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Misleading Election Statistics 2008

When elections roll round, I am always flabbergasted at some of the statistics news agencies cook up. I’m no conspiracy theorist, so I can’t say I’m given to any sort of belief that any wide scale crookedness is going on; however, I do think election time brings out the worst in a lot of people, leading to many individual reporters and writing companies to pump out what I’d refer to as nothing other than utter bullshit.

For example, the Associated Press recently published an article, Black turnout is strong in early voting in the South. This is, by far, one of the worst articles I’ve seen this year. It bears little that suggests logical thought and uses statistics in such a way that even I believe someone’s trying to get the results they want out of writing this. Here are some quotes.

Blacks are already surging to the polls in parts of the South, according to initial figures from states that encourage early voting — a striking though still preliminary sign of how strongly they will turn out nationwide for Barack Obama in his campaign to become the first African-American president.

The opening paragraph alone is shocking, or at least should be. It suggests a direct correlation with a whole race and one man’s candidacy, simply due to, well, race and racism. Can we assume that many black people will vote for Obama? Yes, but not because they share Obama’s skin color. It’s more because African Americans typically vote Democrat. (See the voter demographics from the 2004 election.) Even I, a person who is as white as white can be, finds this a little offensive. What of all the blacks who will vote for McCain or a third party member? Leave it to mainstream news to lump a whole group of people together.

But that’s not all. It gets worse.

There have been predictions all year of a record black turnout for Obama. The first actual figures suggest that wasn’t just talk:

• In North Carolina, blacks make up 31 percent of early voters so far, even though they’re just 21 percent of the population and made up only 19 percent of state’s overall 2004 vote.

There should be a rule of thumb that whenever one sees a lot of percentages within close proximity of each another, his Skeptic Alarm should begin sounding. The problem with the statistic above, if you haven’t figured it out yet, is that it doesn’t mention how many early voters there were in North Carolina, so comparing blacks in early voting to how many blacks voted in 2004 is extraordinarily misleading. If there were only 10 early voters, it doesn’t really matter if “31 percent” of them were black, because the total number of early black voters in that scenario is a long way off from comparing to a whole 21 percent of the state’s population and 19 percent of the state’s voting population.

In an effort to top his former unethical reporting, Mike Baker, the primary Associated Press writer who birthed this atrocious article, performs some more misleading math that even I can decipher.

Democrats are outvoting the GOP by a margin of 2.5-to-1 in North Carolina, where early voting has been under way for a week. That’s roughly double the margin from 2004….In Louisiana, more than 31 percent of the early voters are black, and Democrats are topping Republicans nearly 2-to-1. In the crucial battleground state of Florida, nearly 55 percent of early voters are registered Democrats — well above their 41 percent share of the electorate in the Sunshine State.

Non-Americans will have more difficulty understanding the problem in the above paragraph, but it’s fairly easy to spot if you know a thing or two about American politics. The problem is that when people register to vote, they have a choice (and in some states, a requirement) to affiliate themselves with a political party. This does not, however, mean that they will vote within that party for every election. I am registered under one political party, but I did not vote within that party this year. Statistics like those above would lump me into a category that I actually hadn’t voted in. So if I voted for Nader, but I was registered Democrat, that statistic would see me as a Democrat, not as someone who voted for Nader. It works the same for those affiliated with the Republican party.

So, once again, the numbers are misleading. To say that “Democrats are outvoting the GOP 2.5-to-1 in North Carolina,” is wrong, because we don’t actually know how these individuals voted. We don’t know that all registered Democrats voted for Obama. We don’t know that all registered Republicans voted for McCain. We don’t know whether all registered Independents didn’t place a vote toward one of the main parties, rather than a third party.

To assume that everyone votes according to what party they’re registered under (if any at all), it’s about like saying, “Grocery stores in my country sell meat, and it is often sold; therefore, no one is a vegetarian in my country.” In other words, it’s a huge assumption. Sadly, it’s not the last one in this article.

The surge in black voters follows a similar trend this year in voter registration. In the five states that track voter registration by race, blacks signed up to vote at twice the rate of whites in the six months through September.

The problem with this is that five states tracking registration out of 50 tells one, well, nothing. That’s bad enough. What’s worse, though, is the assumption that, simply because these five states have seen twice as many blacks registering than whites, that there is any actual surge of voters by race. Statistically speaking, the Census reports that, nationwide, in 2004, around 36% of blacks were not registered to vote, and 32% of whites were unregistered. Already, blacks have a greater chance of registering, because fewer registered.

Then there is the state scale of this. Depending on which five states are tracking this data (and the reporter conveniently fails to mention all five), the demographics alone may be playing with the statistics. A state with a large black population, such as Mississippi (37%), will likely see more black voter registration than Connecticut or South Dakota, which have 10% and less than 1% of a black population, respectively.

It really amazes me how misleading numbers can be during an election, and yet how important they can be to some people. If you’re reading lots of news on current events, I suggest you take particular care. You don’t want to be misled.

Comments ordered from oldest to newest.

Ruth

I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment.

I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog

very often.

Ruth

http://www.infrared-sauna-spot.info

The Q Man

Ok,, I have never ever, ever, written to a blog. I also found most blogs not to my taste. BUT, I ran across your comment on ANOTHER blog, about sounding smart and then I followed your name link to your site. You got my attention before and now with this blog you kept it. Thanks for your.

I totally agree with you. For a Long time I have shared with my friends that the Media being mostly controlled by Democratic powers will always lean towards and negotiate the “better” light for the Democratic party.

I am a black male, Republican, Business Owner. ALL my BLACK friends and peers are Republican. For me it was a win/win. McCain wins, I have my party in office. Obama wins I have a black male in office. Sweeett. But I would never vote for Obama, not mow. I believe he is to inexperienced. I would vote for him maybe in 10 years if he had a track record I could follow (outside of the media) but I did not vote for him.

By the way, MANY of the lower income blacks I work with or work for me, QUOTED the news and the STATISTICS that were posted as the “reason why we registering is to mkae sure we vote with everyone else, he definately gonna win, it said so in the news”.

Being raised black, poor, and in a rough area I understood I would need to do months if not years of de-programming. Alot of them don’t know Christmas from Bourke street. So I just nodded alot. and said Um!.

Thanks for letting me ramble. GREAT story from a Liberatarian white as can be american shiela living downunder.

Merry Christmas