NATIONAL PRESIDENTIAL
ELECTION

National Presidential
Election Map

After the dust cleared and the Supreme Court had spoken, Bush lost New Mexico and Oregon but "won" Florida and therefore the presidency with a slim 271 to 267 electoral votes.  In this instance, the outcome of the closest election in American history was determined by the Nader vote (I won't even get into the Florida vote count fiasco, although it appears a state-wide recount would have favored Gore - see below).  I have listed Bush's victory margins in the two closest contests -- Florida and New Hampshire -- and compared them to the votes drained away from Gore by Nader.  Nader claims that 40% of his voters wouldn't have voted anyway, so I've also included the number of Nader voters (the other 60%) who presumably would have voted for Gore.  In both instances, the Nader votes made up the difference by an overwhelming margin, so -- contrary to his claims -- Nader's quixotic candidacy was the spoiler for Gore.
 
 

The Final Word?
(November 11, 2001)

Florida recount study: Bush still wins
Study reveals flaws in ballots, voter errors may have cost Gore victory

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A comprehensive study of the 2000 presidential election in Florida suggests that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a statewide vote recount to proceed, Republican candidate George W. Bush would still have been elected president.

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago conducted the six-month study for a consortium of eight news media companies, including CNN.

NORC dispatched an army of trained investigators to examine closely every rejected ballot in all 67 Florida counties, including handwritten and punch-card ballots. The NORC team of coders were able to examine about 99 percent of them, but county officials were unable to deliver as many as 2,200 problem ballots to NORC investigators. In addition, the uncertainties of human judgment, combined with some counties' inability to produce the same undervotes and overvotes that they saw last year, create a margin of error that makes the study instructive but not definitive in its findings.

As well as attempting to discern voter intent in ballots that might have been re-examined had the recount gone forward, the study also looked at the possible effect of poor ballot design, voter error and malfunctioning machines. That secondary analysis suggests that more Florida voters may have gone to the polls intending to vote for Democrat Al Gore but failed to cast a valid vote.

In releasing the report, the consortium said it is in no way trying to rewrite history or challenge the official result -- that Bush won Florida by 537 votes. Rather it is simply trying to bring some additional clarity to one of the most confusing chapters in U.S. politics.

Florida Supreme Court recount ruling

On December 12, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Florida Supreme Court ruling ordering a full statewide hand recount of all undervotes not yet tallied. The U.S. Supreme Court action effectively ratified Florida election officials' determination that Bush won by a few hundred votes out of more than 6 million cast.

Using the NORC data, the media consortium examined what might have happened if the U.S. Supreme Court had not intervened. The Florida high court had ordered a recount of all undervotes that had not been counted by hand to that point. If that recount had proceeded under the standard that most local election officials said they would have used, the study found that Bush would have emerged with 493 more votes than Gore. [boldface mine]

Gore's four-county strategy

Suppose that Gore got what he originally wanted -- a hand recount in heavily Democratic Broward, Palm Beach, Miami-Dade and Volusia counties. The study indicates that Gore would have picked up some additional support but still would have lost the election -- by a 225-vote margin statewide.

The news media consortium then tested a number of other hypothetical scenarios.

Use of Palm Beach County standard

Out of Palm Beach County emerged one of the least restrictive standards for determining a valid punch-card ballot. The county elections board determined that a chad hanging by up to two corners was valid and that a dimple or a chad detached in only one corner could also count if there were similar marks in other races on the same ballot. If that standard had been adopted statewide, the study shows a slim, 42-vote margin for Gore.

Inclusion of overvotes

In addition to undervotes, thousands of ballots in the Florida presidential election were invalidated because they had too many marks. This happened, for example, when a voter correctly marked a candidate and also wrote in that candidate's name. The consortium looked at what might have happened if a statewide recount had included these overvotes as well and found that Gore would have had a margin of fewer than 200 votes.

The butterfly and caterpillar ballots

One of the most controversial aspects of the Florida election was the so-called butterfly ballot used in heavily Democratic Palm Beach County. Many voters came out of the polls saying they were confused by the ballot design.

According to the study, 5,277 voters made a clean punch for Gore and a clean punch for Reform Party nominee Pat Buchanan, candidates whose political philosophies are poles apart. An additional 1,650 voters made clean punches for Bush and Buchanan. If many of the Buchanan votes were in error brought on by a badly designed ballot, a CNN analysis found that Gore could have netted thousands of additional votes as compared with Bush.

Eighteen other counties used another confusing ballot design known as the "caterpillar" or "broken" ballot, where six or seven presidential candidates are listed in one column and the names of the remaining minor party candidates appeared at the top of a second one. According to the study, more than 15,000 people who voted for either Gore or Bush also selected one candidate in the second column, apparently thinking the second column represented a new race.

Had many of these voters not marked a minor candidate in the second column, Gore would have netted thousands of additional votes as compared with Bush.

However, the double votes on both butterfly and caterpillar ballots were clearly invalid under any interpretation of the law.

What Earlier Reports Concluded

Ballot Review Shows Gore Stood to Gain
Rejected Votes in Florida Yield Findings

Orlando Sentinel
Sunday, February 11, 2001; Page A04

ORLANDO - Al Gore would have gained 203 extra votes if Orange County had conducted a hand recount of all of its ballots that machines could not read after the Nov. 7 election.

Results of a new hand count released Friday by Orange County election officials, and an Orlando Sentinel examination of rejected ballots, found clear presidential votes on 799 ballots for which counting machines had detected no vote or votes for multiple candidates.

The findings show that - had Orange County's canvassing board examined all its ballots - George W. Bush would have gained 298 votes and Gore would have picked up 501. That would have given Gore a net gain of 203 votes - equivalent to more than a third of Bush's 537-vote winning margin in Florida.

The results underscore the blow dealt to Gore's campaign by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that halted a statewide count of all ballots on which machines detected no votes. Orange County's canvassing board had examined about 15 percent of those ballots before the ruling.

Orange County voters mark paper ballots with special pens. Ballots are fed into counting machines at each precinct, which immediately reject ballots with errors and give voters a chance to correct them. Because of that system, which Gov. Jeb Bush wants all counties to use by the 2002 elections, Orange County had one of the lowest rates of rejected ballots in the state.

The most common reason for rejection, the Sentinel's examination found, was because voters apparently used pens other than those provided in the voting booth.

A Sentinel review of about 10 percent of the uncounted ballots, focusing on 16 small counties that use mostly paper ballots, suggests that hand recounts would have helped Gore far more than Bush, even though most of the counties are predominantly Republican. With the findings in Orange County, Sentinel research indicates hand counts in those 16 counties might have given Gore a net gain of 569 votes - 32 votes more than Bush's certified margin of victory statewide.
 

Bad Ballot?
Here's the infamous "butterfly ballot."  Many voters punched holes for more than one presidential candidate (usually Gore and Buchanan).  Over 3,000 voters evidently mistakenly voted for Buchanan.  How could this happen?    You be the judge.

Courtesy ABC News (www.abcnews.go.com)

See?  Gore's name is second on the ballot, but the hole to punch is the third one down.  Do you think you could have done better?  Isn't it sad that it all comes down to this?  Should we decide who's going to be President of the United States by shrugging our shoulders and saying, "Oh well . . . we can't do anything about stupid voters"?
 

Newspaper: Gore Might Have Won

MARCH 11, 08:48 EST

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) -- A ballot design that confused voters into choosing two candidates cost Democrat Al Gore 6,607 votes in Palm Beach County, The Palm Beach Post reported in its Sunday editions.

The newspaper counted more than 19,000 overvotes, or ballots on which more than one vote was recorded for a presidential candidate. It concluded the net gain of votes for Gore would have been 10 times more than he needed to erase Republican George W. Bush's slim margin of 537 votes in the state. [emphasis mine]

Many voters had complained that the butterfly ballot was confusing because candidates' names appeared on both sides of the punchcard with holes in the middle. They expected the holes to select Bush and Gore to be the first two choices as required by Florida statutes, but instead found Buchanan, on a facing page, located between them.

According to the newspaper's review, 5,330 ballots were thrown out because voters punched chads for Gore and Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan, whose name appeared just above Gore's. Another 2,908 voters punched Gore's name and Socialist David McReynolds, the candidate whose name appeared just below Gore's. Bush lost 1,631 votes because people selected both Bush and Buchanan. Buchanan's name appeared just below Bush on the ballot. The two Gore combinations, minus the Bush-Buchanan votes, add up to 6,607 lost votes for Gore.

``What it shows is what we've been saying all along there is no question that the majority of people on Election Day believed they left the booth voting for Al Gore,'' said Ron Klain, Gore's former chief of staff and his lead legal strategist in Florida.

Former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, a vocal Bush supporter, dismissed the findings. ``You're trying too hard to find a correlation here,'' Racicot said. ``You don't know these people, you don't know what they intended.''

The Post reported that even if 1 percent of the 6,607 votes were intended for Buchanan or McReynolds -- more than their combined percent of Palm Beach County's total vote -- Gore would still have received 6,541 votes.

Three-fourths of the overvotes had punches for two candidates, most of which experts said can be attributed to the ballot design. The rest were for three or more candidates, which experts called voter error, not a design problem. There were 5,062 voters who punched three or more choices for president. Twenty-eight voters selected all 10 presidential candidates.

The newspaper's review of overvotes was conducted between Jan. 17 and Jan. 29.

In a story published Saturday, The Post reported that Gore would have gained 784 votes in Palm Beach County if every ballot that had a hanging chad, pinhole or dimple was counted. Had The Post's standard been used and its tally applied without any changes in counting procedures in Florida's 66 other counties, the tally also would have erased Bush's victory margin in the state.

In Palm Beach County's official 10-day manual recount, Gore gained 174 votes. Those were not counted in the statewide tally because the county canvassing board missed the deadline by two hours.

The newspaper looked at the 9,150 ballots that county officials said had no vote for president -- commonly called ``undervotes'' -- and found that 5,736 had a mark for either Bush or Gore. There were 462,350 ballots cast in the county, which Gore carried by an almost two-to-one margin.

During its manual recount, the Palm Beach canvassing board members -- who were all Democrats -- struggled over which ballots should be counted, so board Chairman Charles Burton went to court in hopes of having a firm standard set. But Circuit Judge Jorge Labarga ruled that the board should judge every ballot on its own merit and count those where the voter's intent could be determined. The board counted very few dimpled ballots.

The newspaper's examination of ballots the board rejected broke them into three categories. The paper found that Bush would have had a net gain of 14 votes if the canvassing board had counted the 62 undervotes that had a hanging chad. That's where a candidate's square is partially detached or is hanging from the ballot. But, the newspaper found, Gore would have had a net gain of 25 votes if the canvassing board had also counted the 313 ballots where light could be seen through the perforations or through a pinhole in the square. None of the corners of these chads were detached. Finally, the paper found that Gore would have had a net gain of 784 votes if the board had also counted the 5,361 ballots that had a dimpled chad, which means the chad had an indentation but no light could be seen through a pinhole or its edges.

Burton pointed out a problem with The Post's method. If the canvassing board had counted dimpled chads as votes, it would have had to reject the ballots where voters made a clear punch for one candidate and made a dimple for another because that would have reflected an overvote. It is unknown how many ballots would have been disqualified if that had been done.

The Post is not the only newspaper reviewing Florida ballots. Two groups are conducting examinations in all 67 counties. The first group, which consists of The Miami Herald, its parent company Knight Ridder, and USA Today, had completed its examination in 65 of 67 counties as of Wednesday. The other group consists of The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, The Palm Beach Post, St. Petersburg Times, The Wall Street Journal and Tribune Publishing, which owns the Orlando Sentinel and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. As of Tuesday, it still had 20 counties remaining.
 

My Conclusions

What the studies clearly show is that more voters came out on November 7, 2000 with the intension of casting their ballots for Al Gore than for George Bush.  In my opinion, the problems of the punch-card ballots and the butterfly and caterpillar ballots need to be written off as an example of voter ignorance.  Very little can be done if voters cannot follow directions, regardless of how poorly-constructed the ballots were.  The disturbing aspect of the vote count is the "overvotes" and "undervotes" on the scanned paper ballots.  Because any ballots that had the proper space marked for Gore and had his name written in or on which the wrong pen was used were kicked out by the machines, thousands of ballots that showed beyond a doubt what the voter's intent was were not counted.  This is inexcusable.  If I did the same thing to my students when I use Scantron answer sheets, I dare say there would be a riot in the classroom.  Fault also lies with the Gore campaign, because if they had called for a state-wide recount rather than the dubious selective recount, Gore might very well have won.

---

Gulp!  Well, here goes!  My prediction is that Al Gore will squeak by and win the presidency with 290 electoral votes.  I am predicting victories for Gore on the West Coast (including vote-rich California), the Northeast (except New Hampshire and Maine), Florida, and the Upper Great Lakes States.  I have the gut feeling that voters in those key areas will change their votes at the last moment -- perhaps even in the voting booth -- from Bush (the nagging suspicion that he's too inexperienced/dumb) and Nader ("A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush") to Gore.  In any event, this all means that Gore must win in most if not all of the toss-up states.  In my scenario, Gore could lose a Wisconsin and an Oregon or a Missouri and an Oregon (see how sure I am of Oregon?) and still top 270 electoral votes.  Where did I come up with this?  The tracking polls, the track record, and the primary vote (for the latter two, see below).  What to look for on election night:  if Gore has not won Pennsylvania or Florida, go to bed -- the election's over and George Bush has won.  Otherwise, it's hurry-up-and-wait for the West Coast results to come in.

Ah well, better luck next time.  As it turned out, Bush "won" Florida -- and the election -- so I got six states and the final outcome wrong.  In my defense, if Gore had not been denied a victory in Florida, I would have gotten only five states wrong (Iowa, Maine, New Mexico, Missouri, and Arkansas) and misjudged the Electoral College count only by two.

---

Every four years, polling organizations conduct tracking polls up until the general election in November in all fifty states.  This provides a rough estimate of each candidate's chances in each state, which in turn provides a running estimate of the Electoral College numbers (270 electoral votes -- based on the number of members of the House of Representatives and Senate each state has -- are needed to win).  This year, Rasmussen Research's "Portrait of America" (http://www.portraitofamerica.com) is providing data on tracking polls (at least three times from September to election day).  I also will supplement Portrait of America's data with other polls reported by the Associated Press (http://wire.ap.org/APnews).  As new data is made available, updated maps of the shape of the 2000 Presidential race will be posted here. June 16
June 30
August 2
August 15
August 20
August 28
September 1
September 15
October 1
October 15
October 22
October 29
November 6

---

Making any wagers on the outcome of the election?  Think the polls now reflect what will happen in November?  Click on the link above to check the voting pattern of the last two Presidential elections (1992 and 1996) before you jump to any conclusions.  A Republican candidate cannot win on the scant electoral votes contained in the South, the Great Plains, and the Mountain West; he must make in-roads on the West Coast and in the Industrial Midwest.  Another key is Florida, which switched its vote from Republican to Democrat from 1992 to 1996.

---

Both Al Gore and George Bush faced opposition in this year's Presidential primaries.  Gore faced Bill Bradley and Bush faced John McCain in the early contests.  Even though both Bradley and McCain officially dropped out of the race after "Super Tuesday," they usually remained on the ballot, along with other long shot candidates.  Of note is the size of the insurgent vote -- often reaching 20% even as late as the June primaries -- which indicated dissatisfaction with both front runners.  Click the links below to view charts of each candidate's percentage of votes versus the combined votes of all insurgent candidates.

If the 2000 Presidential primaries had been the actual general election, how would the election have come out?  Click on the link above to view a map based on the total votes cast in states with Democratic and Republican primaries held on the same day.  Of course, the map does not take into account cross-over votes; it simply looks at the margin of victory in each state based on the number of votes cast.  Nonetheless, it does represent the number of hard-core voters willing to back each candidate.
 
 

[HOME]