Seminole County, by the way, is northern Orlando, while Manatee encompasses Bradenton (just south of Tampa Bay) on the Gulf coast). I think both went heavily Republican in the original count.
I don’t think it really matters which way a county went in the original count, but just the fairly random occurance of which votes were missed in the original count. Interestingly, the vote difference has been dropping for the past few days from about 1800 or so to 225 as reported by the AP now.
As a small change of subject, Salon is reporting that they sent duplicate ballots overseas this year.
Gore actually seems to be picking up a lot of ground in the Republican counties. Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but it sorta makes you wonder why Gore’s votes were (apparently) under-counted in those counties the first time around.
The reason you hear 1784 from the Florida elections council, and 225 on the news, is because the news is reporting AP projections. It was just discussed on CNN.
True, these are not wild estimates, but it seems the AP gets some kind of tally independent of the elections council. I’m not sure how this is working, but it is not a case of the votes being tallied officially and then reported. The AP tally is actually ahead of the election council tally.
You would think the media would just wait for the official count before giving their own numbers.
It does seem strange from a probability standpoint that the new votes in the recount are falling 3-1 in favor of Gore. Howzee doing dat?
I thought that 1784 was the original number. That number will not be changed to the new and algore improved recount number until the recount is certified.
Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. This whole issue is confusing.
Well, as someone else mentioned, urban areas tend to vote Dem and also have much busier balloting areas, hence there is more going on and more chance for confusion than you get in a little rural spot with 50 voters. The fact that the votes tend to be going for Gore I mostly consider mere coincidence…out of 6 million votes cast, a 3000 vote sample is remarkably small, and you could see some very anamolous results.
This is true from my understanding of the Florida Secretary of State’s news conference. It seems as though news agencies are contacting each county directly and posting the recounted numbers. They are not official until the original certified recount is received in Tallahassee from each county.
Bush leads Gore by 327 votes (AP). Get ready for recount #3!
I find it amusing that the Bush campaign is calling on Gore to give up (according to CNN.com) after this recount.
Sure, I mean, just 'cus the first recount found that over 2500 Gore votes had been missed (in addition to over 1000 Bush votes), let’s just assume it’s right this time.
You know, I’m an engineer, and if I did calculations this way (count once, get one number; count again, get a different number; give up and say the second count was right), I’d expect my boss to be rather unhappy with me (indeed, I’ve had to supervise other engineers, and can remember a case in which one of them did something like this, and I was rather unhappy with him). When you have such widely varying answers, you have to make sure you’re working with the right numbers – especially here with such a small margin between the two candidates.
Of course, this ignores the fact that there are still absentee votes to be counted, which I guess Bush would just like to forget about.
There’s an interesting Feed Magazine article about who’s in charge with the absentee ballot program.
And CBS News just reported that someone forged someone else’s signature on an absentee ballot.
This election is beginning to look like a bad Don King production.
Gore seems quite willing to forget all the absentee ballots as well when he talks about winning the popular vote. I think the law in Florida is an automatic recount, and then a handcount of a 1% sample in 3 precincts Gore picks. Right now they seem to be following the law.
Both of them should have their teams stand down until the vote is in. It is irresponsible to be casting doubts on the progress before the vote has been counted, and you shouldn’t be picking your cabinet until the votes are in either.
Actually, David, the absentee ballots will probably help Bush because a large percentage of them are from military voters. Of course, if we’ve learned anything from this election, it’s that “usually” isn’t the case here.
I don’t think it’s unusual for Bush to have asked for a concession at this point. I believe Gore would have done the same thing had the situation been reversed. I can’t recall a single election where the winner waited until the absentee ballots were counted to declare victory. And despite everything, these 2 men are politicians and they’ll continue to act like politicians.
Lisa said:
I’m quite aware of that – so why doesn’t Bush wait 'til his lead is even more secure? Why is he trying to rush things? If he won, he won. It’s not like the inauguration is tomorrow.
David B
About your recount comment.
I don’t think this is what they are going to do, but you are not the only one thinking this.
Didn’t I hear somewhere that they may get a large number of absentee ballots from Jewish Floridians living in Israel? Assuming those votes are mostly Democratic, it seems that they might offset any advantage Bush gets from military votes. Also, I am hearing that while officers tend to vote Republican, enlisted men are not tied to the GOP.
Spoke,
I doubt it, especially in this election. Bush made a big deal throughout the campaign about raising military readiness and salaries etc. Didn’t do much for the general populace, but you have to think it would have resonated among the military folk.
The only wildcard is, as you say, the votes from Israel. This due to the Lieberman factor.
We’ll see.
When do these votes get counted? Are they added as they come in, or all at once on the 17th?
Bush wins recount by 327 votes according to AP
New Mexico is now officially up in the air. The last I heard, Gore and Bush were within 106 vote with Five hundred something to go.
The glitch???
They seem to have misplaced 256 of them.
BTW…from what I have read these are the early ballots.
JustAnotherGuy, I saw that 327 munber this morning, but I don’t trust press numbers anymore for this election.
The official Florida number still stands a bit higher at 961. (found here, click on President/Vice President on the left)
But what will happen if GW wins the popular vote after the count is really complete, will Gore shut up then? I doubt it, I look for lawsuits and a media war.