2000 Election The Case of the Hanging Chads

The Closest Election Ever The US presidential election of November 7, 2000, was one of the closest in history. As returns were counted on election night it became clear that the outcome in the state of Florida would determine the next president. When the roughly 6 million Florida votes had been counted, Bush was shown to be leading by only 1,738, and the narrow margin triggered an automatic recount. The recount, completed in the evening of November 9, showed Bush’s lead to be less than 400. Meanwhile, angry Democratic voters in Palm Beach County complained that a confusing “butterfly” ballot in their county caused them to accidentally vote for the Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan instead of Gore. See the ballot below.

Florida Ballot

Who REALLY Won? Make a Scatter plot and linear fit trendline… (data is in AMR Files on my SWIFT website.) How could we use statistics to determine whether or not the “butterfly” ballot confused voters? How big of an outlier was Palm Beach county? Had the ballot been more traditional, can we predict the outcome of the Florida electoral votes (and presumably, the 2000 election?). Is there a model of sorts we could employ to detect such anomalies in the future? While we’re at it, what’s up with Dade County over there?

Hints What does the line of best fit look like with and without Palm Beach? And what might that tell us about the voting discrepancies in Palm Beach? Plot county voting totals, Bush v Buchanan. (Why Buchanan?)

Deliverables Powerpoint Presentation with graphs and argument. Presentation to the class Written summary of your argument and evidence – may be Word document or as appendix slides but MUST be written in complete sentences with paragraph breaks.