Florida Democrat Counties Voting for Bush?
This notion has gotten a fair amount of play over the last few weeks from Democrats anxious to find some way that Kerry actually won.
Consider this:
There were the reports of several counties in Florida, all using optical scanner machines, where Democratic precincts voted overwhelmingly for Bush.
Or
this:
In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry.
In Dixie County, with 9,676 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush.
The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the counties where optical scanners were used. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.
Now, let's leave the question of optical scanners out of it for a moment. Is there anything surprising about Bush winning those particular counties? Not at all. Bush won
all those counties in 2000 as well; his percentage of the vote was 70.1% in Baker County, 59.6% in Dixie County, 54.5% in Franklin County, and 69.7% in Holmes County in 2000. It is quite apparent that registered Democrats or not, people in those counties tend to vote Republican for President.
And errors in those tiny (population) counties could not possibly have given President Bush the election. Bush won those four counties by a combined 13,704 votes in 2004. Give Kerry all his votes in those counties and Bush would still have carried Florida easily.
It appears obvious to me that there's nothing here. The optical scanner issue is just a red herring.
