Additional help for House races:
For US House districts, I compiled and updated uncertified **party** vote
totals in an Excel spreadsheet, drawn mostly from election boards and
secretary of state offices (sources are noted). Candidates from all "other"
parties -- Libertarian, Green, Pirate (yes, there is a Pirate Party
candidate on one state ballot) etc. -- are lumped in a third column with
write-ins.
I'm working on getting these posted on a web page, but if anyone needs the
results immediately, please email me at [log in to unmask] and I will send
the worksheet directly.
This data was compiled as part of the 2006 Political Support in America
Project. The research team is Harold Clarke, Allan Kornberg, Thomas Scotto,
Joe Twyman, Walt Borges and Paul Tran. Fieldwork was conducted by Yougov
America, study director Joe Twyman. Please cite us if you use these figures.
CAVEATS
-- While CNN and EVote carry results that are available without
subscription, their counts are updated sporadically rather than
systematically. That's IF the count is updated: journalists quickly lose
interest once the winners are known, and editors cannot commit resources to
update trickle-in votes for the sake of comprehensive reporting.
-- Votes on non-major parties and write-ins often are not immediately
reported. This is due primarily to the understandable lack of state interest
in reporting of minor candidate vote totals on election night; the election
officials are more concerned with designating winners than tallying what are
perceived as irrelevant votes. Many write-in and other party tallies are
not added for a week or more. Undercounting may persist in most
non-certified totals. For example, initial reports gave the other
parties/write-ins 1 percent of the national House vote. A week later, that
percentage had doubled.
-- Some states do not report the total votes in uncontested races until
certification occurs. Certification usually takes place between Nov. 27 and
Dec. 15, so this spreadsheet is incomplete.
-- Eighteen of 21 unreported uncontested races went to the Democrats, so
these totals undercount Democrat party votes.
-- The Florida SOS office told me it doesn't place uncontested races on the
ballot (This just doesn't sound right, i.e. write-ins would not be possible.
I will check on this later this month. But, hey, we're talking about the
land of the hanging chad...).
-- There is also a problem with 8th House district vote totals from NJ. As
reported to the NJ SOS, the vote for the winner is 481,330, which means we
got a typo on the official web site, one that would be mined by any program
to compile votes. I made the NJ election officials aware of the problem last
week and they are in the process of getting the culprit -- Essex County --
to return the correct figures. I know EVote caught this glitch, but I'm not
sure where they got their updated figures. They appear to be election night
figures, which will be somewhat lower than the updated figures.
-- I also compiled statewide registration figures on a separate worksheet,
although many states are due to be updated momentarily because of same-day
registration. There are a few states where registration counts are two to
four years old.
Having spent several working days accumulating and updating votes for the
435 districts (plus two special interim House elections), I can't help but
echo Simon Jackman's plea for cooperative efforts to assemble this data.
More importantly, the political science community should make a cooperative
effort to communicate to the various state governments **what** public
election data should be systematically compiled and promptly disseminated.
Systematic reporting of voting information by the 50 state governments, as
it is in the interest of the public, the news media and political scientists
to have accurate and comparable vote and registration totals for analysis.
It would be of some value if this society or APSA would initiate such
reporting.
That said, count me in as a Texas reporter of voting results. I'll see if I
can round up some UTD R-heads to write a script to mine the Texas SOS
election returns.
Walt Borges
Doctoral candidate
University of Texas at Dallas
Walt Borges
[log in to unmask]
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