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Now normally I send these emails directly into my trash bin, but my obnoxious moron of a brother in law, in the midst of thousands of people in harms way and our President once again stepping up to the plate to guide our country through crisis, decides to send me a link to another divisive DUmmie discussion about the election. Despite two elections decided LEGALLY, by the rule of LAW, the DUmmies, rather than doing their part in a time of national crisis to make things better in our country, are rehashing issues that have been resolved time and time again. I am SEETHING mad, not just at my brother in law for sending me this tripe (I'm barely on speaking terms with him to begin with), but for these @*@#%! DUmmies who insist on dividing this country at every chance they can get. I attempted to peruse the thread and debunk the entire thread, but I couldn't stay there for more than 30 seconds without wanting to vomit. I know they have a right to post what they wish just as we do, but at a time like this?!?! Don't they realize the damage they're doing to this country? Can you believe people actually believe this crap? Once again, I barely talk to the guy, but I'd love to send him something to shut him up once and for all (and believe me, I've done many a reply to all).

Sigh. The evidence for this article comes from ... Democratic Underground. Anyway, let's count the errors:

1) Believing that mid-day polls were somehow more accurate than vote totals. People don't vote in equal number throughout the day, which skews the totals, and the totals become especially off when democratic groups were sending people to the sites where they knew the polls were taking place to skew the vote totals.

2) Believing pre-election polls (and only certain polls, i.e., the ones that showed Bush losing) were accurate. Republicans have reported being under-represneted in polls for years.

3)Believing that network internal polls, which were wrong in 2002, 2000, 1998, 1996, & 1994, were somehow accurate this time.

Arrrgh. Look. We did hundreds of threads about this around election time. The basic problem of the DU studies is simple: It assumes the exit polls were accurately modelled and unbiased. There is no evidence in either case that they were.

President Bush beat EVERY "anybody but Bush" candidate combined.

The bigger question is if we would ever have elected Bill Clinton, let alone twice, if there had been runoff elections. And yet he claimed he had a mandate from the people.

Here's an old thread "real time" discussion of how the media was calling the election for Kerry all day...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1266986/posts

The numbers at the end of the counting gave no reason for this assumption to be broadcast hourly as "news".