A Level Gaze

A Level Gaze

"What effect must it have on a nation if it learns no foreign languages? Probably much the same as that which a total withdrawal from society has upon an individual."
--G.C. Lichtenberg

Friday, November 05, 2004

Nothing to See Here, Move Along

Over at Ethel the Blog, I found linked this county-by-county list of Florida votes, which includes party registration percentages and calculates the percent of the expected vote for each party by multiplying the total number of votes cast by the percentage of party affiliation. Some of the results are very surprising:

County V_Rep V_Dem V_Ttl %Reg_R %Reg_D Tot_Registered
Calhoun 3,780 2,116 5,961 11.9% 82.4% 8,350
Hardee 5,047 2,147 7,245 26.7% 63.8% 10,399
Liberty 1,927 1,070 3,021 7.9% 88.3% 4,075
Madison 4,195 4,048 8,306 14.9% 79.5% 11,371

According to this, we're supposed to believe that Calhoun County, that has an 82-12% Democratic voter registration advantage, somehow went for Bush by 64-35%. Perhaps Hardee County, with a 64-27% Democratic majority, preferred Dubya by 70-30%. Or Liberty County, where Democratic voter affiliation is 11 times more common than its Republican counterpart (88-8%), chose Bush by 64-36%.

My favorite is Madison County, where voters built a bridge to the Republican party by selecting Bush 51-49%, despite an 80-15% Democratic majority and a population that is 40.3% Black.

For about 2 minutes, I imagined posting this and becoming an instant blog superstar. I'd show everyone the obviously bogus numbers from Florida, the results would be nullified, and Kerry would be president. And he'd owe it all to me, ME! Mwahahaha, etc.

Just to make sure, and to further highlight the divergence from expected voting behavior, I looked up the 2000 Florida county election results. Each of the four counties I highlighted for looking suspicious had voted for Bush-Cheney in 2000 by significant margins. There goes the Pulitzer.

Maybe there's something different about small-county Floridians that causes them to vote for Republican presidential candidates. Or maybe there's something very wrong with these registration and/or voting numbers. Unfortunately, it's probably the latter.

Edit: I can't figure out how to make the spaces entered in the post editing window show up in the final post for the election figures. If anyone knows how to do that in Blogger, I'd be much obliged if someone would drop me a note via e-mail or in comments. Thanks.

posted by David at 11/05/2004 12:20:00 AM ::

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