News

With much attention focussed on politics of US presidential elections in
Florida, the new KDnuggets poll asks -- can statistical inference help to
determine who received the most votes ? Please vote at
http://www.KDnuggets.com

Here are also views of statisticians on the topic of Florida elections
(thanks to Karl Rexer and others for pointers).

http://madison.hss.cmu.edu/
Greg D. Adams, Chris Fastnow.
    Analysis of the Voting Irregularities in Palm Beach, FL.
    How much did the Buchanan vote deviate from the expected?

http://elections.fas.harvard.edu/

    Abstract: It is well known that Reform Party candidate Pat
Buchanan received an unusually high share of the presidential vote in
Palm Beach County, Florida. It has been alleged that the non-standard
ballot used in Palm Beach County was responsible for this insofar as
the ballot caused individuals who wanted to vote for Al Gore to
instead vote for Buchanan. In light of this alleged irregularity we
analyze presidential voting in Palm Beach County and reach the
following conclusions.

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ucdtpums/
	Henry Brady, What Happened in Palm Beach County?

It is now well-known that the design of the ballot in Palm Beach
County could have led to numerous mistakes in voting. Moreover, it is
easy to show that the Buchanan vote in Palm Beach County is a
substantial outlier considering the Bush and Gore votes in that
county.  Buchanan obtained about .8% of the vote, but his expected
vote was probably no more than .2% to .3%.

http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~bhansen/vote/vote.html

Bruce E. Hansen, A NonParametric Analysis of UnderVotes in the Palm
Beach Presidential Vote: Implications for a Recount.

Abstract: A precinct-level nonparametric analysis of the November 2000
Presidential vote in Palm Beach Florida shows that undervoting -- not
marking the ballot sufficiently for the counting machines to read --
cost Gore approximately 3104 more votes than Bush.

Our analysis also predicts that a hand recount will net approximately
294 votes for Gore, but the actual gain can range from 209 to 401.