Very Strange Voting in Alaska
Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com is on to this, and Rachel Maddow had him on tonight to say so.
Something very very odd happened in the Alaska election. Silver points mostly to the incredible delta between the predictive polls and the actual results — jumps of 17 points, for example.
Mudflats from Alaska points to something else, even stranger.
As these strange numbers rolled in at Election Central, I was there watching. Here’s how it fell out over time.
With 36% of the precincts reporting:
61.76% for McCain
35.64% for Obama
With 81.3% reporting
61.54% for McCain
35.69% for Obama
With 96.1% reporting
61.29% for McCain
35.96% for Obama
Looks like some investigatin is needed. Sarah?
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November 9th, 2008 @ 4:27 pm
I don’t understand what those three results are supposed to prove. That the figures changed surprisingly little despite different districts? And what were the predictions?
November 11th, 2008 @ 8:56 am
Helen,
What’s confusing here, I suspect, is use of the word “delta,” which in this context means “change in” or “difference of”. What Nate Silver is saying in his geekish way (click on the link after his name in red) is that between the pre-election polling and the actual election result there was a swing of about 14% in the Republican’s favor. It would be odd, to say the least, for pre-election polls to be that far off. Something smells fishy, and Silver floats several hypotheses as to what might have gone on.
Hey, Ms. Giambruni, great to see you posting here! Any time.