BUSH's "MANDATE" - a closer look - comments please!

[seaclyr]

Bush’s “Mandate” - A Closer Look

Summary: When Bush’s 2004 “mandate” is examined on a state-by-state basis relative to 2000, a two-fold distribution of states is apparent: those with a high contribution (typically averaging around 6% (occasionally 12%), based on the percentage of 2004 voters) and those that contributed only small amounts to Bush or to Kerry. For the latter, their relatively small contributions roughly canceled each other out. The amounts of the “high” and “low” contribution states were about equal both in the number of states involved and in voter populations; it was the averaging of their contributions that gave Bush his 3 percent advantage compared to 2000. The majority of the high contribution states were associated with an exit poll skew that favored Bush by an average of 6 percentage points. A minority (25%) had exit poll skews that favored Kerry or favored Bush only weakly. The majority of low contribution states also were associated with exit poll skews averaging 6% and which favored Bush. The number of exceptions (33%, pro-Kerry or weak Bush) was roughly comparable to that found for the high contribution states. Overall, the results can be accounted for by two components: one that strongly favored Bush and one that -at least on the surface -appeared to be neutral, favoring neither candidate. Is this simply coincidence, or could these data reflect an orchestrated pattern where states were divided into two groups together with manipulation of vote counts to bring them into one or the other category?

Although Bush was behind in the popular vote in 2000 by a half million votes, he apparently turned this around in 2004. Current figures from uselectionatlas.org give him a margin over Kerry of 3 million votes, i.e. the difference between 2004 and 2000 is 3.5 million votes, very close to 3% of the 2004 voting population. Using the numbers for individual states from uselectionatlas.org, Bush’s “mandate” has been examined on a state-by-state basis. In the following, be aware that numbers are calculated relative to 2000, so that the “margins” reported are (Bush-2004 minus Kerry-2004) minus (Bush-2000 minus Gore-2000). It seems important to examine 2004 numbers relative to 2000 because anyone who was planning on winning or perhaps stealing the 2004 election would surely use 2000 as a reference.

The analysis is divided into two parts: (1) Vote margins for each state (relative to 2000), together with the percentage of state 2004 votes that each of these margins represents. For example, a margin relative to 2000 of 380,700 votes in the state of FL is 5% of the 2004 voting population of 7.6 million; (2) A comparison of these percentages with the exit poll vs. vote count differences calculated by Freeman et al. for USCountVotes.org. Note that these latter numbers, being differences, are double the amount of shift in the percentage of one or other candidate. Positive numbers are associated with a pro-Bush shift in vote counts relative to exit poll numbers.

1. Vote Margins
Contributions to the “mandate” for each state are given in column 2 of Table I, where a positive number represents a Bush advantage relative to 2000 and a negative number represents a Kerry advantage relative to (Gore in) 2000. (Please continue to keep in mind that these numbers are all relative to 2000, as described above.) A brief appraisal of the numbers in Table I shows that major contributions to the “mandate” came from a relatively small number of states. For example, fourteen states individually provided at least 100,000 votes to the Bush margin. Taken together, these states contributed close to 3.2 million votes.

Table I
State, 2004-2000 margin,% 2004 total
FL 380700 5
NY 352000 4.8
TX 328100 4.4
TN 267500 11.1
NJ 264000 7.3
GA 243900 7.3
AL 233000 12.2
OK 185000 12.6
IN 167000 6.7
LA 146000 7.7
KY 125000 6.9
MO 118300 4.4
AZ 114000 5.7
UT 113500 12.2
CT 91400 5.7
KS 79400 6.6
NC 62100 1.8
PA 61600 1.06
CA 58900 0.48
MS 58800 5.2
SC 56400 3.5
NE 56200 7.2
WV 56100 7.4
MI 54800 1.14
AR 53100 4.8
VA 42400 1.25
HI 30000 6.8
ID 29600 5
RI 28200 6.4
IL 23800 0.5
MD 23000 0.9
IA 15300 1
DE 14300 3.9
SD 11400 2.9
WY 10200 4.2
NM 6300 0.8
ND 6100 2
MA 4900 0.2
NV 0 0
WI -5700 -1
AK -8000 -2.7
MT -10900 -2.4
NH -16500 -2.4
DC -28100 -12.1
ME -32800 -4.4
VT -33600 -11
MN -39700 -1.4
CO -46000 -2.2
OH -46400 -0.8
WA -66100 -2.3
OR -69800 -3.9



Column 3 shows the margins for each state presented as a total of 2004 votes for each state. Clearly, contributions to the Bush margin are not uniform, but for many of the high contribution states the margin represents about 6% of the 2004 vote. Twenty states in fact show a margin that falls within the range of 6 +/- 1.8 percent. Four states have a significantly higher margin, of the order of 12 percent. These 24 states contributed essentially all the 3.5 million votes that made up the Bush margin relative to 2000; the remaining states taken together contributed essentially zero.

The pattern shows that Bush’s “3 percent” improvement in the popular vote over 2000 results from the mixing together of about half the population having a margin that averages about 6% with the remainder of the population having a margin that averages about zero. Simple coincidence? - or could this be something resulting from an orchestrated plan?.

2. Comparison with Exit Poll - Vote Count Differences
Looking further at the states with the high margins, a clear majority of these states had an exit poll - vote count difference that favored Bush. In fact, eighteen of 24 (75%) had a skew of 2 or more percentage points as shown in Table II. Column 2 shows the margins (again in 2004 percentages) and column 3 the exit poll - vote count differences from the data of Freeman et al. The mean margin for these 18 states is 6.6, the mean exit poll - vote count difference is 5.7.


Table II
State, margin,% exit skew,%
AL 12.2 8
UT 12.2 5.74
LA 7.7 3.74
WV 7.4 3.42
GA 7.3 3
NJ 7.3 6
NE 7.2 8.02
IN 6.7 3.02
RI 6.4 7.5
CT 5.7 6.48
AZ 5.7 3.14
FL 5 4.92
ID 5 5.3
MS 5.2 6.6
NY 4.8 10.34
AR 4.8 4.28
MO 4.4 2.3
WY 4.2 4.74
mean 6.6 5.7




If one supposes that exit poll data for 2004 were reasonably accurate, then the majority of the states in Table II would contribute little, if anything, to the “mandate.” In fact, support for Bush in these states (relative to his opponent) would be back at more-or-less 2000 levels.

Table III has numbers for the states with either an exit poll - vote count skew that favored Kerry, or was very weakly pro-Bush (a skew of less than 2 percentage points). For this set of states the mean margin percent is 8.3, the mean exit poll skew is -1.9 percent.


Table III
State, margin,% exit skew,%
TX 4.4 -3.3
TN 11.1 -3.26
OK 12.6 0.58
KY 6.9 1.52
HI 6.8 -2.1
KS 6.6 -4.74
mean 8.3 -1.9



Clearly this subset of states shows a large difference between the Bush margin and the exit poll skew, even though, geographically and politically, one might argue that they would be likely to resemble adjacent states which had very significant exit poll skews.

Why weren’t these states subject to the same skew? One possibility to consider, which would be consistent with an orchestrated plan, is that sufficient pro-Bush votes were already available to send these states into the “high” category; i.e. no skew was necessary. In addition, a 6% skew in these states would generate anomalously high contributions to the Bush margin (for example 782,000 or more in Texas and 411,000 or more in Tennessee), much higher than in states of comparable size and similar political persuasion.

The 27 states with low margins individually and collectively contribute little to the overall margin. Many of these states, however, (NC,PA,SC,VA,IL,DE,NM,MA,NV,AK,NH,DC,MN,CO,OH,WA,IA, and VT -eighteen in all), also were associated with an exit poll skew that favored Bush by more than 2 percentage points. For these eighteen states (67% of this grouping), the mean margin was -1.7% and the mean exit poll-vote count difference was 6.0%. Again, if one supposes that exit polls are reasonably accurate, these 18 states are the ones that would have provided the Kerry margin of victory over Bush in the 2004 election (compared to 2000, of course). For the remaining nine states (CA,MI,MD,SD,ND,WI,MT,ME and OR) the mean margin was -0.5% and the mean skew was -0.5%.

Again, one may speculate whether there may have been a pre-planned “low” set of states and whether a skew (again of approximately 6%) was applied or not depended on whether such was necessary to bring the state into line.

Note: Although the criterion for inclusion in the “high” and “low” groups is somewhat arbitrary (a lower cutoff of 4.2 percent was used to include a state in the high group) moderate changes in this cutoff would not change the pattern appreciably. Similarly, a change in the criterion used to divide up states with higher and lower levels of exit poll - vote count difference (>2 percent and <2 percent, in each case pro-Bush, was used) would not affect things too much. Changing the criteria would result in a handful of states switching sides, so to speak, without affecting the general conclusions.

[FogerRox]

1. Dont pussy foot with this question---->

"Is this simply coincidence, or could these data reflect an orchestrated pattern where states were divided into two groups together with manipulation of vote counts to bring them into one or the other category? "

Go to your conclusion--


Again--
"Simple coincidence? - or could this be something resulting from an orchestrated plan?."


Good stuff but for those 2 sentences. My 2 cents..

Roj

[seaclyr]

2. Roj, you're right, I didn't mean to imply there's any doubt

of an orchestrated plan in any general sense. I really meant that there still remain options for the specifics. Thanks for your 2 cents!

[FogerRox]

3. Diplomacy is one thing--but we're talking about criminal stuff here.

We know allot about the crime.

And I didnt mean to blast ya too hard--but on this topic I dont see much wrong with firing away. So go ahead and Shoot---repeatedly--LOL