Berkeley Bananas
Richard Baehr
looks at the Berkeley "paper" on the results in South Florida and comes to the same conclusion I did; that if you get enough sociology students together, they may "prove" to their own satisfaction that Kerry won, but they will never prove it to our satisfaction.
He proceeds along the same lines as my analysis, but I did like this bit:
Finally, let us not forget that these three counties are in Florida, a state that consistently votes more Republican in Presidential elections than the nation as a whole. Starting with 1952, there have been 14 Presidential elections, including the 2004 race. In 12 of them, all but 1964 and 1976, the Republican candidate for President has outperformed in Florida compared to his performance nationally. This has occurred now in 7 consecutive elections. This year, Bush won Florida by 5%, and won the popular vote nationally by 2.9%. In 2000, Bush won Florida by 0.01% (call it a tie if you like), and lost nationally by 0.5%. In 1996, Dole lost Florida by just under 6%, but lost nationally by over 8%. In 1992, Bush’s father carried Florida by 2%, while losing nationally by 5%. So it is no surprise that Bush won Florida this year, or that he won it by a bigger percentage than his national margin.
