Conflicting information- Did the president get a mandate of the Florida vote?
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  2012 U.S. Presidential Election Results (Moderator: Dereich)
  Conflicting information- Did the president get a mandate of the Florida vote?
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Author Topic: Conflicting information- Did the president get a mandate of the Florida vote?  (Read 1181 times)
sg0508
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« on: December 02, 2012, 01:09:51 AM »

Seems like there are numbers all over the place and of course from the state of FL, nobody ever knows what the final numbers are or should be.  Wikipedia from Politico has the President at 50.1%.  Here, it's 49.9% and the FL Secretary of State website has something else.

Obviously it doesn't matter, but I'm curious what the final tally was and to see if we actually had every state this go around be won with >50% of the popular vote.
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minionofmidas
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« Reply #1 on: December 02, 2012, 04:44:52 AM »

It depends on whether or not you consider write-ins of random people to be valid votes.
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Benj
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« Reply #2 on: December 02, 2012, 04:20:02 PM »

It depends on whether or not you consider write-ins of random people to be valid votes.

This. Obama got 50.01% of the vote when you only include registered write-ins, but if you include unregistered write-ins (who don't get counted under Florida law), he got 49.91% of the vote.
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Antonio the Sixth
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« Reply #3 on: December 02, 2012, 11:49:34 PM »

So the Atlas takes into account votes that are officially invalid. That's weird.
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minionofmidas
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« Reply #4 on: December 03, 2012, 04:20:41 AM »

So the Atlas takes into account votes that are officially invalid. That's weird.
I agree it's wrong. You need to discuss it with Dave. It's an American thing. I don't know of any other country that has this "write-in" silliness (though Cologne student elections have it too! Grin )
Anyways you'd have to clean up the entire database, not just that one election.
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pbrower2a
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« Reply #5 on: December 03, 2012, 08:42:36 PM »

He got the plurality, and that is all that would matter if Florida were the difference between winning or losing the presidential election.
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Benj
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« Reply #6 on: December 03, 2012, 09:19:00 PM »

So the Atlas takes into account votes that are officially invalid. That's weird.

I agree. However, Atlas has always included write-in votes for candidates who are not registered as write-ins.

Part of the problem is that states have different policies towards such votes. In some states, you can win as a write-in even if you're not registered as a write-in, and thus they count each write-in candidate's votes separately (even votes for Mickey Mouse, Lizard People,* etc.). In other states, unregistered write-in votes don't get differentiated between candidates but are reported. In a few states, votes for unregistered write-ins are considered invalid and not included in official vote reports. I believe Florida is in the last category, but the unregistered write-in vote is nonetheless available in unofficial reports and was included by Dave.

*The Lizard People ballot lives on!
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