New Fox News Op-ed: The Battle Over Minnesota
My newest piece for Fox News starts off this way (it will be up later today):
Al Franken’s unusually large vote gain since the election has generated a lot of anger. Just correcting “typos” in how the votes were recorded have made the difference – reducing Coleman’s lead from 725 to 206 votes when Minnesota counties certified the votes on Monday, November 12th. Correcting these typos supposedly produced a net swing of 459 votes to Franken and took 60 votes from Coleman.
Last week, using the vote totals from Sunday, November 11th, I pointed out that Franken’s net gain was huge – “new votes for Franken from all the precincts is greater than adding together all the changes for all the precincts in the entire state for the presidential, congressional, and state house races combined.” One “precinct’s corrections accounted for a significantly larger net swing in votes between the parties than occurred for all the precincts in the entire state for the presidential, congressional, or state house races.”
The Minnesota’s leading newspaper, the Star Tribune, ran a story by Eric Ringham evaluating my numbers. Glenn Howatt, their editor for computer-assisted reporting, was quoted as saying, “[Lott’s] numbers are simply wrong.” He went on to say, “I don’t know what statistical calculation Lott was using, but Obama clearly got more from the corrections.” . . .
Labels: mediabias, MinnesotaRecount, op-ed
posted by John Lott at 6:37 AM
7 Comments:
Keep up the good work. Unfortunately, those newsmen are not really interested in the facts, just their own predisposition. Maybe if enough people will call them out...
I guess John's the only person on the planet that hasn't heard that old axiom, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics." Numbers lie all the time, based upon the spin that someone wants to put on them. And at FAUXNews, spin is all there ever is.
None of the other races in Minnesota are as close as the Coleman/Franken race. So none of those votes are being scrutinized to the same degree. Mr. Lott's point is foolish.
Isn't it blatantly obvious that Franken knows there is some shady dealings going on with his "new" votes... what other reason would he ask for a re-VOTE? to put aside the tainted votes found in his favor and avoid any investigation into it.
Sir what you are seeing is the Wizard of OZ effect where people now believe in something therefore it is. Dashed expectations by the mobs of ignorant citizens allowed to vote in elections will lead to civil unrest when those who produce decide to stop producing for the Obama moochers who expect everything for nothing.
Conservative media has accomplished one thing. Trust no one, not even a trained conservative economist such as yourself because everyone is biased and will selectively filter data. Trust us but not the other guy (sounds like a salesman).
Everybody has statistics and opinions about those statistics. The best thing that can happen to this world is that all the news analyst and bloggers would somehow die off. It would be a much better world.
So what. Who cares. More important things to worry about like the RECESSION.
Thanks, Mr. Lott, you're right on the money. I live in Minnesota, and I've observed that local left-wing journalists and bloggers (and some posters on this page) appear to be immune to statistics. They simply refuse to believe that the huge adjustments for Franken are anything besides the "will of the people," although it's clear that the results are highly questionable. Regarding the Star Tribune (or, as I like to call it, the Red Star Tribune), don't expect any corrections - as far as they're concerned, if it's right, it's wrong.
I find it very disturbing that Franken only gained votes and did not lose any, if it was a fair recount you would have seen him lose votes some place.
Steve B
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