Bush's win was a historical anomaly-- is this evidence of fraud?

[spooked911]

Initially I wanted to see if the 11.5 million votes Bush got compared to 2000 was unusual for an incumbent president.

What I found was that his increase in votes, compared to the overall percentage increase in voters, was not unusual.

Thus, Bush got 11.5 million new votes from 2000-- but this was really an increase of 9.5% over his totals from 2000.

What is strange is if you compare Bush winning percentage, 2.5% over Kerry, with his increase in new votes, Bush's win really stands out.

Thus looking at incumbents winning the presidency in the past 75 years, and I count Truman winning in 1948 and Johnson winning in 1964, there have been 10 elections where the incumbent has won (FDR, FDR, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton and Bush). Of these 10 elections, 7 times the incumbents received more votes than he did 4 years earlier.

Now look at this list of incumbents who increased their votes from the previous election:

1st number is % margin of victory
2nd number is % total increase votes (compared to previous election)

FDR 1936 / 24% / 5%
Eisenhower 1956 / 15% / 2.3%
Johnson 1964 / 23% / 12.8%
Nixon 1972 / 23% / 20%
Reagan 1984 / 18% / 11.4%
Clinton 1996 / 8.5% / 2.6%
Bush 2004 / 2.5% / 9.4%

So Bush's increase in votes is right in the middle-- but when you look at his margin of victory, it is way way far off from the other president's margins.

While this clearly doesn't prove anything, it makes Bush's 2004 vote increase very strange. Of course, one explanation is fraud-- switching votes from Kerry to Bush.

In fairness, if you go back to Wilson's win in 1916, he had only a 3% margin of victory and he picked up 15.6% more votes than in 1912. But the 1916 election had a 29% increase in voters compared to 1912, which was one of the highest increases ever (I'm not sure why-- maybe because of the start of WW I). In 2004, there was a 16% increase in voters, high but not unusually high.

So I think Bush's win can either be seen as fraud, or due to some world-transforming event like 9/11, which could have caused to the electorate to behave like 1916.

But for many other reasons, I think fraud is the most likely explanation.

[spooked911]

1. All the data is from ---

http://www.uselectionatlas.org

[lenidog]

2. In itself it isn't evidence of fraud

Its a suggestion of fraud.

[babsbunny]

3. How many ways

Do we have to say it? He stole it again! I am sick about it. I'm in Columbus, Ohio. So hopeful that Kerry would be my President when I got up the next morning. Someone that has done so much wrong can't continue? He will be impeached. Of course you know about www.impeachbush.org.

[lenidog]

8. Of course he stole it

but saying that there is a historic anomaly DOES not prove anything it just means there is an anomaly.

[Joe Chi Minh]

15. Rubbish! When

you get a large plurality of anomalies, effectively, all favouring one of the candidates, it amounts to compelling evidence of fraud.

Whether courts dealing with such matters in particular countries are honest in assessing such matters in elections, is altogether another matter. There would be a wide spectrum of integrity across the countries of the world, but where there has been a discernible movement towards totalitarianism, unless checked, such a movement will not stop short of full-blown totalitarianism, and the judiciary will be a job lot, bought and paid for.

[spooked911]

16. So-- you're saying that we're screwed, right?

There's no stopping the movement towards totalinarianism?
:(

[Philly Buster]

4. Both parties had unprecedented GOTV efforts

The republicans won that fight. They concentrated on "exurban" areas which I never heard of before but that was the key according to the pundits

[DELUSIONAL]

5. Oh bull shit!

The GOPigs did NOT win that fight.

And they did not concentrate on the exurban areas.

That word (exurban) only came out AFTER the election -- Rove found it and tossed it out.

All the ways to steal the vote were used by the GOPigs -- suppress the vote in Urban/democratic areas -- voting machine fraud -- fraud fraud fraud etc.

The only way the GOPigs could win was to cheat in every way they could -- switch the vote from Kerry to Bush at the central tabulator.

This was a massive huge fraud. And a whole lot of people were in on the fraud.

[bemis12]

6. And zero of them are talking.

Uh huh.

[spooked911]

7. A simpler explanation is this:

normally when an incumbent picks up a lot of new votes, he wins the election by a very large percentage margin (e.g. Reagan's 18% margin and 10.6 million new votes in 1984). In the case of Bush in 2004, he picked up a very large number of new votes (11.5 million) without much of a winning margin (2.5%).

Because we know Democrats were very united against Bush, and the electorate was very polarized, there can't have been much switching from 2000. This means Bush got something like 60% of the new voters who didn't vote in 2000. But given Bush's overall vote percent was 51%, this means new voters behaved very different from the electorate as a whole--- and it is very hard to believe this was the case, especially given that new excited voters tend to go 1) for Democrats and 2) for the challenger.

The question has remained as ever since Nov.2, 2004-- where the hell did Bush get all his new votes from?!?!

[DELUSIONAL]

9. answer: he didn't get the vast majority of new vote

AND people are not going to stand for hours and hours in line to vote for the status quo -- they are voting for change.

Plus the huge Kerry/Edwards turnouts when they were touring the country -- while georgie porgie had hand picked audiences -- and often he was putting his audiences to sleep.

The circumstantial evidence against a georgie porgie win is overwhelming. Kerry should not have conceded so quickly.

AND it isn't about Kerry -- it is about the people's right to vote.

[spooked911]

10. I was wondering if media types might take another look at Bush's numbers

when they are put into some historical perspective.

:D :D :D :D

Yeah-- I didn't think so either.

[jjtss]

11. Probably fraud........

Just before the election, I tuned in CNN (which I almost never do) and watched for about a half hour. The next morning I was on the Internet reading the news(which I always do) and saw a picture of G. Brish and the thought popped into my head "what a nice person who's good for the US" It was such anathema to me that I was shocked that I could possibly have thought the unthinkable. It bothered me so much that I googled everything I could about subliminal programming and am convinced that I had picked up some somehow, somewhere.
Anyway- definitely FRAUDx(

[spooked911]

13. WOW-- that's weird. But...

As much as I detest the man, I must say sometimes I find him disturbingly likeable. He seems to have some weird charisma that most of the time I can block out but sometimes gets the better of me. Or maybe it's simply the way the media portrays him and his advisors present him.

In any case, these are the demons I wrestle with sometimes!

[RaulVB]

12. You're missing the point here, you are close, though...

Nixon, Johnson and Reagan exemplify LANDSLIDES.

"*" barely "won" 282 electoral votes over 256 for Kerry, the smallest margin for an "incumbent" since 1916.

Kerry OUTPERFORMED GORE ALMOST EVERYWHERE.

"*" claims to have gained 50 millions (aprox) in 2000. His increase is 20% over that total, which is nonsense, since HE LOST SUPPORT IN PRETTY MUCH ALL DEMOGRAPHIC GROUPS.

That is the whole story.

[spooked911]

14. The nice part about this kind of analysis is that it shows something funny

happened without any reliance on exit poll numbers, which most mainstream types don't trust (with all due respect to TIA).

[seaclyr]

17. Not sure how you calculated the numbers

Is the 9.4% from (62.04 million - 50.46 million)/ 122 million? At first I thought you were comparing 62.04 million with 50.46 million, a gain of 23%. (Not that this detracts from your argument that this is a historical anomaly, which I find very interesting.)