I've been following the election numbers reported by CNN,
CSPAN, and
YAHOO! as returns are compiled and amended. Kerry is slowly but consistently gaining ground. The results can be seen at
http://66.92.36.134:7744/increments.gif
http://66.92.36.134:7744/mandate-vs-date.gif and
http://66.92.36.134:7744/mandate-vs-count.gif.
Kerry is systematically ahead, getting ~53.8% of the updated count.
Bush's lead in 2-way vote climbed down from over 3.1% to around 2.8%. That is, from 3,581,574 votes to 3,320,362 as of 8:40 PM PST on November 17. Let us see what the final "mandate" is.
The gap between Bush's 51.6% share on election night and 46.2% share in the post-election cumulative count (5.4%) is statistically huge. Whatever underlying reasons for the gap are, they need to be understood and addressed. We cannot have two voting systems -- one blue, one red -- if we are to trust the results.
This page can be found at
http://66.92.36.134:7744/mandate-vs-date.htmEmail me at kplayer at gmail dot com.
As of Nov 17 there have been NO post-election-night updates of the Ohio count.
Ohio secretary of state web
site zeroed out all of their numbers in (I assume) anticipation of a state-wide recount.
In Florida, last update was on November 5, clearly before the overseas and provisional votes were counted.
jfern pointed out that in 2000
"Gore was up only about 0.25% in the popular vote election night. Republicans claimed absentees would allow them to win the popular vote. Gore ended up winning by 0.51%".
It appears that there is greater divergence between "regular" and all other votes this time, resulting in ~0.32% swing already.
11/19 update
The count rate slowed down a bit in the last few days. Still no "official" updates from Florida or Ohio.
11/23 update
No changes since 11/20. Current numbers are
60,645,844 vs
57,313,461
12/3 update
There was a small number of additional votes counted reported by The
Washington Post. I find it quite telling that
Ohio Secretary of State Mr.
Kenneth Blackwell has not updated his
"
unnoficial count"" since Nov. 3. You'd think the best thing one could do to quiet down the conspiracy theories
would be to keep up-to-date. The unescapable impression one gets is that the guy is trying to run down the clock. Last I heard he will only certify the results on Nov. 6.
Update [2004-12-14 22:40:17 by KPlayer]:
12/14 update
Of all sources I listed, CSPAN has the latest numbers. Looks like certain shrinkage continues -- the mandate is now under 2.7%. 54.8% of the post-election-day count (roughly 4.2 million votes) went to Kerry.
If someone has a resonable explanation for this, I would like to hear it.