Elwar
09-30-2009, 12:08 PM
by Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight
...
Certain statistical properties of the results reported by Strategic Vision, LLC suggest, perhaps strongly, the possibility of fraud, although they certainly do not prove it and further investigation will be required.
The specific evidence in question is as follows. I looked at all polling results reported by Strategic Vision LLC since the beginning of 2005; results from 2008 onward are available at their website; other polls were recovered through archive.org. This is a lot of data -- well over 100 polls, each of which asked an average of about 15-20 questions.
For each question, I recorded the trailing digit for each candidate or line item. For instance, if Strategic Vision had Barack Obama beating John McCain 48-43 in a particular state, I'd record a tally in the 8 column and another in the 3 column.
...
We might expect, as a default, the distribution of these trailing digits to be approximately random. Here, for instance, is what I get if I run the numbers for all Senate and Presidential polls -- more than 3,000 (!) of them -- in my 2008 database:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5ieXw28ZUpg/SrywQfOHsLI/AAAAAAAABVI/e2LUuHvosNo/s400/sv2.png
...it is close to random, and could fairly easily have occurred through chance alone.
By contrast, here's what we get if we run the same tally for the Strategic Vision polls:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_5ieXw28ZUpg/SrzD2Fi2gbI/AAAAAAAABVY/uAF7-jO6y2c/s400/sv3.PNG
This data is not random at all. For instance, the trailing digit was '8' on 676 occasions, almost 60 percent more often than the 431 times that it was '1'. Over a sample of more than 5,000 data points, such an outcome occurring by chance alone would be an incredible fluke -- millions to one against. Bad luck can essentially be ruled out as an explanation.
...
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/09/strategic-vision-polls-exhibit-unusual.html
...
Certain statistical properties of the results reported by Strategic Vision, LLC suggest, perhaps strongly, the possibility of fraud, although they certainly do not prove it and further investigation will be required.
The specific evidence in question is as follows. I looked at all polling results reported by Strategic Vision LLC since the beginning of 2005; results from 2008 onward are available at their website; other polls were recovered through archive.org. This is a lot of data -- well over 100 polls, each of which asked an average of about 15-20 questions.
For each question, I recorded the trailing digit for each candidate or line item. For instance, if Strategic Vision had Barack Obama beating John McCain 48-43 in a particular state, I'd record a tally in the 8 column and another in the 3 column.
...
We might expect, as a default, the distribution of these trailing digits to be approximately random. Here, for instance, is what I get if I run the numbers for all Senate and Presidential polls -- more than 3,000 (!) of them -- in my 2008 database:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5ieXw28ZUpg/SrywQfOHsLI/AAAAAAAABVI/e2LUuHvosNo/s400/sv2.png
...it is close to random, and could fairly easily have occurred through chance alone.
By contrast, here's what we get if we run the same tally for the Strategic Vision polls:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_5ieXw28ZUpg/SrzD2Fi2gbI/AAAAAAAABVY/uAF7-jO6y2c/s400/sv3.PNG
This data is not random at all. For instance, the trailing digit was '8' on 676 occasions, almost 60 percent more often than the 431 times that it was '1'. Over a sample of more than 5,000 data points, such an outcome occurring by chance alone would be an incredible fluke -- millions to one against. Bad luck can essentially be ruled out as an explanation.
...
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/09/strategic-vision-polls-exhibit-unusual.html