Has anyone seen more of this analysis or any of the data?
John Samples
Cato Institute
Washington, DC
Tuesday, November 14, 2000
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Gore might lose a second round: Media suppressed the Bush vote
By John R. Lott Jr.
With Florida's election results so close, charges of voter confusion and
intimidation fill the air. Votes have been recounted and are being recounted
yet again. Because of the closeness of the race, problems that have been
ignored in the past are difficult to ignore now.
So what has created this incredible closeness? The Gore campaign, along with
the media, has focused on possible problems in Palm Beach county.
Supposedly, had it not been for the 19,000 spoiled ballots where voters cast
more than two votes for president and the 3,400 votes that Buchanan
received, there would have been a Gore victory. But by now many have heard
that the spoiled ballots are nothing new in Palm Beach, where 14,800 ballots
suffered similar problems in the last presidential election. Heavily
Republican Duval County apparently had over 25,000 similarly spoiled
ballots.
Buchanan's votes are actually not an anomaly. With 16,695 registered members
of the American Reform, Reform and Independent Parties, Palm Beach is a
hotbed of Reform party activity. Indeed, it has the second highest total
Reform and Independent party membership of any county in the state.
Hillsborough County, which comes in third, lags behind with 11,258 members.
Up to two-thirds of Buchanan's vote in Palm Beach can be explained simply by
county differences in party registration.
A more important explanation for the close results exists. By prematurely
declaring Gore the winner shortly before polls had closed in Florida's
conservative western Panhandle, the media ended up suppressing the
Republican vote. Bush obtained over 65 percent of the vote in the affected
area. With only 329 votes separating the two candidates Friday morning, even
a few hundred discouraged votes in addition to the 379,000 cast in Florida's
western panhandle could have made a crucial difference.
Congressman Billy Tauzin (R., La.) promises congressional hearings to look
into the impact, although the discussion is focusing on California's
razor-thin Republican congressional losses and the very tight Senate race in
Washington.
With the advanced age of Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, the Senate race may
determine whether the Republicans can retain control. The California house
races made the difference between Republicans picking up and losing seats in
Congress.
Unfortunately, more than a few Florida votes were also affected. An
examination of past Republican presidential votes by county in Florida from
1988 to 2000 shows that while total votes declined, the Republican voting
rate in the western panhandle was significantly suppressed relative to the
non-Republican vote. The 4 percent greater reduction in Republican votes
averages about 1,000 votes per county, 10,000 Republican votes for all 10
counties in the western Panhandle. This holds true even after accounting for
the average differences in voting rates across counties as well as the
changes in voting rates from one election to another.
This conservative estimate of 10,000 votes is more than the any additional
votes that Gore might pick up from the manual recounts in counties like Palm
Beach, Boward, and Dade.
The media may generate higher viewer ratings by keeping this horse race
going, but the networks have done their fair share in helping deprive
Americans of sleep over the last week. Whether intentional or not, the
media's ability so clearly to alter the presidential race requires the press
to seriously consider abolishing using exit polls to forecast election
results.
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John R. Lott Jr. is a senior research scholar at the Yale University Law
School. � 2000 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
John Samples
Director
Center for Representative Government
The Cato Institute
1000 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20001
call 202.789.5248
fax 202.842.3490
