Busting the Dixiecrat myth

[DoYouEverWonder]

The media wants us to believe that there are 1000's of Zel Millers living across North Florida, who voted for Bush, but otherwise usually vote Democratic.

However, this myth is not necessarily based in reality. A look at the counties that are in the Heart of Florida's Dixieland, you will see actually voted for KERRY!

So next time someone claims Bush won Florida because of the Dixiecrats, here's evidence that they didn't. Besides even if they all did vote for Bush, there isn't enough of them to have given this state to Bush. Not with his big lose in the Hispanic vote.


Gadsden
6,253/Bush
14,629/Kerry

Jefferson
3,298/Bush
4,134/Kerry

Leon
51,594/Bush
83,830/Kerry

plus Madison was very close

Madison
4,196/Bush
4,048/Kerry

All four counties are in North Central FL on the FL/GA border.

[Carl Brennan]

1. Good find. Do you have a source for this?

[DoYouEverWonder]

2. Straight from the horse's mouth

http://enight.dos.state.fl.us/

[batchdem04]

3. how did they vote in 2000?

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. I believe they went for Gore

though turnout was consistantly higher throughout the state in this election.

[Sinti]

9. Dixiecrat?

Carter beat Reagan in Liberty county in 1980 (when there should have been more "dixie" crats living) Carter beat Reagan in Dixie County in 1980. Clinton carried Dixie county in both of his runs. Both these counties are triple digit wins for Bush with the registered DEM voting REP. Can someone point me to the number of registered democrats in Florida Counties for the years 1980 through 2000, please?

[neohippie]

45. Carter was a southernor

The dixiecrat counties elect democrats all the time to local offices, so it isn't that they won't vote for democrats, but they need to be conservative, and christian.

[jbnow]

6. Here's 2000 compared to 2004

I notice the 2004 totals I have are slightly different then 1st poster. They must have changed since I originally gathered then soon after election, but the 2000 would still hold.


GADSDEN 2000
GORE 9,736 66%
BUSH 4,770 32%
Gadsden 2004
Kerry 14,610 70%
Bush 6,236 30%

JEFFERSON 2000
GORE 3,041 54%
BUSH 2,478 44%
Jefferson 2004
Kerry 4,133 55%
Bush 3,298 44%

Leon 2000
GORE 61,444 60%
BUSH 39,073 38%
Leon 2004
Kerry 79,591 62%
Bush 47,902 37%

MADISON 2000
GORE 3,015 49%
BUSH 3,038 49%
Madison 2004
Bush 4,195 51%
Kerry 4,048 49%

[txindy]

7. Those counties are very consistent

Florida is a morass of contradictions. A lot of that is Jeb's doing, IMO.

[Eloriel]

16. Please remember that 2000 numbers may not be all that

reliable either. These same counties by and large had optical scanners then, too. And it was an optical scanner system with a little smart card that added a NEGATIVE 16,000 for Gore in Volusia County (not in the panhandle -- the home of Daytona Beach, on the east coast). The smart card subsequently disappeared, which is awfully easy to do since they're the size of a credit card.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

13. Perhaps a better indicator is how did they vote in 1996 or 98

Since the 2000 election was also suspect

[NewYorkerfromMass]

5. "...his big lose in the Hispanic vote"

you mean as I posted in my thread?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x42375

[DoYouEverWonder]

8. Yes, I knew I saw that info

somewhere this morning.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

10. People need to keep that thread kicked

It's potentially a big story which is being suppressed.

[Chili]

11. not to mention the fact that CNN's own exit polls...

...states that 85% of Florida's Democrats voted for Kerry.

HOW does that reconcile with the "Dixiecrat" vote? Why won't anybody explain that?

85%...! That's pretty high for Democrats to be crossing over. Or is this one of those situations where the exit polls aren't valid when they choose them not to be?

ALSO - look at the poll by ideology - only 34% of the voters they asked considered themselves "conservative," whether they're Dems or Reps. Kerry took the moderate vote by 56%, and the liberal vote by 81%, HOW does this add up???

http://us.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/FL/P/00/epolls.0.html

[eowyn_of_rohan]

12. Is it reasonable to believe the Panhandle is SOLIDLY "Dixiecrat "?

Is there something meaningful here, or am I going off the deep end?
I spent some time looking at the Florida voting charts yesterday--the ones that show the expected vs the actual vote totals for Dems and Reps by county. If you consider all the northern counties 'panhandle' except those on the NE coast, I counted 32.

Of the 40 counties with highly suspicious numbers on the charts (Seemingly transposed, and grossly padded and/or skimmed numbers), 30 of them were in the panhandle.

But the other 2 panhandle counties were among the mere 27 counties with "reasonable" numbers...Both these counties went with Kerry! How did these 2 counties slip through the cracks, and not support their "dixiecrat" excuse?

Here are examples
From the Unreasonable numbers category --*30* panhandle states had similarly outrageous inconsistencies--ALL favoring Bush:
Expected Rep - Actual Rep - Expected Dem - Actual Dem -Voting Equipment - FLA Location
Dixie county - 968 - 4,433 - 4,988 - 1,959 - Diebold Op-Scan - Panhandle

Only 2 panhandle counties in the "reasonable" numbers category, voted Kerry. Why would there be 2 tiny islands of reason in a sea of dixiecrats?
Alachua county- 30,887 - 47,615 - 56,111 - 62,348 - Diebold Op-Scan - Panhandle

It just seems to me they overstate this dixiecrats in the panhandle theme... There are many different kinds of people in the panhandle, not only Bible belt types...

[NewYorkerfromMass]

15. I have a simple solution. Find another Dixiecrat county elsewhere

and compare histories and totals to Baker and Dixie counties.
92 thru to 04. See how these 2 counties stack up against another county in Georgia or Alabama.

[jbnow]

23. I don't know Florida

But the only 9 counties that Kerry held the same % as Gore or slightly exceeded it. These were Alachua,Collier,Duval,Gadsden, Hamilton,Hendry,Jefferson,Leon, and Miami-Dade.

When I say slight I mean slight...Bush lost 0 to 4% in these. In every other county Bush gained, often in double digit percentages.

I know 2000 was also suspect and I know % gain per county isn't that meaningful...but pretending there was no cheating in 2000, does it make sense?

Right after the election needing to do something I looked up the total, percentages and machines used in every county. Of course they are all Dibold, Es&S and Sequioa in 2004 so that part wasn't much help.

[neohippie]

46. This is true and the vote reflects that

Look, I don't want to discourage anyone from investigating this, and it may turn out that these Dixiecrat counties votes were manipulated somehow, but, I also don't think we should focus on this particular area too heavily.

The issues are voter supression, fraud, spoilage, and possibly electronic vote tampering, most likely on the tabulators.

I was born and raised in Florida and I lived in this area of the state for over 12 years. I worked in state politics and I am pretty familiar with how this area votes historically.

I am not an expert, but it is not like no one voted for Kerry here, there are plenty of good people in North Florida, but, they tend to be very conservative and christian. Of course not everyone there likes Bush or voted for him and in the more educated areas, surrounding larger cities, the vote reflects that.

I just feel that our energy could be concentrated on looking deeper at this issue. Some people are so focused at the surface issues, registered voters, and their party affiliation vs how the vote turned out. If you were going to try and conduct fraud in an election that was this closely contested, why would you make it so easy to discover?

Please don't label me a disruptor, I am only trying to help here in an area where I have first hand knowledge.

[Cadence]

14. What's also annoying

about the dixiecrat theory is the way they back it up by going alllll the way back to the 1996 election and saying that the majority of registered democrats in those Florida counties voted for Dole.

Well 1996 is when the Diebold optical scan and electronic voting machines were installed there dumbasses!

[bullimiami]

17. This Dixicrat crap is just another cover like blaming the exit polls

these people have long since switched to the republican party. civil rights, the 60s and 70s shook them all out. the southern racist once strongly democrat is now firmly republican.

[Eloriel]

18. Ding, Ding, Ding!! Thanks for that important detail. n/t

[NewYorkerfromMass]

19. optical scan is not a black box

in fact they are the most reliable of all the ballot methods.
Am I missing something here?

[Cadence]

25. The votes are tallied

from optical scan machines using Diebold software on a windows desktop machine that has back doors written into the code.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

28. so each scanner has its own CPU? nt

[Cadence]

29. Each scanner

feeds it's results to a computer running the Gems software

[DoYouEverWonder]

30. I believe optical scanners are black boxes

that is where BBV derived their name.

What happens is that you feed your ballot into a black box and who knows what happens after that.

Yes, you still have a paper ballot that could be recounted, which is good. But unless there is less than a 1% difference a recount is not triggered. Also I think I've read that they are not allowed to open the boxes even for a recount, in some places? Depends on how they wrote their laws.

Also, the real problem is how the data from the votes is transmitted. That is where it is most vulnerable.

[Carl Brennan]

20. Nice. And, just coincidently, the Dixiecrat proponents pick 1996 as

the stopping point. :eyes:

[TR Fan]

41. A more accurate comparison

would be 1988 when Bush I was running against another candidate from Mass. For Baker and Dixie those numbers are:

Dukakis Bush
Baker: 1353 3414
Dixie: 1366 2027

Also, the counties mentioned in the thread opener are, as noted elsewhere, centered around Tallahassee and FSU. Another thread mentions Alachua, which, btw, is not in the panhandle and which also is the home of U of F (my alma mater). Leon and Alachua have, in recent memory, always been heavily democratic.

[sandnsea]

47. The R vote doubled?

Twice as many people went for Bush over Kerry as went for Bush 1 over Dukakis? I actually don't think that's likely.

[noiretextatique]

21. i think it's impossible that * won florida

especially by the margin they are claiming. considering the 2000 race was decided by a few hundred votes, how is it possiblwe that the 2004 race would be so lopsided? i don't buy it.

[Duncan]

22. I wish somebody would conduct a poll of registered dems

in one of the supposed "dixiecrat" counties NOW. Maybe Move-on has a calling list? I would gladly volunteer to make calls for such a poll, but I guess it would be worthless unless a nonpartisan polling agency were hired to do it. This is what I donated to Kerry's challenge chest for damn it.

[glitch]

24. Been saying that since 11/3 - Welcome to DU!nt

[RuleofLaw]

27. Also add to the Florida

result, that in 2000 Nader got in the neighborhood of 72000 votes, but in 2004 not even close to that amount. Did they all go to Bush?

[bullimiami]

26. no duncan you are missing it.

we need to have hand counts of the optical scan originals in those counties. the evidence is there locked away. they are almost all optical scan.
interviews could never be used evidence and would never be taken seriously.

[DoYouEverWonder]

31. Agree

Do you know what the rules are for recounting in Florida?

We still haven't finished the 'Count' phase of the election, so it will be interesting to know, legally what the next step is after the count has been certified?

[glitch]

37. It's a place to start when it's touchscreen or you don't have access to

the ballots. And sworn affadavits are taken seriously, so the polling would be the start of the investigation to initiate the hand counts where possible, and sworn affadavits where no paper trail.
Then come the lawsuits, which bring out more discovery, and finally the indictments!
:bounce:

[eowyn_of_rohan]

32. Where are the outraged Floridians?

If you lived in one of these counties with suspicious results, wouldnt you be protesting? Demanding recounts? It worries me a little that there doesn't seem to be much backlash from all this in the sunshine state.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

33. Because the vote tampering could have been subtle

Just a 5 to 6% shift of votes (actually take 3% of Kerry votes and switch them to Bush and you've got a 6% swing) would have made the difference.

[floridadem30]

35. I am right here and I have been writing letters,emails, and petitions

[newyawker99]

39. Hi Duncan!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[TrainWreck]

34. Unfortunately, it ain't busted

Unfortunately, the issue isn't party affiliation, it's race.

If you look at the results of these counties and compare them with race, you will see that whites tend to vote GOP and blacks tend to vote Democratic. In fact, I have precinct demographic data from the 2000 election and it shows that even in these Dixiecrat counties, the predominantly black precincts strongly supported Gore while the predominantly white precincts supported Bush.

If I'm not mistaken, isn't Gadsden the only majority African American county in Florida? (I don't have access to my data at the moment.)

I'm not saying that there isn't cheating going on there, but it's more subtle than the stuff I'm reading here. It would show up as statistical anomalies, histories of minority intimidation, and election fraud, not gross generalizations about the number of registered Democrats. I think that the powers that run the election machinery used their position to manipulate the results in 2000 and probably in 2004, but it was a bunch of little Zell Millers who did the manipulating.

Given the size of the final Bush margin in Florida, I don't think the big story there is in the Dixiecrat counties. I think the story is hackers probably backed by some shadowy organization ("plumbers") for which the overt GOP has plausible deniability; incredibly unsecure voting equipment; and passive facilitation of fraud and suppression by state officials. If the number pops out at you then you're probably looking in the wrong place, or at least at the wrong approach. They didn't rip off 50% of the vote in Liberty County (and the other Dixiecrat counties), they ripped off 7% in places where it's not immediately noticeable.

[floridadem30]

36. What about duval county dem cnty rep vote diebold machine?

[newyawker99]

40. Hi TrainWreck!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[bobbyboucher]

48. Correct about the race of Gadsden. Leon is

Tallahassee, with two universities and the capitol, so could reasonably go Dem, as for Madison, I'm not sure, but is worth looking into, very rural.

What needs to be looked at is so-called "Dixiecrat" counties that use e-voting, not central tabulating opti-scan. Just to make a comparison. After all, isn't that the question?

[glugglug]

38. Leon county is a college town

That's where FSU is.
Those others are right next to it and could also have college student influence.

[truehawk]

42. kick

[truehawk]

43. kick

[neohippie]

44. I lived in Leon County

These counties surround Leon County, Tallahasse, FL home of Florida State University, Florida A&M university and the captitol of Florida.

These counties are slightly different than the other 15 or so counties in north Florida, in that they surruond an urban area, and have more educated less conservative voters than the rest of that part of the state.

I am on our side on this issue, but, this evidence hardly refutes the Dixiecrats. If you have something else to make your arguement with, then please prove me wrong.

[bobbyboucher]

49. The Dixiecrat hypothesis needs to be tsested in counties

that are not in the panhandle and do not use opti-scan with central tabulation. There are some counties that would fall into this category.

[neohippie]

51. most of the Dixiecrat counties in Florida are in the panhandle

All are rural, counties. Again, I offer that if the votes were manipluated there it wouldn't have to be a large manipulation, most of these folks would have supported the shrub.

People need to remember that in 5 of the last 7 presidential elections Florida went to a Republican. The other 2 times Florida went to Clinton and Carter, both democrats from the south that won because of their ability to carry the south.

I just don't see where the big controversy is in those counties, but I hope to GOD that someone can prove me wrong.

[ReneB]

50. anyone seen this?

http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=973

if its a dupe, i am sorry..

[bullimiami]

52. gadsden has always been democratic

and has gotten progressively more so the last 20 years the trend continued as expected this year.

offhand i dont think gadsden looks suspicious.

it is also a majority black county around 60%.

[bullimiami]

53. jefferson county truly does bust the dixiecrat myth

jefferson is 60% white.

jefferson in 84, 88, 92 voted slightly non democratic. (92, 96 rep + perot vs clinton)
in 96 and 2000 became steadily more democratic by about 10% per cycle.
this year while it voted democratic it was only slightly more democratic than in 2000.

why did this year virtually hold the line rep vs dem compared to 2000?

I am slightly suspicious. I would like to see a hand count of the ballots. I think jefferson is op scan.

[futurecitizen]

54. Dixiecrats, etc.

I believe we need the exit poll data, and in thinking about it, it might be possible for us, as a community, to apply pressure to the exit poll people to release that information. I've contacted Liz Doyle repeatedly about them and been told that the data won't be released for six to nine months. She failed to specify a reason. I've contacted her again today to request the information or at the very least get an explanation of why we can't even purchase the data. We'll see how that goes.

I think this community can assist in this. If we all call her and ask how much the exit poll data costs, why it isn't being made available, whether or not this is standard procedure for a national election, etc, they might cave to the pressure. We can also contact the media about it and see what happens.

Her email is [email protected], phone number 888-325-8683. You don't have to be rude, but we have a real concern here, and that company should at least be forced to justify their actions. Withholding information that might prove fraud is serious, and if there is nothing to hide there is nothing to hide.

A little more on this topic: the website refers people to member sites for the national election. If *that* data is the same as the data they initially gathered, why not publish it on their own site? It makes no sense (though I suppose some non-compete clause might have been written). At the very least, why can't the sell it to us? There may be a perfectly innocent explanation, but it seems suspicious to me, and I want to find out.

Please call her and ask: Liz Doyle, 888-325-8683. Phone calls are better than email, imho.

FC

[bullimiami]

55. leon one more. busting the myth.

population 67% white.

leon has been headed steadily more democratic for 20 years.

84 1.22 positive is rep negative is dem. this is 22% rep leaning.
88 1.07
92 1.03 92 and 96 i combined perot + rep vs dem
96 -1.23 county has gone democratic....
00 -1.57 a lot more democratic
02 -1.62 only slightly more so. why was bush able to stall the trend? hmmmm.


you can see it is a steady democratic trend. this seems to be true pretty much all over florida. suspiciously (slightly) it virtually held its 2000 bias this year.

one more county I wouldnt mind seeing a hand count to compare to the tabulator total.