More voters wanted Davis than Arnold!!! This is big!

Sorry about the exclamation points in the title, but I feel this is important. I had been working on this idea earlier:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=495211
But I didn't have the data I needed -- the number of Schwarzenegger voters who also voted "no" on the recall.

Then I got sidetracked on a separate issue:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=503009
(how much the votes were changing toward then end of the reporting -- I still think this is worth looking into)

Anyway, my original idea was that you could compare the number of "no" votes on the recall question to the number of votes Schwarzenegger got on the candidate question. This would determine whether Davis or Schwarzenegger would have won if, instead of having a separate recall question and candidate question, Davis had been listed as a candidate along with the other candidates. There was just one problem with this: some voters voted "no" on the recall and then voted for Schwarzenegger on the candidate question. I needed to figure out how many voters fell into this no/Schwarzenegger category. I found my answer. The Washington Post conducted an exit poll that included the information I needed:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/recallexitpoll.html

Here's how I look at it:

1. Anyone who voted "no" on the recall clearly prefers Davis as their top choice. It doesn't matter whether they voted for Arnold, Bustamante, someone else, or even no one at all on the second question. Their first choice was to have Gray Davis remain in office. Any candidate they chose on the second question was only their second choice.

2. The number of "yes" votes on the recall is irrelevant. Some voters had reported voting for Arnold but forgetting to vote "yes" on the recall, but since we don't need to look at the "yes" votes, this doesn't matter. Unless a Schwarzenegger supporter forgot to vote for the actual candidate, there is no problem.

3. We can assume that anyone who voted for Schwarzenegger and voted yes on the recall prefers Schwarzenegger.

4. We can assume that anyone who voted "no" on the recall and also voted for Schwarzenegger prefers Davis (see point #1). Arnold was only their back-up choice.

5. If a voter voted for Schwarzenegger but did not vote on the recall question, that vote is somewhat ambiguous, but we'll be generous and give this category to Arnold.

6. Voters who voted "yes" (or abstained) on the recall AND voted for a candidate other than Arnold (or abstained) on the candidate question are in the minority. Their votes should not count toward Davis or Schwarzenegger.

The number of "no" votes is easy. It's 3,562,894. The number of Schwarzenegger votes is 3,743,393, but remember we can't count those who also voted "no" on the recall as preferring Arnold. We have to separate those who voted no/Arnold from those who voted yes/Arnold and abstain/Arnold. We can use the Washington Post exit poll to do this. Of the Schwarzenegger voters they interviewed, 8% said they voted "no" on the recall. 8% of 3,743,393 is 299,471 votes that we can't count for Arnold, meaning he ends up with 3,443,922. So votes indicating a preference for Gray Davis (3,562,894) actually outnumber votes indicating a preference for Arnold (3,443,922) by 118,972 votes!! Now, of course this is only an estimate based on that Washington Post 8% figure, but the rest of their numbers seemed pretty accurate. You can compare their exit poll data to the official results found here:
http://vote2003.ss.ca.gov/Returns/gov/00.htm

Even if we use an estimate as low as 5% to calculate the number of Schwarzenegger voters who also voted "no" on the recall, Davis still beats him.

All of this is even assuming that no cheating or voting irregularities have taken place to help the Republicans.

So the scenario that many of us were worried about before the election seems to have come true. Arnold Schwarzenegger has "won" even though a clear majority of voters preferred Davis. If we Democrats don't scream this from the rooftops, we're nuts.

Please help me to keep this kicked up for a while.

:kick:

Davis could not run. Sure the Yes were against him in this case BUT had he be able to run, IMHO he would still have more votes that Gropinator.

How can we spread the word on this? Mail it to the Arnold recall people - maybe they can help!

Totally Recall Arnold Schwarzenegger Petition


http://www.petitiononline.com/schwarze/petition.html


We need to terminate the terminator ASAP !

:kick:

you might try their website for more details. Kick!

More people wanted Davis out than in. If we are going to win elections in the future we have to live in the real world. This is an apples to oranges comparison. Add the McHitler votes to Ahh-nuld votes and you have some seriously disturbing statistics. Twisting the facts like this after-the-fact for feel-good factor is NOT going to help us any in future elections.

Try reading the post again.

Try to follow the logic.

Then do the math.

Hint don't use your fingers and toes to count,
the numbers are very big.

I'm not twisting any facts, but I welcome specific criticism of my data and analysis if you have any. The problem with the way the election was structured was that it required Davis to get a 50% majority to keep his job but allowed Schwarzenegger to "win" with a mere plurality of less than 50%. How is that fair and democratic? And this is not "after-the-fact". It's exactly what we were saying before this sham of an election.

Speak for yourself. Man, it's incessant around here.

More people didn't want Arnold than did want Arnold.
This isn't a matter of twisting the facts.
The way the recall was set up made it so a vote of "no" on recall was a vote for Davis (since he wasn't on the ballot).
By that logic, Davis got more votes than Arnold.

Come back and troll when you have a real point.

If this pans out, that will be QUITE a find.

KUDOS to you for not crying in your beer and crunching some very important numbers.

I agree with everything (except anti-anything**), and I would drop a PM to Bev Harris and discuss it with her.

Good work***

Davis was more than a hard-ass on crime, he tried to abolish parole. In so doing, he was looking to set the clock back to the time of dungeons and throwing away the key. He was nutty.

The question naturally arises that if he was nutty in one area, was he also nutty in others? The fact that 18% of California Democrats voted for Arnold suggests that Davis was easy to dislike.

Lots of people don't vote along party lines. Davis was slammed by the media while Schwarzenegger got many hours of free campaign time. And yet voters still preferred Davis more than Arnold. I don't know why you would place more weight in that 18% statistic than in who the plurality of voters actually indicated their preference for. Why cherry-pick some negative statistic and ignore the more important and relevant statistic? And his policies on crime have nothing to do with this thread.

Bottom line.

The Change the rules win at any and all costs MePublicans are just making sure we fully understand it. Only our Party is suppose to follow the rules and the rules are whatever the f*** the MePublicans say they are.

One of the candidates choosen to replace the existing Governor must get more votes than the Recall passes.

Mike

... the idea that the 8% who voted NO on the recall and YES for Arnold prefered Davis?

Many conservatives and Republicans such as George Will opposed the recall process out of principle, but still hated Davis. Having a choice to make they still gladly voted for Arnold over anyone else, yet opposed the precendent of this kind of direct democracy.

"1. Anyone who voted 'no' on the recall clearly prefers Davis as their top choice. It doesn't matter whether they voted for Arnold, Bustamante, someone else, or even no one at all on the second question. Their first choice was to have Gray Davis remain in office. Any candidate they chose on the second question was only their second choice."

This is just not necessarily true. You are assuming it is true, but I don't see how you can say this with any amount of certainty. Quite a few people despised Davis, yet also hated the process. Some people probably don't want to see the recall repeated, but were happy to use this opportunity to cast a vote for their own candidate. You can't say that they preferred Davis over anyone else on the ballot. I see your point, and it is a good one, but you can't really divine what the voter is saying like that. A certain percentage of people have their own outside-the-box reasons for voting a certain way.

"2. The number of 'yes' votes on the recall is irrelevant. Some voters had reported voting for Arnold but forgetting to vote 'yes' on the recall, but since we don't need to look at the 'yes' votes, this doesn't matter. Unless a Schwarzenegger supporter forgot to vote for the actual candidate, there is no problem."

Nope. You can't logically say that the fact that 55% voted FOR the recall is irrelevent. That is over half of the public that didn't want to see Davis remain in office. It is certainly not irrelevent. Infact, it sends a pretty big message that a majority of the CA populace wanted to oust Davis.

"So the scenario that many of us were worried about before the election seems to have come true. Arnold Schwarzenegger has 'won' even though a clear majority of voters preferred Davis. If we Democrats don't scream this from the rooftops, we're nuts."

Democrats will not be screaming this from the rooftops. They won't because your logic is interesting, but despite your efforts, does not prove that voters wanted Davis more than Arnold. Further, this is just to convoluted and arguable for it to be worth repeating outside of existing true believers.

When Arnold got more votes than the NO on recall got, those talking points were blown out of the water. Further, you just can't dismiss the fact that 55% voted FOR the recall.

Interesting post though. I hope I didn't sound too critical here. I actually think you did a good job assembling this, I just disagree with your ultimate conclusions.

Imajika

Your point about the overlapping no/Arnold voters is one that I was expecting. You say "Many conservatives and Republicans such as George Will opposed the recall process out of principle, but still hated Davis. Having a choice to make they still gladly voted for Arnold over anyone else, yet opposed the precendent of this kind of direct democracy." When I stated that those voters "preferred" Davis over Schwarzenegger, I did not mean they necessarily liked Davis more than they liked Arnold. A voter who opposes the recall might not be fond of Davis and might simply oppose the recall on democratic principle. However, that voter still "prefers" that the recall fail -- meaning that Davis keeps his job. The voter expressed that preference by voting "no" on the recall. I'm not trying to guess what's inside anyone's head or suggest any motive behind their vote. I simply think that any voter who votes "no" on the recall has unambiguously expressed a preference that Davis not be recalled, regardless of how they personally feel about him.

Second, the fact that 55% voted for the recall simply means that 55% preferred one of the other 135 candidates over Davis. Suppose there were only two candidates running against Davis. The recall passes 55% to 45%. Of the two candidates running, one gets 60% of the votes on the second question, and the other gets 40%. But remember that is only 60% and 40% of the original 55% who voted for the recall. So 45% prefer Davis, 60x55% prefer candidate A (33%), and 40x55% prefer candidate B (22%). So candidate B wins with only 33% support, while Davis loses with 45% support.

I also don't feel this is too convoluted, but I may have made it seem that way by over-explaining it. If I could have used a diagram, I would have drawn two circles slightly overlapping, one representing the "no" votes and one representing the votes for Schwarzenegger. Some votes lie outside the two circles, but the vast majority lie inside the two circles. The overlapping part is that 8% I referred to. That piece and the rest of the "no" votes should count toward Davis and the other circle, minus that piece should count toward Arnold.

Your points are interesting but your conclusion does not neccesarily hold. It doesn't follow that those who voted against the recall were voting for Davis. Further, I have to ask "so what?" I don't mean to be harsh, but the fact of the matter is that the recall did pass and Arnold received a sufficient number of votes to take the Governorship. Those being the facts on the ground, how does playing around with the numbers change anything? You can say this makes AS illegitimate, but the fact is that once the votes are certified he'll be sitting in the Governor's chair. To me that's what needs to be dealt with, and I don't see how this line of argument helps with that.

....Shall Gray Davis be recalled (removed) from the office of Governor? Yes / No.

A Yes vote was a vote against his remaining in office.
A No vote was a vote for Gray Davis to remain in office.

It took me a few hundred words to say what you just said in two lines! :)

You said "It doesn't follow that those who voted against the recall were voting for Davis." Really? In fact, that is exactly what they were voting for when they voted no on the recall -- a preference that Davis remain in office and not be recalled. Davis was not listed as a candidate on the second part of the ballot. There was only one way for voters to express their preference that Davis remain in office and that was to vote "no" on the recall question. As I already stated, this doesn't imply anything about the voter's personal feelings toward Davis. All it means is that the voter prefers Davis to remain in office more than the voter prefers having Davis replaced by any other candidate. There may be rare situations where voters vote "strategically" rather than expressing their true preference -- in bullet voting situations for example, where a voter can choose more than one from a list but chooses only one in order to increase the vote's potency. This was not one of those situations. If you can think of any plausible reason why a voter would vote "no" on the recall and not be sincere, please explain it to me. And I did not "play around" with any numbers. It is the format of the election that is playing around with the numbers. I am trying to straighten them out.

As far as the significance of this, you are entitled to your own opinion, but I feel that when democracy has been corrupted to such a degree, it is my civic duty to do something about it and to make others aware of it. I have not lost so much faith in my countrymen that I assume they no longer care about democracy.

I actually think you did a good job assembling this, I just disagree with your ultimate conclusions.


Unless you know why anyone voted the way they did, any conclusions you might draw are on shaky footing.

The numbers say what they say about an event, but they can't give answers about the motives of the people participating in the event. For that, you need more data.

I am just looking at how people voted. If you voted "no" on the recall, you have expressed a clear and unambiguous preference that the recall fail and that Gray Davis remain in office. To argue otherwise is absurd. As I said in another post, it doesn't matter why that is their preference, only that it is their preference. I don't care whether people voted against the recall because they think Gray Davis is a hunk of burnin' love, because space aliens told them to do it, or because they pulled his name out of a hat. The point is they voted against the recall, which means they voted for Davis to remain in office. There is absolutely no way you can spin this to mean otherwise no matter how hard you try.

edited for typo

Acording to the Washington Post exit poll, 10% of Bustamante voters voted yes on the recall. 3% of total voters in the exit poll voted the yes/Bustamante combination.

.....5. "If a voter voted for Schwarzenegger but did not vote on the recall question, that vote is somewhat ambiguous, but we'll be generous and give this category to Arnold."

Not so fast! From ELECTIONS CODE SECTION 11381-11386

11382. No vote cast in the recall election shall be counted for any
candidate unless the voter also voted for or against the recall of
the officer sought to be recalled. :evilgrin:

I hope this helps! :)
This is why we need the precinct totals!

"11382. No vote cast in the recall election shall be counted for any
candidate unless the voter also voted for or against the recall of
the officer sought to be recalled."

What is your interpretation?

How many people voted for Arnold but did not vote on the recall part of the ballot?

total the sum of the yes and the no votes, right? I wonder if they do? Haven't looked yet.

There were roughly 276,000 more votes counted on the recall question than the candidate question.

Every comment and thread on this issue helps me understand a little more of this very important issue!

Recall, Yes/No: 7,978,767

Candidates( All votes for any candidate): 7,701,156

Prop 53: 7,425,701

Prop 54: 7,726,476

Ballots Cast: 8,363,376


384,609 did not vote yes or no on recall

662,220 did not select a candidate

937,675 did not vote on prop 53

636,904 did not vote on prop 54

What exactly were these people at the polls for? That seems like a very large numer of mistakes for an election that was called for a pretty specific purpose. I could understand why a lot of people may have not voted the Propositions, but I can't imagine that so many would fail to vote on the recall question or select a candidate.

If some people were forgetting to vote on the recall and just going straight to the candidate question, that might explain part of it. And I'm sure some people voted no on the recall and then abstained on the candidate part as a form of protest.

I think it doesn't actually affect my analysis, though. I teased out the no/Schwarzenegger voters from the other Schwarzenegger votes, which I assumed would contain some abstain/Schwarzenegger voters. I guess if they abstained on the recall, their votes were lost. So the remaining Schwarzenegger votes are all yes/Schwarzenegger voters.

118k votes out of 8 million isn't exactly that huge a margin.

they had him below 50% in november and quickly figured the recall was a great shot at taking the gov's office from the dems. They are a take no prisoners bunch, look at the Texas redistricting map, they are estimating they could pick up 5 seats, 5 seats that's huge!!
So on your orginal post, yeah I spent the morning looking over the exit polls and yeah you make a very thoughtful and cerebral case about the vote tally and more people wanted DAvis over Swarz. but fact of the matter is Davis is out and Swarz is in. and that's Fucked!!!

70% of Tuesday's voters were WHITE male and female and over 60% voted yes, CA is <50% white
only 39% of Tuesday's voters were democrats, 24% of them voted yes, the state is overwhelming registered democrat, they stayed home

45% of union members voted yes
Our base was depressed and many that did vote were so angry they kicked Davis out, that's what I read.
Davis needed to have the epiphany that Micheal Moore spoke about but didn't. We got fucked again. Time to have our own take no prisoner approach!!!!

only 39% of Tuesday's voters were democrats

That says that a full 61% of the voters came from other parties, most of them Republican. The difference in the outcome is that Republicans got their people out to vote; Democrats didn't.

Here's a lesson to Democratic politicians considering a shift to the right: Don't do it. You think you'll get votes from the center but you won't. In fact, your voters will stay home.

that said she voted against the recall but voted FOR McClintock. I think a lot of people voted like she did. MY question is, how did all of those "no name" candidates get 600, 700, 800 and up votes? I HIGHLY doubt that. If people took the time to vote do you really think they wasted that vote on someone like THESE people?

Mike Schmier Dem 1,370 0.0
Diana Foss Dem 1,331 0.0
Lingel H. Winters Dem 1,316 0.0
B.E. Smith Ind 1,294 0.0
Joe Guzzardi Dem 1,226 0.0
Richard J. Simmons Ind 1,225 0.0
Mike P. McCarthy Ind 1,198 0.0
Leonard Padilla Ind 1,156 0.0
Art Brown Dem 1,141 0.0
Iris Adam Nat 1,124 0.0
Maurice J. Walker Grn 1,107 0.0
Trek Thunder Kelly Ind 1,080 0.0
Darin Price Nat 1,029 0.0
Vikramjit S. Bajwa Dem 998 0.0
John "Jack" Mortensen Dem 967 0.0
David Ronald Sams Rep 952 0.0
Sara Ann Hanlon Ind 939 0.0
Diane Beall Templin AmI 928 0.0
Jim Hoffmann Rep 911 0.0
Dick Lane Dem 893 0.0
Charles "Chuck" Pineda Jr. AmI 887 0.0
William B. Vaughn Dem 882 0.0
Robert C. Newman II Rep 859 0.0
C. Stephen Henderson Ind 832 0.0
Scott A. Mednick Dem 791 0.0
Dorene Musilli Rep 781 0.0
Jamie Rosemary Safford Rep 743 0.0
Kurt E. Rightmyer Ind 737 0.0
Brian Tracy Ind 729 0.0
Sharon Rushford Ind 726 0.0
Robert C. Mannheim Dem 709 0.0
Darryl L. Mobley Ind 708 0.0
Christopher Ranken Dem 706 0.0
Patricia G. Tilley Ind 690 0.0
A. Lavar Taylor Dem 672 0.0
Michael Jackson Rep 663 0.0
Douglas Anderson Rep 661 0.0
Joel Britton Ind 656 0.0
Alex-St. James Rep 655 0.0
Darrin H. Scheidle Dem 654 0.0
Bob Lynn Edwards Dem 631 0.0
Paul "Chip" Mailander Dem 608 0.0
Paul James Nave Dem 586 0.0
Ed Beyer Rep 582 0.0
John W. Beard Rep 582 0.0
Chuck Walker Rep 553 0.0
William S. Chambers Rep 540 0.0
Warren Farrell Dem 537 0.0
Robert Cullenbine Dem 534 0.0
Dennis Duggan McMahon Rep 517 0.0
James M. Vandeventer, Jr. Rep 515 0.0
Vip Bhola Rep 507 0.0
Gerold Lee Gorman Dem 506 0.0


THAT is suspicious and should be investigated. Don't ask me how you could possibly do that though. Does anyone believe those #'s are legit?

It does seem a bit odd that these 53 candidates got numbers so close to each other. But I'm not an expert.

There's MORE of THOSE candidates. Here's everyone except the top candidates. LOOK at how many people voted for Arianna....she had dropped out!

Arianna Huffington Ind 42,654 0.6
Peter V. Ueberroth Rep 22,267 0.3
Larry Flynt Dem 15,489 0.3
Gary Coleman Ind 12,712 0.2
George B. Schwartzman Ind 10,960 0.2
Mary Cook Ind 10,129 0.2
Bruce Martin Margolin Dem 7,991 0.2
Bill Simon Rep 7,915 0.2
John Christopher Burton Ind 5,924 0.0
Van Vo Rep 5,819 0.0
David Laughing Horse Robinson Dem 5,753 0.0
Leo Gallagher Ind 4,867 0.0
Cheryl Bly-Chester Rep 4,536 0.0
Lawrence Steven Strauss Dem 4,402 0.0
Ronald Jason Palmieri Dem 3,759 0.0
Calvin Y. Louie Dem 3,294 0.0
Badi Badiozamani Ind 3,021 0.0
Audie E. Bock Dem 2,881 0.0
Ralph A. Hernandez Dem 2,717 0.0
Dan Feinstein Dem 2,587 0.0
Edward Thomas Kennedy Dem 2,586 0.0
Bob McClain Ind 2,508 0.0
James Henry Green Dem 2,480 0.0
Angelyne Ind 2,262 0.0
Garrett Gruener Dem 2,182 0.0
Jerome Kunzman Ind 2,143 0.0
Jim Weir Dem 2,073 0.0
Ivan Alexander Hall III Grn 2,050 0.0
Ned Fenton Roscoe Lib 2,011 0.0
Georgina Russell Dem 1,957 0.0
Paul Mariano Dem 1,928 0.0
Jack Loyd Grisham Ind 1,917 0.0
Jonathan D. Miller Dem 1,867 0.0
Brooke Adams Ind 1,832 0.0
Daniel T. Watts Grn 1,749 0.0
Christopher Sproul Dem 1,730 0.0
Ken Hamidi Lib 1,705 0.0
Randall D. Sprague Rep 1,596 0.0
Nathan Whitecloud Walton Ind 1,555 0.0
Frank A. Macaluso, Jr. Dem 1,524 0.0
Mohammad Arif Ind 1,507 0.0
Marc Valdez Dem 1,503 0.0
John J. "Jack" Hickey Lib 1,495 0.0
Daniel C. Ramirez Dem 1,474 0.0
C.T. Weber P&F 1,455 0.0
Michael J. Wozniak Dem 1,384 0.0
Mike Schmier Dem 1,370 0.0
Diana Foss Dem 1,331 0.0
Lingel H. Winters Dem 1,317 0.0
B.E. Smith Ind 1,294 0.0
Joe Guzzardi Dem 1,226 0.0
Richard J. Simmons Ind 1,225 0.0
Mike P. McCarthy Ind 1,198 0.0
Leonard Padilla Ind 1,156 0.0
Art Brown Dem 1,141 0.0
Iris Adam Nat 1,124 0.0
Maurice J. Walker Grn 1,107 0.0
Trek Thunder Kelly Ind 1,080 0.0
Darin Price Nat 1,029 0.0
Vikramjit S. Bajwa Dem 998 0.0
John "Jack" Mortensen Dem 967 0.0
David Ronald Sams Rep 952 0.0
Sara Ann Hanlon Ind 939 0.0
Diane Beall Templin AmI 928 0.0
Jim Hoffmann Rep 911 0.0
Dick Lane Dem 893 0.0
Charles "Chuck" Pineda Jr. AmI 887 0.0
William B. Vaughn Dem 882 0.0
Robert C. Newman II Rep 859 0.0
C. Stephen Henderson Ind 832 0.0
Scott A. Mednick Dem 791 0.0
Dorene Musilli Rep 781 0.0
Jamie Rosemary Safford Rep 743 0.0
Kurt E. Rightmyer Ind 737 0.0
Brian Tracy Ind 729 0.0
Sharon Rushford Ind 726 0.0
Robert C. Mannheim Dem 709 0.0
Darryl L. Mobley Ind 708 0.0
Christopher Ranken Dem 706 0.0
Patricia G. Tilley Ind 690 0.0
A. Lavar Taylor Dem 672 0.0
Michael Jackson Rep 663 0.0
Douglas Anderson Rep 661 0.0
Joel Britton Ind 656 0.0
Alex-St. James Rep 655 0.0
Darrin H. Scheidle Dem 654 0.0
Bob Lynn Edwards Dem 632 0.0
Paul "Chip" Mailander Dem 608 0.0
Paul James Nave Dem 586 0.0
Ed Beyer Rep 582 0.0
John W. Beard Rep 582 0.0
Chuck Walker Rep 553 0.0
William S. Chambers Rep 540 0.0
Warren Farrell Dem 537 0.0
Robert Cullenbine Dem 534 0.0
Dennis Duggan McMahon Rep 517 0.0
James M. Vandeventer, Jr. Rep 515 0.0
Vip Bhola Rep 507 0.0
Gerold Lee Gorman Dem 506 0.0
Kelly P. Kimball Dem 495 0.0
Mike McNeilly Rep 490 0.0
Eric Korevaar Dem 490 0.0
S. Issa Rep 486 0.0
Bryan Quinn Rep 436 0.0
Gino Martorana Rep 432 0.0
Richard Andrew Gosse Rep 431 0.0
Tim Sylvester Dem 426 0.0
Paul W. Vann Rep 397 0.0
Michael Cheli Ind 390 0.0
Heather Peters Rep 386 0.0
Jeff Rainforth Ind 374 0.0
Ronald J. Friedman Ind 362 0.0
Jeffrey L. Mock Rep 352 0.0
Bill Prady Dem 346 0.0
Daniel W. Richards Rep 345 0.0
Scott W. Davis Ind 333 0.0
Todd Carson Rep 321 0.0
Lorraine Fontanes Dem 317 0.0
Carl A. Mehr Rep 311 0.0
Jon William Zellhoefer Rep 303 0.0
Gary Leonard Dem 296 0.0
Gregory J. Pawlik Rep 294 0.0
Reva Renee Renz Rep 285 0.0
Kevin Richter Rep 261 0.0
Stephen L. Knapp Rep 258 0.0
William James Tsangares Rep 253 0.0
D. (Logan Darrow) Clements Rep 242 0.0
Robert A. Dole Rep 236 0.0
David E. Kessinger Dem 207 0.0
Gene Forte Rep 198 0.0
Todd Richard Lewis Ind 172 0.0

Here's the link.http://vote2003.ss.ca.gov/Returns/gov/00.htm

The top three - Schwarzenegger, Bustamante, and McClintock accounted for around 94% of the candidate vote.

Camejo, Huffington, Ueberroth, Larry Flynt, Gary Coleman, George B. Schwartzman, Mary Cook, Bruce Martin Margolin, and Bill Simon each got at least 0.2% of the vote and when combined accounted for about 4.5% of the votes.

The remaining candidates when combined accounted for roughly 1.7% of the votes.

One person had noted especially high numbers for these "fringe" candidates in Tulare. It was on Bartcop and some other places on the Web.

people waste their votes on candidates who can't win all the time.

Darrah is toast this week.

sigh

Not sure whether this is directed at me or whether you're parodying others on this thread. :shrug:

Seems like there were two fellows...Gore and whathisname...in another election that went to the loser.

How is it that this keeps happening?

He got a million votes as a true believer-nut conservative. Add those votes to Arnold's and you have a solid majority on the governor side of the ballot.

Cali SOS site has statewide turnout at 8,374,681 with 7,989,705 cast on the recall question. Even if all the non-votes (385,000) on the recall part were added to Davis' total he still would have lost by a 53% to 47% amount. A clear majority of the voters did not prefer Davis as their governor either by looking at the recall or the combo of the Arnold/McClintock vote.

Look at your numbers - no matter how you spin it, Arnold did not get many, if any, more support than Davis from voters.

You're the second person to suggest adding McClintock's votes to Arnold's votes. Why on earth would you do that? Is there any logical reason for it? The point is that Arnold was able to win the election even though Davis was preferred by more voters. Anyway, you could pick out any governor in the country and find many who at this very moment would not get 50% majority support. Many were not even elected with a 50% majority. Should we be able to recall any elected official whenever they fall below 50% support?

If they voted no on the recall..did the vote for governor replacement even get counted?

I am new to all this and am I am really curious?

But if they did not vote on the recall question, their vote for candidate, if they made one, was not counted.

now I am really lost


it would seem to me that if they voted no on the reecall that was their vote...

is their a link to the instructions given and how the votes were tallied?

Once the yes/no question was settled, everyone should have the right to vote on the replacement. If you vote no on the recall and yes on bustamant, for example, your "no" vote (along with everyone else's yes or no vote) is used to decide the recall question. If the recall passes, they tally the votes from the candidate question. Davis was not an option on this part.

.....Click here ! :evilgrin:
Everything you always wanted to know about California elections....be afraid you asked! :)

But I think you're right. However, isn't the recall a two-step process? Firstly, do you want the governor recalled? That motion passed. Davis is out of the picture. He had the arduous task of gaining over 50% of the people's approval, and failed. He's completely out of the picture. Now, the way is paved for the other 100+ candidates, which excludes Davis because the recall has now ousted him. The winner in the new wave was Schwarzenegger. So even though Davis could've very likely gotten more votes if this was formatted like normal Davis vs. Schwarzenegger race, it wasn't a normal race. It was a recall effort, and once that recall passed, which I think we can all agree happened, Davis was history. The votes for him became irrelevant because they were outnumbered by the votes against him.

...at this point the official results have around 3.56 million votes for Davis (i.e. "no" on the recall) versus 3.74 million votes for the Apeman.

:-(

Not all votes that went to Arnold in the second part should be counted as a preference for Arnold since 8% of those voters voted "no" on the recall, which means Arnold as governor was only their second preference and Davis as governor was their first preference.

As far as the will of the people goes, the ultimate question is what would have happened if a straight-up Davis versus Arnold election were held. You are arguing that the recall results show that Davis would have won.

My contention is that the recall results do not provide sufficient data to show that either Davis or Arnold would have won such a hypothetical election. Now I will explain why this is true.

Under your scheme, if a voter voted yes on the recall, but then voted for McClintock, then you treat them as having effectively abstained on expressing any preference as between Davis and Arnold. This unfairly disenfranchises McClintock voters (as well as yes-recall voters for other third party candidates).

It is possible that these numerous, disenfranchised voters would have skewed toward Davis in a straight-up Davis versus Arnold election. It is also possible that these voters would have skewed toward Arnold in a straight up Davis versus Arnold election. Given the fact that they voted yes on the recall, I think these voters would have skewed Arnold's way, but really we have no way of knowing.

The point is, you cannot simply ignore these yes-recall voters when considering whether Davis or Arnold was more popular with the people. It isn't fair.

To demonstrate the unfairness of ignoring these voters, consider the following hypothetical. Imagine that the recall was set up so that a "primary" was held as between the original 150 candidates. The winner of the "primary" would then run against Davis in a one-on-one recall election. However, the voters were informed ahead of time that if their candidate did not win the "primary," then they would not be allowed to vote in the Davis versus winner election.

Forewarned with the risk that they would have to abstain from the one-on-one election, how many people would vote in such a primary? How many would vote for a candidate unlikely to win the primary?

The point of the hypothetical is this -- if you forewarned the electorate that by voting for a McClintock they would forfeit their right to express a preference as between Davis and Arnold, you would have had two things happen: (1) lots of complaints of unfairness in the system; and (2) very different voting patterns.

However, your scheme doesn't warn voters they they will be considered as disenfranchised ahead of the election. Your scheme does this after the fact as part of your analysis. I can understand the temptation to analyze as you have, but it isn't fair to disenfranchise people after the fact and then proceed to claim that you have sufficient data to show there was a majority for Davis after all.

The best your analysis does is point to the fact that we don't know what would have happened in a straight-up Davis versus Arnold election. The fair thing to do would have been to have a "primary," but without the disenfranchisement feature of my above hypothetical primary. That is how elections are usually done because that is the fair way to really divine the democratic will of the people. The recall, as executed, simply does not allow for this determination.

Final note: I voted no on recall / Bustamonte. However, given the totality of the numbers, I strongly suspect that Arnold would have won a Davis versus Arnold election. The recall didn't lead to the obviously undemocratic result that I feared it might.

I wasn't intending to show what would have happened in a "straight-up Davis versus Arnold election" but I did suggest that my analysis shows what would have happened had Davis been competing directly against the other candidates and perhaps that was an over-reach on my part. What my analysis actually shows is the number of voters who expressed a preference for Davis (in the way that this election was set up) vs. a preference for Arnold. It doesn't really address any "what-if" issues. In the way the election was actually set up, more voters expressed a preference for Davis to remain in office than for Arnold to replace him, yet Arnold "won". That is the real point.

that your analysis does not reflect the type of democratic will that we usually see when an incumbent governor (or pResident) runs for re-election.

Your analysis reminds me of charges that Florida de-registered voters because their names "sounded black" (aka, were similar to the names of felons). If these charges are true, some of these de-registered voters would be white, but the point of the charges is that the Republicans would have been playing the percentages in their strategic de-registration. If the charges are true, the result is an unfair election. An unfair result that allows Republicans to claim: hey! of the people expressing preference in Florida approximately the same number preferred Bush and as preferred Gore.

What the Republicans allegedly did on a small basis in Florida with strategic de-regulation, your analysis does on a much larger scale in California.

I was forced to fill out a Provisional ballot and I suspect that many that did not trust the DIEBOLD potential in their area may have done the same..

have they actually COUNTED MY VOTE YET? And how many provisional ballots were/are there?

What if there are a million FOR Davis ballots floating around out there?

I want a DEWEY WINS moment for my generation :)

ballots. Has anyone got any official # on those? Were any or all already put into the mix in the votes already counted?

I disagree that "anyone who voted "no" on the recall clearly prefers Davis as their top choice."

I would have voted against the recall on principal, not because of any love for Davis. Conservative columnists George Will and Jonah Goldberg indicated they would have done the same. Secondly, no vote "clearly" indicates everything. I used to vote in West Virginia. It was often not a choice of "clear preference" so much as which candidate was least likely to raid the Treasury.

And secondly, I think you are missing the bigger picture. This was not a race between Davis and Schwartzeneger (though I suspect Arnold would have easily won a head-to-head race too). I think you have to think of it as two separate elections. Davis was badly beaten in the first election and Arnold easily won the second. The two don't interact as easily as you suggest.

And, in keeping with the "bigger picture" theme, there is no way this election can be looked as anything except a massive repudiation of Grey Davis. The voters were asked, "Do you want to keep the man with five years experience and who you elected last year . . . or take your chances with an inexperienced collection of idiots." Voters overwhelmingly went with the idiots. Spinning the story doesn't change the outcome unfortunately.

and 30% of Latino voters went for Arnold.

You make a lot of the same points as Imajika in post #12, and I responded to him/her in post #21. Let's go with your example of voting for the candidate who is "least likely to raid the treasury". That is a preference. You may not like any of the candidates but you chose one who you thought would do the best (or least worst) job of the bunch. Whether a voter actually liked Gray Davis or simply opposed the recall on principle, if the voter voted "no" on the recall, that was an indication of preference for the recall to fail and for Davis to remain in office. This is true even if the voter went on to vote for A.S. or some other candidate on the second part. After they voted "no" on the first part, it was clear that whichever candidate they chose on the second part was only their second choice to Davis remaining in office -- whether or not they had warm, fuzzy feelings for Davis.

You say "I think you have to think of it as two separate elections." But that is exactly the problem. By separating the recall question from the candidate question and not allowing Davis to run as a candidate, the structure of the election was inherently unfair. Davis had to get a 50% majority to stay in office. But A.S. needed only a mere plurality to grab the seat -- and that is a plurality of candidates after Davis, the Democratic Party's number 1 guy in CA -- the candidate Democrats chose in their primary -- was already eliminated. Thinking of this as two separate elections is an optical illusion that misrepresents voters' true preference. Basically, Schwarzenegger got a "bye" in the first round of playoffs and only had to compete against of huge pack of nobodies instead of the opposing partie's top candidate.

And who is doing the spinning here? "No" votes on the recall were at 45%. Many, many candidates win elections with less than a 40% plurality. I certainly wouldn't call that a "massive repudiation". If the rest of the country had California's ridiculous recall procedure, we'd be seeing recalls all the time until people finally got sick of it and changed the law to something more sensible. It's absolutely ridiculous to have a recall threshold that is higher than many candidates can get even on the day they are elected. Recalls would continue endlessly because no one would be able to get a 50% majority, and when they finally did it would be more a reflection of voters' weariness with the process than with actual support for the incumbent.

if a person voted "no" on the recall, then they expressed a "preference" for Davis to remain in office regardless of how they felt about him personally. If George Will had voted "no" to the recall, that would mean that he "prefered" Davis to remain in office over giving the office to anyone else. The reasons for this "preference" are not importantto this analysis.

And a significant majority of voters voted to recall Davis. Arnold got more votes than Davis did.

Give it a rest! This game is over, it is time to get ready for the next game.

What does it matter that two candidates combined total 60% of anything? How does that relate to my analysis that showed more voters preferred that the recall fail than that preferred Arnold become governor? And what is the moral of your tale -- that California Democrats should be more like the GOP? I really don't see where you're going with this. Arnold did not get more votes than Davis. In fact, Davis did not get any votes directly. But my analysis shows that more votes indicated a preference for Davis to remain in office. If you want to address that, please enlighten us.

"1. Anyone who voted "no" on the recall clearly prefers Davis as their top choice. It doesn't matter whether they voted for Arnold, Bustamante, someone else, or even no one at all on the second question. Their first choice was to have Gray Davis remain in office. Any candidate they chose on the second question was only their second choice."

I read several columns from conservative pundits that advocated voting against the recall on the grounds that the whole recall system was harmful to the democratic system. They inevitably stated that that although Davis was a miserable failure and someone else would be far better, the ends did not justify the means.

I sincerely believe that there were a percentage of "No" votes that were actually pro-Schwarzenegger as far as favored candidate.

If some voter hates Davis but opposes the recall on principle and votes "no" on the recall, that indicates a preference for Davis to remain in office and the recall to fail. It doesn't matter why that is their preference, only that it is their preference. Otherwise why would they vote against the recall? The polls showed the recall issue so close that no one would have voted one way on the recall when their true preference was the other way. Even if it hadn't been close, what good reason would there be to do that? Everyone still got a chance to vote on the candidate question. I can't understand all these people who are quibbling about the "no" votes not indicating a preference for Davis to remain in office and the recall to fail. When a voter votes for something, I think we can assume that is their preference unless there is a very good reason to think otherwise.

"The polls showed the recall issue so close that no one would have voted one way on the recall when their true preference was the other way. Even if it hadn't been close, what good reason would there be to do that?"

You are discounting the fact that people could "on principle" vote against the recall, while at the same time strongly believing that Scharzenegger would be a far better Governor.

After one small piece of the reall provision of the California state constitution was thrown out (probably working toward Davis' favor), the election was held exactly in accordance with the letter and intent of the law. It's an unusual set of rules, but I don't see how your academic analysis could be applied to any practical purpose, other than perhaps a basis for arguing for a change in the law.

Comments?

Imo, the Recall petition should be only if Grey Davis killed someone, or did some high crime or something. Just because one party is unhappy with the outcome of the previous election is no reason to recall someone.

What's done is done. The repukelicans should remember what goes around comes around.