Precinct anomaly

[Torie]

Look at this precinct in beautiful downtown Glendale, AZ on its southern end where most of its Hispanics hang out. It's surrounded by precincts that look about the same (small tightly packed well kept little single family houses, with a few apartments here and there). Yet all the surrounding precincts with similar demographics, voted 3 to 2 for Obama over McCain. This precinct also had unusually high turnout, maybe close to twice as high as some precincts nearby, so scratch the theory that the Hispanics are packed into the apartments on the west side of the precinct, and don't vote. Heck the McCain vote is not that much below the white population over 18. I wonder what is going on here?

]

[ElectionsGuy]

Notice how the average is closer to 60% Obama. Even precincts that are Democratic have averages that are less Democratic than that. Might be a mistake of entering the wrong numbers.

[Torie]

Notice how the average is closer to 60% Obama. Even precincts that are Democratic have averages that are less Democratic than that. Might be a mistake of entering the wrong numbers.

Ah ha, that is probably the best answer. The neighboring precincts do have about the same Democratic averages. Unless there was some bizarre McCain love there, maybe because he spent weekends there handing out free beer, it's probably just a data entry error. Damn! How boring.

But what about the high turnout? Maybe a digit transposition?  Except even moving the order of the digits around to get the Pub and total vote down would not really do more than eliminate part of the anomaly.

[muon2]

According to the archived data at the Maricopa recorder the data for Bethany precinct is correct. The problem is that Bethany precinct is in Phoenix just south of Phoenix Mountains park. If you look there you will also see a Bethany precinct won by Obama with 55% of the vote even though the precinct avg is 55% Pub. The data in that Phoenix precinct belongs to Bethany Park precinct, which is located, wait for it ... in Glendale. The 2008 presidential numbers for the two precincts were switched by the data entry person for DRA.

[Torie]

Nothing to add here as it seems like muon2's response is the best, but could Torie or someone else please tell me what program you took a picture of in the original post is from, please? Thanks.

Here you go. We call it Dave's Redistricting Application, or DRA for short.