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Medvedev Won by Curious Numbers
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Race
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| Contributor | Ralphie |
| Last Edited | Ralphie Apr 14, 2008 12:18pm |
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| Category | Analysis |
| News Date | Monday, April 14, 2008 06:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | There are numerous curiosities to be found in the official returns of the March 2 presidential election.
Analyzing official returns on the Central Elections Commitee web site, blogger Sergei Shpilkin has concluded that a disproportionate number of polling stations nationwide reported round numbers -- that is, numbers ending in zero and five -- both for voter turnout and for Medvedev's percentage of the vote.
The statistical anomalies offer mathematical evidence of election fraud in Medvedev's victory, math-savvy bloggers, election analysts and economists said.
In most elections, one would expect turnout and returns to follow a normal, or Gaussian, distribution -- meaning that a chart of the number of polling stations reporting a certain turnout or percentage of votes for a candidate would be shaped like a bell curve, with the top of the bell representing the average, median, and most popular value.
But according to Shpilkin's analysis, which he published on his LiveJournal blog, podmoskovnik.livejournal.com, the distribution both for turnout and Medvedev's percentage looks normal only until it hits 60 percent. After that, it looks like sharks' teeth. The spikes on multiples of five indicate a much greater number of polling stations reporting a specific turnout than a normal distribution would predict.
The analysis and results mirror Shpilkin's study of the Dec. 2 State Duma elections, in which he found a similar predominance of round numbers both for voter turnout and for the percentage of the vote captured by pro-Kremlin party United Russia. |
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