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."

Comments

Detailed tests?

[Iwanowitch]

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.

Re:Why?

[arivanov]

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.