That isn't the red of socialist flags you are seeing but the blood of the inactive Federalists I just slaughtered and had vampirized.
There were certainly a lot of interesting currents flowing in this election, and I think it's hard to blame any one element (but yes, Federalists had a metric f[inks]-ton of no-shows; 40% of all no-shows in the election from a party that comprises 25% of the country).
There was also the dynamic of SWE not doing a good job of carrying the non-absolutists in Labor (probably to do with campaigning or the lack thereof). Some other candidates, however, didn't campaign, either. Bacon King and Polnut alike would have had a field day sniping Laborites in this scenario (similar to what occurred in August), but Lief was there to pull a lot of the voters they probably thought they locked down from other parties and from the independent bloc into his column.
I didn't bother even trying to count voters until a few hours before the election. I tried to use this last report (from 4:30 PM ET) as a baseline, and going into the end of the election, I showed something like this (can't remember if I updated it fully):
SWE - 20
Lief - 19
JCL - 19
Bacon King - 19
Cris - 18
Polnut - 17
Polnut was the one that appeared to be the lowest, but no one else seemed to show this scenario when we compared numbers after the booth closed. On one hand, I just assumed (all along) that my numbers were going to be off and were likely wrong. On the other hand, I thought it all made sense; I figured Yankee was voting for Cris because he was the most in danger, and I figured Cinci voted for BK because TPP thought Polnut was already too far gone.
Well crap, I thought Polnut was safe..
I thought the same thing back in March, and we all know what happened...
Fun times!