What really happened in the 2022 elections?

[Bob Klauber]

Seems to me there are three possible reasons for the flip from red shift to blue shift in 2022.

1. There really has been a “reluctant Republican responder to polls” effect, but, after 20 years, it suddenly changed in one year to a “reluctant Democrat responder to polls” effect.

2. A Republican led element has been manipulating electronic voting for 20 years, but they suddenly stopped this year, and the Democrats suddenly started.

3. A Republican led element has been manipulating electronic voting for 20 years, but they suddenly stopped this year for fear of being caught, because of all the furor over voting and the resulting increase in oversight. The pollsters had been red shifting their reports over the years to match official results, so those official results (now accurate) appeared blue shifted.

Which of these scenarios seems most likely?

Question for Theodore de Macedo Soares: How confident are you that the exit polls in your chart represent raw data, rather than massaged data? The pre-election polls are, in high likelihood, massaged to track historical results.

[Josh Mitteldorf]

Bob -

    When you frame the question that way, you put the rabbit in the hat. If we are going to have any credibility at all, we have to pursue the evidence wherever it leads without partisan prejudgement.

     We know that Hillary stole votes from Bernie. We know that Mayor Daley stuffed ballot boxes.  We know that our pleas for Democratic party leaders to come out for verifiable machines went unheeded for many years. It's not responsible to go into researching the 2022 election with a presumption in favor of Democrats. And if we do this, then no one will listen to us next time there's a redshift -- and who would blame them?

- Josh

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[Jonathan Simon]

I wrote an article that speaks to the "mystery" of E2022: https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/the-election-didnt-go-boom-so-whats-the-problem/.

 

Note especially the acknowledgement by Philip Bump (WaPo) that the pollsters did in fact further red-tweak the polls, finally getting it "right" (the net blue shift was negligible -- the poll/votecount relationship was about what we'd expect of an honest election honestly polled). There's been a lot of red-tweaking over the years - to the point where I think the one thing we can agree on is that polls conducted according to established and untweaked methodologies would be chronically well to the left of votecounts -- make of that what you will.

 

And no, we don't "know" that Hillary "stole votes from Bernie," any more than we "know" that Trump stole votes from Hillary or Rove from Kerry (for Bush). (Mayor Daley couldn't be less relevant to the activities of the computerized voting era.)

 

I'm not sure, Josh, why you find it necessary, or even acceptable, to apply a double standard of "proof" or probative value in service to your determination to indict both sides here. I don't quite understand why you are trying so hard and why you, as an expositor of scientific method, should depart from it, even rhetorically, so glibly.

 

We've collected data for 20 years -- and we've also observed behavior and adherence and lack of adherence to basic ethical standards for at least 20 years. It's pretty plain what direction virtually all of the indicators are pointing, which side of this room the stench is coming from. In that regard, here's another recent article: https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/elections/no-its-not-both-sides-response-to-a-liberal-friend/. 

 

There are many examples of nuance to be found in the world. As one who has probably spent more time than anyone here, and maybe on the planet, collecting and analyzing US elections' data, I can tell you flat out that this isn't one of them.

Jonathan D. Simon

Senior Editor, WhoWhatWhy.org

Executive Director, Election Defense Alliance (2006 - 2016)

Author: CODE RED: Computerized Elections and the War on American Democracy

www.CodeRed2020.com

@JonathanSimon14

831-266-5111

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[Theodore de Macedo Soares]

Bob,

You wrote: Question for Theodore de Macedo Soares: How confident are you that the exit polls in your chart represent raw data, rather than massaged data? The pre-election polls are, in high likelihood, massaged to track historical results.

Yes, pre-election polls, this year, have been adjusted to over-weigh Republicans. As I noted in my comment, according to Nate Cohn, the NY Times chief political analyst, are specifically weighed, on dubious grounds, to adjust for their past “misses” by adding an average of two percentage points to their polls of Republicans in this election.

Nate's article.

On the exit polls, I noted in my comment, there is no record that Edison used such dubious means to alter them to compensate for past "misses." For now, in agreement with Josh's comment, I take them at face value.

If the apparent "blue shift" helps bring Republicans on board HCPB, there is nothing wrong with that.

As I noted in my comment: "The main problem, of course, is that the hidden computerized vote tabulation is trusted as accurate while pre-election and exit polls are not. In actuality, no one can know if the computer counts are accurate, with much evidence showing they are not.

We need to follow Germany’s example, and most of the world, and count votes transparently by hand."

Ted

www.tdmsresearch.com

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[Bob Klauber]

Not sure how my points are partisan. #2 surely isn't. All three are just summarizing what I see as the possible reasons for the data we have seen. If anyone can come up possible scenarios for that data other than these three, let's hear it.

Sure there have been funky things involving the Democrats. But for the Republican/Democrat match ups in the last 20+ years, we've seen a clear, unambiguous pattern suddenly reverse. The questions are why and what seems most probable?

Part of the answer may revolve around Theodore's exit poll data. How unaltered was it?

Bob K

[Paul Lehto]

The political parties are in the midst of realignment, which historically happens approximately every 50 to 75 years.  If you identify with a political party for a long time you might nit notice the shifts because it is the water you swim in. But lots of people are noticing the parties changing positions in the last few years. 

I'll give one solid example. In the early 2000s, the Democrats tended to be doves and the Republicans hawks. I'm not saying Republicans are doves now but Democrats consistently poll more hawkish and pro-war than Republicans. 

After Russiagate, Democrat have become the party of trusting the military FBI and CIA, with Republicans significantly more skeptical.  Per has this is just the effect of different media silos but it is true nonetheless. 

Across the board Dems have moved from the 60s mantra of "question authority" to trusting the authority. There is zero room for debate -even scientific debate - on Covid policy for example. 

The military and the CIA are widely immune from rigorous examination of any kind. And in the final shift, Dems have gone.frlm the party more likely to distrust election results to the party much more likely to trust them-to the point where certification ends all debate and questioning makes one scurrilous somehow.

I think Bob has missed possibilities in the shift from red shift to blue shift.  What if the "party" or parties influencing and shifting election results don't give a hoot about partisan politics per se but are most interested in preserving and enhancing the power of the establishment?

That would explain red shifts turning into blue shifts.  In fact,  the names "red' and "blue" imply a big difference when maybe the shift is always the same and it is a pro establishment shift, but the parties have evolved.

Paul Lehto, J.D

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[Joel Simpson]

Bravo, Jonathan. I read your article. The election climate has clearly changed since the era of computerized voting machines.

Now what to do with all those outdated machines that caused so much mischief? Sell them for parts?

Best,

Joel

Joel Simpson

jssp...@verizon.net

908-875-8741

joelsimpsonart.com

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[Jonathan Simon]

All this is very interesting but it seems predicated on a mistaken notion that the characteristic red shift morphed in E2022 to an equal and opposite blue shift. As the attached spreadsheets should establish, that is hardly the quantitative reality.

 

Yes, there were some significant blue shifts (NH, PA, e.g.), along with some significant red shifts (FL, OH, e.g.), but the average (mean) shifts were both modest and went both ways (exit polls and pre-election polls in minor disagreement (these numbers are not fully updated, so there may be minor changes).

 

This is nothing like a mirror image of the pervasive patterns of red shift (especially pronounced in battlegrounds) we've seen in the past. It's basically, as I've said before, about what we'd expect from accurate polls and accurate votecounts. The problem is we've been tipped off that the pollsters pushed their samples to the right, anticipating the red shift (Nate Cohn said by 2 percent, for what that's worth), so, with previous methodologies (already pushed right by the LVCM and basing EP weightings on prior adjusted EPs), there would have been at least a modest general red shift across the board in E2022.

 

So we can wonder to our heart's content about whether that rightward poll-push was justified as a fix for inherent polling bias or instead covered a chronic GOP-benefiting votecount mistabulation.

 

But I don't think the basic numbers are there to support speculation about a "sudden reversal" and specualtion about the various implications of a nonexistent phenomenon.

Jonathan D. Simon

Senior Editor, WhoWhatWhy.org

Executive Director, Election Defense Alliance (2006 - 2016)

Author: CODE RED: Computerized Elections and the War on American Democracy

www.CodeRed2020.com

@JonathanSimon14

831-266-5111

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[Bob Klauber]

Thanks, Paul. But, even when the Democrats were in power (Obama days), i.e., the "establishment", there was a red shift.

Thanks, Theodore, but because there is no record of Edison doing any massaging is not evidence that it was not done. Given what all other pollsters have been doing, and our experience with exit poll massaging in the past, I know what side my suspicions lie on. :-)

Thanks, Jonathan, for your clarity -- always welcome your input.

Bob K

[Josh Mitteldorf]

Thank you, Paul - 

    I would add that the base of the Democratic party used to be labor, and the Democrats have abandoned labor. 

    The left wing of the Democratic party used to be where I lived. For EI issues, Kucinich and McKinney were the only two Congresspeople we could count on. McKinney was primaried and Kucinich was gerrymandered out of his district. The DNC establishment didn't lift a finger for either one. The Dems actively kept Bernie out of the nomination in a year when he would have easily trounced Trump. Some prominent donors said they would rather lose with Hillary than win with Bernie.

     Maybe I'm myopic, imagining that there are a lot of other former Dems out there who think like me. Or maybe the Democratic abandonment of their constituency and their core values has been a primary reason that they don't dominate American politics the way they did from 1932 to 1980.

     I'm already being more partisan than is appropriate for this forum, but I'm going to stick my neck out further and say that the Silicon Valley Billionaires club has taken over the Democratic Party, and I don't like it. Last week, Taibbi and Musk wrote about the way Twitter, Google, and Facebook cooperated to bury the Hunter Laptop story in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election. In my book, partisan manipulation of the media is even more dangerous than electronic vote theft.

- Josh

[Joel Simpson]

Thanks, Jon. Have we discussed vote suppression by means other than doctoring totals? Greg Palast has a new documentary that reveals the vote suppression schemes put in place by Brian Kemp to dampen Black votes. He notes that mail-in votes were down by a million last month with respect to 2020.

https://www.gregpalast.com/vigilantefilm/

And despite this, NY Times editorial board member Michelle Cottle wrote a fawning piece on Kemp as the hero of the anti-Trump Republicans appearing in this past Monday's Times.

I still believe that Stacey Abrams would have won—in 2018 as well as this year—had Kemp's various schemes and new laws not been in place.

Joel Simpson

jssp...@verizon.net

908-875-8741

joelsimpsonart.com

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[Mike Ridgway]

I would very much appreciate it if we could rescue one of the exact models of the ES&S machines that were used in Sarasota County in 2006. They save the ballot definitions forever, right? If so, we could recreate the exact interface that failed all across the county and I could test out my theory as to just how duplicable the problem actually is. Can anyone help me with this?

Mike

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[Josh Mitteldorf]

At this point, I start from the default assumption that both D's and R's are manipulating elections, that this occurs by vote suppression, by gerrymandering, and by electronic manipulation, but most of all by controlling the two parties and the MSM. 

I think we are forced into clever investigative techniques and ways to gather indirect evidence because elections are more opaque than ever. Part of this is the unfeasibility of standalone exit polls because of the shift to vote-by-mail.

In the past, I have conducted independent exit polls, raw data for which are completely open to the public, and results of which can be compared to reported results at the precinct level. I can't say that we discovered anything fundamentally new from these exercises, but I think it's a worthwhile project going forward. It ends up costing a few hundred dollars per precinct. 

- Josh 

On Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 5:36 PM Mike Ridgway <miketan...@gmail.com> wrote:

Well it's nice to see that someone in this group still has it in them to be an election denier when the alleged victim is a Democrat. :-)

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