Re: The Controversy over the Buchanan Vote in Palm Beach County, Florida.
I was curious about the claimed problems with the ballot format in Palm Beach County, so I did a bit of analysis of the Buchanan vote by county in Florida and have the following data to present.
[[Source of data: cnn.com ]]
At this time, statewide results as follows:
Candidate: Votes: Vote%:
Bush: 2,909,176 49 %
Gore: 2,907,451 49 %
Nader: 96,837 2 %
Browne: 18,856 0 %
Buchanan: 17,356 0 %
Phillips: 4,280 0 %
Hagelin: 2,287 0 %
County results for Buchanan are as follows:
[[Urban Counties are IN CAPS, for easier comparisons. Counties with over 100,000 total votes considered urban.]]
County: Votes: Vote%:
Alachua 262 0%
Baker 73 1
Bay 248 1
Bradford 65 1
BREVARD 570 0
BROWARD 789 0
Calhoun 90 2
Charlotte 182 0
Citrus 270 1
Clay 186 0
Collier 122 0
Columbia 89 1
DADE 561 0
DeSoto 36 0
Dixie 29 1
DUVAL 650 0
ESCAMBIA 504 0
Flagler 83 0
Franklin 33 1
Gadsen 39 0
Gilchrist 29 1
Glades 9 0
Gulf 71 1
Hamilton 23 1
Hardee 30 1
Hendry 22 0
Hernando 242 1
Highlands 127 0
HILLSBOROUGH 845 0
Holmes 76 1
Indian River 105 0
Jackson 102 1
Jefferson 29 1
Lafayette 10 0
Lake 289 0
Lee 305 0
Leon 282 0
Levy 67 1
Liberty 39 2
Madison 29 1
MANATEE 272 0
MARION 563 1
Martin 108 0
Buchanan 47 0
Nassau 90 1
Okaloosa 267 0
Okeechobee 43 1
ORANGE 446 0
Osceola 145 0
PALM BEACH 3,407 1 (noted on CNN-TV as 0.79%)
PASCO 570 1
PINELLAS 1,010 0
POLK 538 0
Putnam 147 1
Santa Rose 311 1
SARASOTA 305 0
SEMINOLE 194 0
St. Johns 229 1
St. Lucie 124 0
Sumter 114 1
Suwannee 108 1
Taylor 27 0
Union 29 1
VOLUSIA 396 1
Wakulla 46 0
Walton 120 1
Washington 88 1
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Since Palm Beach County is predominantly Democratic, and the results there are clearly an outlier**, it would be valid to discuss whether the process the county created was simply too confusing and is detrimental to public confidence in the basic fairness of the process.
**The Palm Beach vote represents 20% of Florida's vote for Buchanan. |
