote margin. So how do we account for the 230,000 discrepancy from Bush’s 537 recorded vote margin?
Let’s be conservative. We will assume that the uncounted ballots were all spoiled ballots. According to the Census, there were 43,000 Net Uncounted votes (uncounted – stuffed ballots)in Florida.
Since Stuffed ballots is equal to Gross uncounted (200,000 spoiled) less Net uncounted (43,000), there must have been 157,000 stuffed ballots.
Therefore, Gore’s margin was reduced by approximately 80,000 due to 200,000 spoiled ballots and by 157,000 from the stuffed Bush ballots. The 237,000 total reduction is within 7,000 of the 230,000 calculated above. And that is being conservative.
Remember, we are assuming that a) Gore won with a 3% lower vote share than the unadjusted 53.4% exit poll and b) all uncounted votes were the result of 200,000 spoiled ballots. We have ignored the (unknown) absentee and provisional ballots. These would very likely raise Gore’s vote share closer to his unadjusted 53% exit poll share.
President Gore, what is the mission of Current TV? To be truly independent and fact-based, or just another clone of the mainstream media?
http://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/current-tv-and-election-truth/President Gore, you won a mini-landslide in 2000:
http://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/unadjusted-state-exit-polls-indicate-that-al-gore-won-a-mini-landslide-in-2000/