Since Wednesday, people have been posting about this plot from Zero Hedge with
comments about the big, obvious thing in blue on the right. It's hard to
find this without mention of 21 million votes missing and I can't see where
that comes from (which is sorta OK - there could always be other sources of
numbers although it's proper to mention them). But there's just some things in there that keep gnawing on the
back of my brain. First, the plot with a couple of things I added - numerical
values for some things I'm going to keep referring to.
Take a look at the vertical axis on the left and you'll notice that it's scaled from 50 to 85 (in millions) by five. Along the red and blue bars on the last two elections, you'll see numbers I wrote. I rush to point out that (for example) the blue 2020 bar is not minus 82, that's a tilde which is short hand for "approximately" - at least in my world. I did the two blue bars first, and was working on this in what will be full scale when you click on it. I dropped the tilde and didn't go back and redo the plot. Mea culpa. Forgive me.
So back to the 21 million missing votes question. Where does that come from? The blue bar goes from 82 to 66, which is 16 million. Where are the other missing five million? This doesn't demonstrate that there aren't fraudulent votes there, but nothing at this scale (the whole country) could possibly show that.
The thing about the graph that's kind of gnawing at the back of my mind is that the red column also got smaller in the '24 election than the '20 election. Granted that it's still bigger than '16 and didn't fall as much as the blue did between 2020 and 2024 (dropping 2 million vs 16), but everything we're hearing is about this election being record-setting. The number of red votes going down implies Trump is less popular than he was in '20 and I just don't see evidence to back that anywhere. Some of the vanished 16 million blue votes could have moved from blue to red, which could explain why '24 is bigger than '16, and some blue votes probably did. After all, one of the most consistent stories we heard around the election was about people leaving the Democratic party (and most often saying the party actually left them first). See, for example, RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, RFK's running mate, Nicole Shanahan... I've heard of record numbers of Hispanics, blacks, and other regular big D voting blocks having gone for Trump.
As a simple scaling, the increase from 2016 to 2024 seems realistic - if you just look at red votes. What looks to be essentially the same number of blue votes for Kamala as the Hildebeest got seems pretty weird to me. If the country had a constant percentage of blue and red voters, they both would have gone up just from population growth (not that I'm sure we'd have growth without the illegals).
An astute observer (Mark Twain?) once said there's liars, damn liars and statistics. I will cite climate change, Chicago crime and any thing originating from the Federal Reserve as prime examples of that statement.
ReplyDeleteThe similar quote I use more often is, "figures don't lie but liars can figure."
DeleteAs of today California still has almost 5 million more ballots to count. Trump is getting around 40% of the votes, so he’ll be nearing the 74 million he got in 2020. Yes, California is that f..n slow counting ballots largely because we’re 100% mail in ballots.
ReplyDeleteCP
That's one of the problems with this plot. It's too few votes to show much of anything. Another problem is that there are reports that poll workers in CA react to someone showing ID like movie vampires react to someone holding a cross. More seriously, California isn't the only place that can't count.
DeleteGee, if only more places voted like Florida. We went from the laughingstock of the nation over shenanigans in Broward County (aided by feckless eneMedia persons) to having the most secure and fastest counting system.
ReplyDeleteAs to mail-in ballots, simple answer is they must be postmarked by, oh, say 7 days before the national election day, and must be received by and then counted by that day. Or just get rid of all mail-in ballots except for a few exceptions.
Beans expressed my thoughts quite well. Absentee voting should be very limited as it used to be. No other mail in voting allowed. Voting precincts should be limited in size so that they can handle the volume without excessive lines or delay, both in voting and counting.
ReplyDeleteHow likely do you think it is that any such thing will be approved?
DeleteEspecially in the Communist areas of this country.
Di you have a conclusion?
ReplyDeleteAwkwardly and stupidly placed in the post, "This doesn't demonstrate that there aren't fraudulent votes there, but nothing at this scale (the whole country) could possibly show that. " Worded more precisely, the common report that the 21 million missing votes were the way they cheated can't be shown by this.
DeleteDid you see the documentary "2000 Mules"? It tells and explains so much more than this graph does.
ReplyDeleteYes I did, and it certainly does.
Delete2020 total votes = 156
ReplyDelete2024 total votes = 138
That's 18. And it is a proximation.
Less people voted blue in 2024 than in 2020. But that proof is obscured by the large number of fraudulent 'votes' in 2020.
Others have argued the the number of total votes in 2020 is statistically impossible. Also, the number from 2020 bucks the historical trend in a significant way.
I had a book titled, Liars And Statistics, or something like that. About 400 pages, it was a fun book because it examined many cases and showed how stats couldn't possibly be correct in each case. Statistics make my eyes cross and blue my vision but that was a fun book on stats.
It is yet another book I lost because it wasn't returned after loaning it out. That is a lesson I had b en slow to learn.
I should add that the total votes is as shown on the graph.
Delete"How to Lie With Statistics". A very worthwhile read. At least one free pdf version is available on the internet.
DeleteWe found the missing votes:
ReplyDeletehttps://i.imgur.com/aGaZhIm.png
I had a prof who was a stickler about plots & charts: you *had* to show the origin, or get an F. If you needed a closeup, you could do a "detail", but zero was mandatory.
ReplyDeleteHe was rigid on axis units as well, only 1's, 2's, 5's and 10's. Anything else cost you a grade point.
I faintly recall an argument about plotting decibels, but don't remember if it was between us students or between a student and the prof.
My only thing about mandating the plots start at zero in Y is "what does that tell you that this doesn't?" Pick any bar, either color. The bottom of the chart is 50 million. What does a long bar from zero to 50 tell you that this doesn't? It's not like votes can turn off at some point and then start up again millions higher. A bar from zero to 20 million, then goes away and starts up at 30? Impossible. Does the X axis start at 1776 for zero or at 0 AD?
DeleteIf you need to be told you're looking at differences of a few million out of 80, or the difference between 82 and 66, why would making the bars cover 0 to 85 instead of 50 to 85 help?
As I said, a stickler.
DeleteI would say: in general showing the origin gives one an immediate sense of the magnitude of an issue, are the differences likely to be signifigant or down in the noise?
In this particular case, a real issue, I think.
Incidentally, I looked him up, he just passed this year:
https://m.cpp.edu/guest/device/small/news/detail?feed=newsstories&id=bc15396a-6a82-5857-be85-87a8c161b10f
A decent, if strict, guy. RIP.
Update on Rick’s presidential popular vote totals - 2020 was156 million, 2024 currently stands at 145.7 million. California ballot counters took the weekend off with 4.9 million ballots remaining to tally. So, when they get off their asses and finish the job we’re looking at a total a tad north of 150 million.
ReplyDeleteCP