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Graph Shows Fraud in Russian Elections
gaika writes "A graph in the best traditions of Edward Tufte shows how the voting was rigged in Russian parliament elections. Initially some regions were showing higher than 100% attendance, but later on everything was corrected, or way too much corrected, as the correlation between winning party's vote and attendance now stands at 90%. I guess the people who have rigged the vote have never heard about Correlation Cofficient."
I heard people in hospitals were denied medications unless they voted for him. Very mean and dishonist thing to do. 1st post by the way :)
I mean really! Dissident journalists have been murdered. A rival was imprisoned for political reasons. Gee, and I thought this election had a shot to be a fair one! Anyone surprised by this doesn't follow Russian politics at all. Putin doesn't play around. He used one of the most devious Russian reversals of all time. He found that in Soviet Russia corruption empowers you absolutely!
I got a catholic block.
This doesn't surprise me at all, I guess anybody that follows what happens in Russia suspected this. Still, it will be interesting to see how much evidence is left behind or in other words, how good a job they did at rigging the election ;-)
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
For comparisons' sake I would like to see the same graph of percentage vs turnout in the presidential race for Florida counties in 2000 and Ohio counties in 2004.
What a lot of people don't understand here in the US is that Putin is really effing popular in Russia. We hear a lot of talk about how Putin silences critics, wants to set up an ex-KGB dictatorship, etc. And it's probably all true. But again. Putinism is popular and Russians will keep voting for it. This is no surprise if you talk to more than a handful of Russians. They don't need to commit electoral fraud because they've already got the populace on their side.
I didn't realize the extent of this until I started dating a Russian, who introduced me to many Russian viewpoints, friends and relatives.
It certainly seems like the distribution of the red dots is different from the others from a graphical impression.. But can someone remind me on what the correct statistical procedure is to 'determine fraud' here? Nonparametric ANOVA, comparing the groups? I mean, noting that the correlation coefficient is 0.9 doesn't really prove anything, does it...
I've had some statistics but I was never really good at it... I developed a radar for lousy statistics, though. Hard numbers please.
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Putin has been successful in changing all that; I would imagine the giving people enough to eat and decent housing can excuse a lot of police-state abuses.
For example, that WSJ article covered a Soviet-era glass factory that was originally a very outmoded, inefficient industrial plant, but with the result of millions of dollars of foreign investment, is now earning lots of export rubles by manufacturing automobile windshields.
You know what they said about Mussolini: "At least he made the trains run on time".
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Can someone give a better explanation? I'm taking actuarial mathematics and multiple regression courses, and even I have no clue what the guy is talking about.
Some years ago, he held a speech in front of the german parliament (the "Bundestag" ) in german
and you could clearly hear, how even then he tried to cover his accent, while his use of the german language was overall very good.
In the US, UK and other countries with a "first past the post" scheme, the whole system is perpetually rigged in favour of two parties. Small parties find it very difficult because their support is spread thinly. Even if a new party comes along with some amazing ideas, it will likely never get a single seat due to the nature of the electoral system.
If the way of voting was always rigged to favour one particular party, we would be up in arms, but having a system rigged in favour of two parties is not much better.
Why you ask? I'll tell you why!
:) And, guess what, United Russia at this point has %64 of all votes which, what with rounding up and all, will be that magic constitutional majority. D-oh.
Realistically, United Russia was going to win about %50 in "unrigged" elections. This is a simple majority, sufficient to pass regular laws. However, Putin needs constitutional majority (which is defined as 2/3 of the votes) to be able to pass constitutional amendments and various important laws related to status of Russia in union such as union with Belorussia. Now 2/3 for those advanced math majors is about %66
While it doesn't do this exact type of analysis, Rolling Stone make a pretty convincing case that there was some serious meddling going on in the Ohio election in 2004.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
In Florida, 13 counties reported more votes than voters, these accounting for 39.4% of the vote. In Ohio, at the Gahana 1 Precinct, Bush received 6,253 votes, Kerry 1,916 votes, and the others, 23. This totals 8,192 votes, which is strange, since only 4,346 people voted.
At another Precinct in Gahana, Ohio, 4,258 votes were cast for Bush and only 260 for Kerry, while only 638 people were registered as having voted.
Another source. These sorts of ridiculous "errors" could be seen when searching the online results at the time.
No, I think he was confused by the fact that it resembles the revolutionary right-ism in the United States so much that it is difficult to distinguish them.
The political landscape is a sphere, go far enough in ANY direction (right or left, progressive or conservative) from freedom at the "top" and you always eventually get to dictatorship, down at the bottom.
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Dunno who's grandparent, but I can assert that it's common belief among Russians that elections were rigged - we had this belief long before elections, given the way the authorities were preparing for them. And yes, Putin is still very popular. Actually, it follows the old pattern - people don't like what authorities do, but they like Putin. I find this schizophrenia very disturbing, but it's been like that for several years, so I'm not surprized.
I suspect he did not. In fact I suspect none of his immediate surrounding did. As many people pointed out they had no need whatsoever to do it.
Now, cronies and henchmen in remote regions are a completely different story.
Realistically, the feudalism never went away in the Soviet Union (and Russia for that matter). Many of the remote places and nearly all of the so called "autonomous republics" and "autonomous areas" are ruled in a feudal manner. In fact usually the rule inherited from father to son.
It is essential for a vassal to demonstrate his true loyalty to the ruling feudal. In the middle ages it was the oath of allegiance. Now it is votes. This is exactly what is happening here. Chechnia, various tatar states and other fiefdoms demonstrating their loyalty to the king. Move along people, there is nothing we can do to fix it for at least a 100 more years. Old habits die hard. Really hard.
Also, they are a blip on the overall statistics radar. In total we are talking about less votes than Moscow and St Petersburg which were not rigged and had the highest opposition representation which were not rigged this way. In fact I would expect less than 2-3% of the overall vote to be subjected to such rigging (the fiefdoms in question are not particularly large).
The real killer was the strict prohibition on foreign funding.
There were anything between 30-200 million of American money behind every mid-right wing win in Eastern Europe for the last 15 years (I have personally seen some of it). Without this level of support none of the right-wing "blue" muppets would have gotten even close to winning an election in Bulgaria, Romania, etc. By yanking the plug and making sure that none of the local oligarghs gives money to the opposition Putin has guaranteed his win. The 7% was simply a topup just to make sure.
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I like your comment "How even then he tried to cover his accent..."
Hmmm, he wants to blend in with the natives... I wonder why? hmmm, let's think on this one...
Oh yeah I got it, maybe because he was a spy?
I remember when Bush met Putin for the first time and said, "I looked the man in the eyes..."
At that point I thought, Bush, are you daft? The man in front of you was (is?) a spy and he would try to make himself appear like the Dali Lama himself...
I once asked a Russian when Putin was elected whether he was good or bad for the country. He replied, "does it matter?" I was completely surprised by this answer. He explained himself and said, "Mother Russia has always been ruled by an iron fist, and no politics whether communism, a tzar or free market will change that. Russia is one of the few places where a powerful person will drive over the shoes of a policeman, and the policeman will smile and say, "thank-you you are free to do that again""
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