Reply #30: Why isn't the 3rd party vote affected more?

[mulethree]

1. The votes seem to be moving from Kerry to Bush as the 'confusion' increases. But if it is happening randomly - then the third parties should be picking up more votes, Kerry votes should be spread across all 4 (5?) of the other candidates.

2. Also, what factors affect the number of precincts in a polling place? Is it possible that pro-kerry areas tended to have fewer precincts at a poll and Bush districts tended to have more?


re: 1. To avoid the third party vote escalating, you could have it happening non-randomly. Precincts where a direct kerry-bush mapping occurred would be encouraged to mingle, while precincts where a mingling would inflate 3rd party votes, would be properly discouraged from mingling. But this would show spikes within the polling place, where some precincts had 'clean' kerry/vs bush preference and other - the 'transposable' precincts showed much less preference.

re:2. Simplest assumption to fit this, is that urban areas have fewer precincts per polling place, and rural or suburban areas have more precincts per polling place. This fits with 'suburbanites are used to driving everywhere' while urbanites insist on being able to walk.


I don't mean to put your work down, and do mean to check out these theories myself. I just hope to discourage the tendency we get here to go 'WOW! send 50 copies to kerry, conyers, arnback and so on before vetting and peer review can weed out problems.