OK, OK, OK, this is a joke, right?

In several OHIO counties the LOSING CANDIDATES FOR STATE REPRESENTATIVE OR COUNTY COMMISIONERS, that are running as democrats, get MORE VOTES THAN THE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL TICKET.

I guess I didn't understand the magnitude of this until I reviewed the numbers tonight!

we should find out how often (if at all) this happened in other states, and which states.

I live in Oregon and, by rule, in my county A LOCAL DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE never gets MORE VOTES than the Presidential ticket. That goes for the Republicans too.

Just impossible.

This happens all the time folks. There are whole states where local races almost always go to Democrats but they vote for Republicans for President.

"This happens all the time..." Do tell. Seriously.
"All the time" should lead to a boatload of examples
at the local level. Names?

You've never heard of "split ticket voting"???

People here say "I'm a Democrat, so of course I'm going to vote for the Democrat in every race". But the mistake is to assume that everyone else votes that way.

In my precinct in NC, Jim Harell outpolled Kerry substantially even though he lost by a large margin in the district. He also outpolled Erskin Bowles (who in turn outpolled Kerry both here and state-wide).

Our candidates for Lt. Gov, AG, Auditor, Insurance commissioner, Labor commissioner, and on and on..... ALL beat Kerry in the precinct.

In fact... in NC, "straight ticket" does not include the Presidential race. In my precinct, a higher percentage of people voted for the straight Democratic ticket than voted Kerry for President. Not a MUCH higher percentage... but there are clearly a number of people who vote "Democrat" for EVERYTHING except President.

As I said... this happened every election. I used to work the polls in VA and we saw this every year.

The congressional candidate (a Democrat) did not have any Republican opposition. I repeatedly saw people voting for George W. Bush and ALSO voting for this leftie Democratic candidate, as opposed to the Libertarian. Strange but true...

My town 2004 - local Dem candidates get 200 votes more than Kerry. I have seen the same thing many times.

3,341,309 votes statewide. Kerry got 2,938,095 and Bush 2,793,847. That surprised me, but Casey is a big name in PA, so I don't know if it's significant...

I never saw anything like it overseas.

By simple political rule, the candidate that "galvanize" base support and gathers the most votes is ALWAYS the presidential candidate of either party. Is a matter of resources and the people understanding that the Presidential election is the one with major impact on their lives.

This is crazy!

In Ohio, Sen. George Voinovich (R) received more votes than Bush. In Hamilton County -- that includes the City of Cincinnati -- Todd Portune (D) received more votes than Bush. Both Voinovich and Portune are well-known incumbents (Portune is Hamilton County Commissioner) who get a good number of votes from Independents, but little from the faithful of the opposition party.

What's inexplicable is how a non-incumbent Democratic nominee for State Supreme Court manage to get more votes than Kerry in heavily-Republican Warren County. The judicial nominee is an African-American woman from Cleveland -- not exactly the kind of candidate who will trigger a stampede to her campaign headquarters among Warren County voters. THAT needs to be investigated.

A Republican winning a "heavily-Republican" county?

Or a Democrat winning a "heavily-Republican" county?

How can this possibly add anything to a potential fraud case against Bush? If it is any indicator at all, which I doubt, it would tend to show a problem in the SC candidate's tally.

It really depends on the circumstances. Portune, a Democrat running in a county that skews Democratic, won election in 2000 based on voter outrage over the stadium deal given to the Cincinnati Bengals -- his opponent was the architect of the deal. He barely won -- didn't get a majority, in fact, because of a third-party conservative candidate.

In the Warren County Supreme Court vote, it could be that a few thousand votes for Kerry were somehow "misplaced," although I agree the more logical answer is that there's a problem with the vote for Connally

Bush Kerry
68,XXX 26,XXX

Moyer Connally
44,XXX 28,XXXX

I think it's odd that there was a thirty percent drop-off in Bush Voters going to Moyer (who is an incumbent), but an increase in Kerry Voters going to Connally. The only explanation I can offer is the Moyer did appear to receive fewer votes than any other Republican judicial candidate. Either they just don't like Moyer in Warren County or voters were confused and thought he was one of the Supreme Court Democrats. Maybe they had him confused with Bill Moyers and didn't want some PBS liberal pinko on the Ohio Supreme Court. Who knows?

came in with their palm cards, or they showed it to the people around them. Republicans definitely knew which SC judge to vote for. I am pretty involved in the Dem party and I didn't know anything about Conally except she was a Dem. She was WAY outspent around here. We didn't have any signs for judges and the Reps had a judge sign that listed all three judges running in at least 70% of the yards that had Bush signs. I can understand a Dem accidentally voting for a Rep but I can't see it the other way around. From what I gathered from my Rep friends, they had no reason to vote against Moyer.

.

in N. Ohio where everyone knows her name. Of course Portune got GOP support in Hamilton County, everyone knows his name. Same with Voinivich.

check results and assumptions underlying stats. (Gee, hasn't that been said already?)

I'm serious. My family has been in small-town politics for two generations. Shots have been fired in anger over local races. Meanwhile, the Democrat wins 90 percent of the presidential vote.

PA ranked high on my voting irregularities index, based on tens of thousands of reported incidents nationwide. Doesn't inspire trust in the presidential vote count that there seemed to be a concerted effort to "help" the president.

Reality happens.

Kinda like sports: sometimes you lose big and sometimes small but in the end you still lose.

Whadja expect? Fewer votes, a tie?

I checked Missouri last week and there were many counties whose Democratic party candidates got more votes than Kerry. Some counties had 3 or 4 on the ballot that beat Kerry's numbers.

I counted at least 10 counties that had numbers that way. I got tired and haven't checked the rest of the counties yet.

Kerry received a total of 3,583,544 votes

Castor received a total of 3,590,201 votes

Castor received 6,657 more votes than Kerry.


In the race for President - 61,774 votes went to other candidates

In the Senate race - 166,829 votes went to other candidates, with the majority going to Dennis Bradley.

So in the Senate race 105,055 more votes went to other candidates than in the race for President.


Also, the total votes cast for President = 7,609,810

The total votes cast for Senate = 7,429,894

That means there were 179,916 more under votes in the Senate race than the Presidential race.


So Castor lost 105,055 votes to other candidates over Kerry. Plus 179,916 more people didn't pick anyone for Senate but did pick someone for President. Yet Castor still beat Kerry by 6,657 votes?

...in those crutial Ohio GOP counties.

Right?

:grr:

just wondering what is going to come of all this and what we can do. How do we help the folks in Ohio?

Some people vote for the best candidate, regardless of his party affiliation. An independent or libertarian (small L) usually votes the man, not the party. Moderate members of both parties are more likely to crossover on a ballot.

A pro-war union Democrat in Ohio may vote for a Republican US representative, but vote for a Democrat for President. Or, he may vote for a Republican presidential candidate, but a Democrat for Congress.

It's part of the beauty of secret balloting- we are each free to vote our conscience, or our party, or for the candidate with the best hair.

We're also free to withhold our vote for a particular office, if neither candidate suits us.

The Pagan Preacher
I don't turn the other cheek.

would be difficult to justify as being anything other then "something broken".

I'm working on this problem actually.

One way to show where the anomoly was and which races it affected
is to break out the absentee vote.

For example, look at Stark County (this is only a partial list of the races.):

        	Cast	Connally Kerry	Bush	Moyer	Fingerhut-D	Voinovich-R
Stark Regular	172314	60967	86042	82538	84908	60230	106639
Stark Absentee	19467	6216	9673	9296	9351	6719	11919
Stark Reg/Abs	8.85	9.81	8.9	8.88	9.08	8.96	8.95

Stark is a bit unusual in that as many dems voted by absentee as republicans, the other counties have different Reg/Abs ratios for dems and republicans. However, you can tell anomolies in the ratio of regular ballots cast to absentee ballots cast, if you compare them to other candidates of the same party on the ticket.

But it won't be convincing unless I have a lot of counties analysed. A lot of the canvasses are up on the web, but it burns a lot of time to find them and get them into the spreadsheet. So if anyone wants to pm me pre-done counties -- as many races as you can get -- that would be great.

was comnpletely unknown in S. Ohio, spent no money, yet got more support in S. OH than she did in Cleveland where everyone knew her name.

I believe he was working with an organization (the one that is not Common Cause) that was associated with this judge. He noticed anomalies vis-a-vis Kerry and her totals.

remember, though, that the judicial race was non-partisan (no party listed on the ballot).

Similar to the Ellen Connolly numbers, I don't think this is indicative of fraud. In many rural areas, I don't think its unusual for someone who has made personal connection with many people there, perhaps living there their entire life, to outperform the Presidential candidate. People don't vote straight party line all the time.

As for the Ohio Supreme Court matter, it's dubious at best. Judges can't put their party affiliation on the ballot, so many times people don't know so they just guess. Its sad but true. Its probably how Ellen Connolly won more votes than Kerry in southern Ohio.

for her in S. OH.

The Democrat who just won the governorship did everything but print up Bush-Manchin signs. Not the least bit surprising.

George W. Bush * (R) 417,516 56
John F. Kerry (D) 322,276 43
Other 5,302 1

Joseph Manchin (D) 465,636 63
Monty Warner (R) 250,831 34
Other 18,113 2

one of those 18,113 other then.