[floadaVonfoli]

Yes. Obviously voter fraud, intimidation adn whatnot. THe evil Belzebub made a deal with Obama, who is a direct descendent from the Bohemian Grove. It all makes sense now, let's just replace the right with the left. I knew it, it did make sense then, it makes sense now.

Alex Jones will be all over this in a second. Now he will be the nut against the left. NWO, booyaa! I can already hear the sound of the Amero, where's Charlie Sheen and other fine scholars when you really need them?!

[Rithlilky]

I felt like Obama would get a landslide victory based on election polls given to me by my favourite media sources; therefore if he didn't get it of course the fault should be in the election process, which of course is filled by fraud by the evil Republicans.

Truthiness™

[dWSOj26H]

1. **** Happens
2. Demand a recount that won't happen because someone burned teh ballots.

[baritkello]

Originally posted by Thue
VJ: the suspicious part is the house and senate votes, not the presidential election. The polls numbers in the article for the house and senate runs are confirmed by multiple independent polling agencies. That was NOT my point at all.

My primary point was that nobody should be blaming the results if the polls are pointing to a different direction; that is a very disturbing precedent because it's an empirically realized fact that people are afraid to admit to pollsters that they support a certain politician/party if (s)he's been smeared to death by the media.

My secondary point is that Huffington Post does not have any evidence of a voter fraud, despite this being extremely easy to notice if the voters vote by paper (leaving a "paper trail") and the vote counters are composed of all parties receiving votes and form a consensus about the amount of votes received for each party.

My first tertiary point is that Huffington Post is cherry-picking polls by quoting a single poll by "Hays Research group" which has a sample of 400 voters and thus has a ±4.9 margin of error (with 5% probability of having a MoE higher than that, just in case someone doesn't know the definition of the phrase "margin of error").

My second tertiary point is that considering all other points, everyone who gives any credit to that article by Huffington Post has made up his mind about voter fraud beforehand, and is thus only reinforcing his own hidden prejudices; or in other words, educating himself with truthiness.

[sitescools]

Well, leaving aside tinfoil hats and all that, and not even considering discrepancy with the polls, there is a simple question here:

How is it that overall voter turn out for this election topped 2004, but in a state where the governor was on the presidential ticket and there was both a high-profile senate race and a high-profile congressional race, turnout in Alaska was down something like 30-35% compared to 2004? (FWIW, turnout in Arizona was about the same as 2004, and turnout in Delaware slightly higher; and as far as I can tell, only one similarly big, empty, deep-red Western state -- SD -- saw turnout fall, and that was only by 2-3 points).

That may not point to mischief, but is is a glaring sociological/demographic/historical anomaly, and requires an explanation. "Fraud," whatever you think of the people yelling it, is a pretty compelling explanation. But there may be other compelling explanations.

Anybody? Anybody?

edit: xpost with Thue, who makes the same point just above.

[esconsise]

According to Weather Underground:

In 2004, it was snowing in Anchorage with 20 mph wind gusts.

In 2008, no snow, no wind to keep the voters away.

ACK!

[TNgqZhLR]

Originally posted by Tuberski
In 2008, no snow, no wind to keep the voters away. Do you mean the lack of snow and wind is why people didn't vote? We are talking about Alaskans here...

[neictscek]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Well I do think that part of it is that Obama won so early in the evening, depressing turnout in Alaska. 2004 was very, very close.
When the first battleground states were called it was around 5pm in Alaska, so perhaps that may have cut some turnout.

Voter fraud is diffiocult to prove, even harder in Alaska where the Federal Prosecutor was handpicked by Stevens.

[LOVEBoy]

Originally posted by Thue
The huge disparity between opinion polls and results, which matched perfectly everywhere else in the US, is very distinctive.
The disparity is explainable. Most polls had the Senate race 1-3 pts either way before the conviction. Polls after the conviction could be tainted; many people wouldn't go on record as supporting Stevens because of the conviction, even though they had every intention of voting for him.

[GinaGomesz]

Even if it's not fraud, it would be worth figuring out why because it's interesting. We might learn something about voter participation (or we might learn Alaska is wierd).

[Kennypor]

is SpaceUS still living in Alaska? Haven't seen post here him in a while.

[voksveta]

Let's keep in mind that this is the state where a group of law makers had official Corrupt Bastard Caucus hats made for themselves. I'm usually very leery of claims of vote fraud, but Alaskan politics are deeply ****ed up. At the very least this should be investigated, it doesn't make sense for a ticket with Palin on it to get so many fewer votes than Bush in 2004.

[illetrygrargo]

At the very least this should be investigated, it doesn't make sense for a ticket with Palin on it to get so many fewer votes than Bush in 2004. McCain lost 7 million conservatives. That plus the fact that the election was called early explains the depressed turnout.

You see similar effects in Washington, Oregon and California.

[h4z1XBI7]

Also BK does not believe that anything untoward happened, therefore some bad **** went down.

You think I like Stevens? It's a fact. McCain's turnout dropped precipitously on the coast.

That didn't take long though. 1 day and the liberals are whining about voter fraud.

You won, get over it.

[Cgnebksb]

For a non canuck/yanky/brit - can you please explain this expression ? What I think it means doesn't quite fit It's an idiom.

The media usually "calls" an election, which means they declare the winner. They are making a prediction that Obama will be the winner.

In this context, the election was declared before all the voting in Alaska and CA was done. IIRC, the networks called it about 6 PST, which is well before the polls close.

[NarhozNic]

It wasn't called until 8pm PST.

But it was obvious well before then.

ACK!

[lh88gFzI]

My guess: Ben Kenobi is saying some stuff about US politics which demonstrates a fundamental ignorance of same.

[choollaBard]

Nope, not in this case - he just had some wet dreams that wasn't fulfilled.

Well, not quite true - fantasies about that things could have been different if teh truth hadn't been revealed too early.

Only problem is that it would be impossible unless the remaining voters went crazy It was disappointing, but yeah I figured he lost by about 630 PST or so, which is an hour and a half before they called it for Obama.

I was at work, and missed most of the festivities, which was a shame. I figured it would be a long night, but that certainly wasn't the case.

[shemadagaswer]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


McCain lost 7 million conservatives. That plus the fact that the election was called early explains the depressed turnout.

You see similar effects in Washington, Oregon and California. 1) Dropoffs in those 3 states were nowhere near the magnitude of the 30% dropoff in Alaska (about 10% down in WA and OR, about 18% in CA).

2) Conservatives staying home would have handed Alaska's closely-fought House and Senate races to the Democrats. That's not what happened.

[sat23neus2]

1) Dropoffs in those 3 states were nowhere near the magnitude of the 30% dropoff in Alaska (about 10% down in WA and OR, about 18% in CA).

2) Conservatives staying home would have handed Alaska's closely-fought House and Senate races to the Democrats. That's not what happened. The state is so red, the only reason the races were close is because of the drop in turnout.

As for the difference in the ratio, Alaska is another 2 times zones to the west of the pacific, so the election call comes two hours earlier. You would expect to see depressed turnout higher in Alaska then elsewhere.