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John Adams Blog

The blog of The Antient and Honourable John Adams Society, Minnesota's Conservative Debating Society www.johnadamssociety.org

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

But for a switch of 55,000 votes....

Poking around on Taegan Goddard's left-leaning but usually fair and always interesting Political Wire, I ran across this quote from Bob Schrum, Sen. Kerry’s former political advisor and 0-8 presidential campaign loser:
"We're just going to stay in Washington while getting ready for our move [to New York, where Shrum, starting next month, will teach at NYU]. My aim is to stay out of the 'limited traffic zone.' How am I feeling? Disappointed. Right now, I'm waiting for a camera crew from CNN to interview me about Karl Rove. Just think, a switch of 55,000 votes in Ohio, and I wouldn't have been doing this interview. But you've got to be gracious." -- Lloyd Grove, New York Daily News

I’m getting a little tired of hearing this line about the vote switch in Ohio. Let’s give Mr. Schrum his 59,386 vote switchers in Ohio. In exchange, I ask for only about 10% fewer vote switchers in Wisconsin – 5,908 to be exact. That leaves us with

Bush - 286 – 20 + 10 = 276
Kerry - 252 + 20 – 10 = 262

Hmmm. That won’t do it either. Let’s try giving him the 59,386 in Ohio, but we’ll take 33,745 vote switchers in Oregon.

Bush - 286 – 20 + 7 = 273
Kerry - 252 + 20 – 7 = 265
Dang. Let’s try the Ohio swap with 49,223 switchers here in Minnesota


Bush - 286 – 20 + 10 = 276
Kerry - 252 + 20 – 10 = 262
I guess that it’s perfectly OK to pick-and-choose vote switching states when it works in their favor, but not in ours. I shouldn’t be surprised. I seem to recall this strategy being tried and failing in Florida a few years ago.

Certainly, we can play with numbers all day and they get interesting when you work with IA and NM. In fact, there is probably a scenario where the Democrat elector here in Minnesota who cast his/her vote for President for "John Ewards" would have made the difference.

Still, the bottom line is that the results are the results, and all the wishing in the world won't change it. Let's stop talking about vote switching in Ohio. Time to take your own advice and MoveOn, people.

--- NOTE: Vote Total Statistics from CNN.com

Blogger Harsh Pencil said...

Festivus,

Give them their butfors and their ifonlys. Anyone who watches any sports knows thats loser talk.

2:01 PM, January 19, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

OHIO 2004: 6.15% Kerry-Bush vote-switch found in probability study

Defining the vote outcome probabilities of wrong-precinct voting has revealed, in a sample of 166,953 votes (1/34th of the Ohio vote), the Kerry-Bush margin changes 6.15% when the population is sorted by probable outcomes of wrong-precinct voting.

The Kerry to Bush 6.15% vote-switch differential is seen when the large sample is sorted by probability a Kerry wrong-precinct vote counts for Bush. When the same large voter sample is sorted by the probability Kerry votes count for third-party candidates, Kerry votes are instead equal in both subsets.

Read the revised article with graphs of new findings:

The 2004 Ohio Presidential Election: Cuyahoga County Analysis
How Kerry Votes Were Switched to Bush Votes

http://jqjacobs.net/politics/ohio.html

PowerPoint: http://jqjacobs.net/politics/vote_switching.ppt

5:21 PM, February 10, 2007  

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