Where are the Critical Correlations? Help!

[The Doctor.]

We know that Ellen Connally, Ohio State Supreme Court Democratic candidate received tens of thousands more votes than Kerry did over 36 Ohio counties.

Do we know which ones?
Do we know what machines they used?

If she only received more votes than the Presidential Candidate in counties that widely used those machines, than fraud is assured and I can finally convince a bunch of people of it.

But I haven't found a list of counties that use which machines and a breakdown of vote totals per county/per candidate.

I don't have a huge amount of time to trak down dissappointing links,
Does anyone have either?

[kster]

1. Hope this will help you

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2617492

[The Doctor.]

2. That is an excellent resource. Thank you. (nt)

[kster]

3. kick.nt

[OnTheOtherHand]

4. I don't think that dog will hunt

The problem is that the Chief Justice race was non-partisan on the ballot, so it's not surprising that Connally could do better than Kerry in some Republican areas. If anything, Connally is a Republican name.

Here are the least-squares regression lines at the precinct level, using Connally share to "predict" Kerry share, for each technology used in Ohio:

(I've suppressed the individual points because they make the plot unreadable.) Ordinary least squares is probably not the best way to model this relationship, but it's a relatively familiar one.

It appears that Kerry may have done "surprisingly well" relative to Connally in DRE precincts (at least the Democratic-leaning ones), versus other precincts, but there isn't much there there. This model is too simple, but not nearly as too-simple as the one that says that Kerry "should have" outdrawn Connally.

Here's another approach: I figured (Kerry votes - Connally votes)/(total votes). That will turn out a bit differently than a model that compares Kerry % in the presidential race to Connally votes in the chief justice race, since fewer people voted in the latter race. The means are:

punch card  0.1163, std error 0.0013, n = 8345
DRE         0.1732, std error 0.0027, n = 1541
opscan pct  0.0271, std error 0.0076, n =  139
opscan ctr  0.0988, std error 0.0029, n = 1341

So again, Kerry seems to do surprisingly well (relative to Connally) in DRE precincts. Over half of those precincts are in Franklin County, and I wouldn't be surprised if the drop-off from presidential to chief justice races tends to run higher in urban areas, but I will leave that for anyone who is curious. Anyway, I don't see a killer fraud argument here, certainly not one that hinges on technology. Your mileage may vary.

If you're a quant, you should read Mebane and Herron's Section VI of the DNC report, http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/Ohio2004/OhioDNC/ -- other parts depending on your interests. And check in with "Time for change."

[OnTheOtherHand]

7. I forgot to give a clue on how to read the graph...

Mentally draw a line from the lower left-hand corner to the upper right. (I probably coulda done that myself, but I had already spent too long on the graph.) Above that line, Kerry does better than Connally. Below it, Connally does better than Kerry. Regardless of technology, the break-even point is around 40% Democratic. On average, Kerry did better in the Dem precincts, Connally did better in the Rep precincts -- which IMHO makes sense for the reasons given in my preceding post.

[Ms. Toad]

8. There's another name thing going on

Since judges (at least in 2004 - it may be changing) did not list their party, folks who hadn't done their homework didn't have much clue about who they might be happy with.

It's fairly well accepted (in Ohio, at least) by both parties that female judicial (real, or presumed - like males named Lynn or Clair) candidates names gain several percentage points because many Dems figure there aren't enough female judges. I don't do it often, but I have to admit that I have occasionally been guilty of voting by gender when I did not follow things closely enough and judicial race appears on my ballot that I was not expecting.

So Connally may got a bump in the Republican camp for presumed party association with her name, and gender bump among a number of Dems for being female.

Don't know if that accounts for all of the difference - but with these extraneous factors and the absence of a political party ID it will be difficult to control for the factor(s) that created the difference.

Edited to modify parenthetical info in 1st sentence

[OnTheOtherHand]

9. that's an interesting point, although

clearly the bump wasn't nearly big enough, since she still ran well behind Kerry even in percentage terms. If she had run even with him in Dem precincts, I imagine she would have won -- but it's hard to pick up all those Dem votes if the voters don't know that you're Dem.

Anyway, as you say, there's no way to disentangle it all now. (I was just reading how the exit pollsters blew the first call in Florida 2000 partly because they chose one race to model against, and it turned out to be the Wrong Race. Any other race, and they never would have made the call. Of course, they were under time pressure, and we aren't!)

I've really appreciated your input on Ohio 2005. I hope to see more of your views on Ohio 2004 and 2006 (not to say that you haven't posted, just reporting what I've read).

[Ms. Toad]

10. I believe the lack of party affiliation

is about to go down the tubes (if it hasn't already), just like the ban on attorney advertising did years ago. Rules of Ethics (imposed by the Supreme Court of the state in which the attorney is registered, generally) which don't mesh well with US constitutional rights only hold up as long as all the attorneys are on the same page and choose not to challenge the Rules :)

It will be interesting to see if female Republicans (or males with female sounding names) get the same bump once party affiliation is clear to the voter at the hime s/he marks the ballot.

Thanks for the compliment. Mostly I lurk here. I'm a lot more active in the photography group. With work, family, and my Equality Ohio preoccupation I gotta have something fun to do!

[kster]

5. Another article here

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2005/1593

[OnTheOtherHand]

6. oh dear, Ohio 2005 again?

If we have to talk about Ohio 2005, then I have to point out again that there is no evidence for a technology effect on those results, either. And those four reform issues were all defeated by massive margins, so you need to posit massive fraud in many jurisdictions, on various technologies, in order to flip the results.

http://polysigh.blogspot.com/2005/11/fraud-in-ohio-doubtful.html

I don't think it happened. I certainly wouldn't cite the Dispatch mail-in poll as proof that it happened. I don't know of a polling expert in the world who would -- although, granted, it's a big blue world.