BradBlog has compared the vast discordance between pre-election polling and primary results, especially Zogby's, which predicted a 42-29 sweep for Obama over Hilary with only 5% undecided. Steven Freeman has asked for suggestions about how to pinpoint the likely mechanism of fraud if the hypothesis of fraud holds up, and has offered Ron Paul's breakdown's of the vote by machine vs. hand, and by town size. See http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5530 and http://ronrox.com/paulstats.php?party=DEMOCRATS (which has a link to REPUBLICANS).
Several points are worth emphasis. First, even the hand-counted paper ballots give Obama only a circa 4.1% victory, not a blow out, he loses more heavily to Clinton in large cities that were roughly 64% of the total vote. Thus, if you want to do the stats to see whether or not there was a fraud, try to obtain the breakdown of the polling data by town size from the pollsters. Was a blow-out expected in rural areas? If, for example, Obama was expected to beat Clinton evenly across the board, or was expected to run especially strongly in the big cities, then the case for fraud is very clear. The strongest case for fraud would have pre-polling favoring Obama by about 4.1% in rural areas where hand-counting occurred, and stronger in the big cities. This would indicate that the rigging was done primarily in urban areas through control of the electronic voting machines. The generally accurate pre-polling data with the reported results for all the other candidates, both Dems and Repubs, is the evidence for the fix.
Only two towns over 1,500 used Hand Counted Paper Ballots, but many towns under 1,500 used electronic means. The updated Ron Paul website has compared the results for hand counter paper ballots versus electronic voting machines for small and mid-size towns with dramatic results. In small towns Clinton's Electronic vs. HCPB results were + 3.733%. By contrast, Obama's were a negative, - 4.550%. That is, in small towns (<750 voters) electronic machines rewarded Clinton and punished Obama compared with HCPB that gave Obama a margin of victory of 5.96%. For medium towns (750-1500 voters), Clinton's electronic tally was 5.572% greater than her HCPB count, whereas Obama's was -4.257%. Obama beat Clinton in the hand count for medium towns by 4.16%. Unfortunately only two large towns (Claremont, Franklin) used HCPB, just 2.3% of their voters, so there is no meaninful comparison between Electronic and HCPB results within that group of voters for the simple reason that these two towns may not be a representative sample.
A good statistician can provide precise confidence levels, but for practical purposes the answer is clear enough: the electronic machines were programmed to record more votes for Hilary than she received and to record fewer votes for Obama than he received. The pre-polling was accurate. Just as in the 2004 election, HCPB tracked the votes as cast. As Professor Steven Freeman showed in his book, Was the 2004 Election Stolen?, for the 2004 presidential election only HCPB agreed with the National Exit Polls before they were adjusted to conform to the official count.
Second, as Brad Friedman remarked, the MSM is engaging in disinformation to make us distrust paper ballots; it may also be engaged in disinformation to make the public distrust exit polls, pre-polls and anything else except the official vote count. Distrusting pre-polls makes it easier to fix the Big One. Additionally, the "horse race" phenomenon speaks for itself to the appearance of vitality and integrity in the electoral process whether or not it has any.
Third, if the fix has been put in for Hillary, there are two scenarios which I adumbrated previously but are worth repeating. One scenario has the pseudo-liberal hawk Hilary as the first Madame President; the other has her put in the running seat of the Dems for the purpose of defeating her with a McCain-Huckabee ticket. Q: Why bother with fixing the Dem primary if one can fix the finals? A: In a "democracy" like ours it is always important to keep up appearances, and Hilary gives the best appearance of a Democratic candidate headed for honest defeat, one where the fix is easy, small, easily concealed, etc. Please keep in mind the CNN poll of who would do what in the Big One, viz., that Clinton would lose to McCain:
CNN poll: Edwards DESTROYS GOP candidates (with graphs!) by BruinKid Thu Dec 13, 2007 at 05:53:13 AM PST
GENERAL ELECTION MATCH-UPS Democrat Republican Margin Clinton 51% Giuliani 45% Win by 6% Obama 52% Giuliani 45% Win by 7% Edwards 53% Giuliani 44% Win by 9% Clinton 54% Romney 43% Win by 11% Obama 54% Romney 41% Win by 13% Edwards 59% Romney 37% Win by 22% Clinton 48% McCain 50% Lose by 2% Obama 48% McCain 48% Tie Edwards 52% McCain 44% Win by 8% Clinton 54% Huckabee 44% Win by 10% Obama 55% Huckabee 40% Win by 15% Edwards 60% Huckabee 35% Win by 25%
TOUGH LOVE FOR PAKISTAN
Whereas our failure to tackle Iran seems to be leading inexorably to our attacking it, our failure to tackle al Qaeda in Pakistan seems to be leading inexorably to its attacking us again.
When we let bin Laden escape at Tora Bora, a region along the Afghan-Pakistani border, in December 2001, we played Brer Fox to his Brer Rabbit. We threw him into the perfect briar patch, under the direct protection of tribal leaders who do not consider their land part of Pakistan and under the indirect protection of the Pakistani government, which believes that it is. On September 12, 2001, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf agreed to sever his relationship with the Taliban and let us fight al Qaeda inside Pakistan. But distracted by Iraq, we have since allowed him to go back on his word. http://tinyurl.com/24dhct
Though nobody has a crystal ball, myself included, the McCain-Huckabee ticket is a Republican powerhouse and Hilary is the opponent-of-choice, and she would not be so bad for the corporate class if elected: recall her retort to Edwards during the debates that she would not agree to raise the Social Security tax cap above $97,000 "because that would hurt the poor and middle class" only to have Edwards reply that the poor and middle-class do not earn more than $97,000, only the well-to-do. Hilary, here as elsewhere, wore her allegiance to the ongoing transfer of wealth on her sleeve. Nonetheless, my odds-on bet is for a McCain-Huckabee ticket to beat a Hilary & friend in the Big One and the fixes, if needed, to support that end.
The other top candidate, Mike Huckabee, offers an even bolder tax-cutting plan than Mr. Bush did in 2000. Mr. Huckabee may speak in the populist tones favored by Democrats, but his policies are arguably the least populist of any candidate.
Whatever its other pluses and minuses, his national sales tax, known as the Fair Tax, would undeniably increase the share of taxes paid by the middle class while cutting the share paid by the wealthy. If voters can just forget what he is saying, Mr. Huckabee is the candidate for those who think the country needs to stop soaking the rich.
