The Method or the Map?
Liberal blogs are aflame with speculation that Diebold voting machines rigged a Granite State victory for New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Vote tallies from the New Hampshire Secretary of State show that she won by 4.23 percentage points in the counties using Diebold optical scanners, but lost by 5.81 points in those where paper ballots are counted by hand. (These numbers use the most recent vote counts by township.)
Ergo conspiracy.
Preliminary analysis from Edison/Mitofsky, however, indicates that the difference between the two types of precincts goes back at least two elections. As Joe Lenski, executive vice president of Edison Media Research, wrote in an e-mail, "unless there has been hidden election fraud in New Hampshire for the last three presidential primaries the 'evidence' being used by these fraudsters probably does not hold up to any rigorous statistical analysis."
Moreover, attributing all the differences between these townships to their choice of vote-counting procedures misses other potentially important differences among voters (e.g., proportions independent, highly-educated).
Here's a Behind the Numbers analysis, showing the differences between the townships have been in the same direction the last three cycles:
UPDATE: The table below has been updated to reflect new numbers from the Secretary of State.
| Vote by type of voting equipment used: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Optical scanners | Paper ballots | |
| 2008 Clinton | 40.09 | 33.74 |
| 2008 Obama | 35.84 | 39.77 |
| 2008 Margin | Clinton +4.25 | Obama +6.03 |
| 2004 Kerry | 39.52 | 32.40 |
| 2004 Dean | 24.74 | 34.43 |
| 2004 Margin | Kerry +14.78 | Dean +2.03 |
| 2000 Gore | 50.35 | 45.80 |
| 2000 Bradley | 45.03 | 49.13 |
| 2000 Margin | Gore +5.31 | Bradley +3.33 |
-- Jennifer Agiesta and Jon Cohen
By Jennifer Agiesta |
January 10, 2008; 7:39 PM ET
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