Marilyn Bose, Julie Hosch, Belma Huebner, Don Kass, Don Racheter, Dorothy Schlitter, Wanda Sears… these names don’t ring a bell? They won the election for Presidential Electors in the state of Iowa in 2004. These are the candidates the citizens of Iowa actually voted for when they cast their ballot for George W. Bush for President in the 2004 General Election. As stated in Article II Section I of the United States Constitution that Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress. Today, all states except two (Nebraska and Maine) appoint an entire electoral slate through the use of a state-wide popular vote. The aforementioned exceptions in Maine and Nebraska vary only slightly from this model, choosing electors based on the Congressional District Method.

Some 3,400 Presidential Electors nation-wide have been added to the Atlas database and the election results for Presidential Electors is accessible via the link on any state summary page (Example: Iowa Electors 2004). Electors included are all those pledged to a candidate that was ballot-qualified in at least one state (electors for qualified write-in candidates that had no ballot access are not included).

In March of 2005, the Secretary of State of Mississippi signed an Amended Certification of the “whole number of votes given in each county for Presidential Electors for each candidate in the November 2, 2004, General Election for the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States of America”. This amended certification corrected the well-documented error in Lowndes County (the total shown on the County Recapitulation sheet for Bush truncated the final zero giving Bush 1,369 votes instead of actual sum of 13,690 votes). The amended certification also corrected a data shift error in the DeSoto Official Recapitulation sheet that occured in Bridgetown Precinct. This error gave 331 votes to Harris, 3 to Kerry, 1 to Nader and 0 to Peroutka. Shifting the data to the correct figures gives 0 to Harris, 331 to Kerry, 3 to Nader, and 1 to Peroutka. The state-wide totals are adjusted accordingly and may be seen on the Mississippi Summary Results for 2004.

The 2004 election spreadsheet data file has been released to version 1.0. The file includes vote data for the 2004 election at the National, State, County, and Township (New England States) levels. Also included are statistics, charts, voter turnout by state, candidates, and ballot status for each candidate. The file lacks the November 2004 voter registration figure for Maine (they do not have a scheduled release date for the data). The January 2004 datum is used in its place. The spreadsheet is available for purchase on the Store page (the file is available for free to those who have purchased the preliminary file.)

The 2004 official results are starting to come in. Eight states now have official results posted (ID, GA, LA, ND, SC, SD, VT, WY). The site data is being updated gradually as the results from more states become available. Precinct and Congressional District Results are also being added to the site for some of these states (available to full site members). A full tally of official results is expected by mid-December.

The preliminary 2004 Nationl County Map is now available.

The first votes counted in the Presidential Election are those in Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location, NH. The results this year are as follows:

From four years ago, Hart’s Location had Bush 17, Gore 13. Hart’s location voted Republican in 1996 as well, giving Dole 13, Clinton 12, Perot 4, and Browne 2. Perot won Hart’s Location in 1992 with 15 votes to Bush Sr. 9 to Clinton 6.

In Dixville Notch in 2000, Bush received 21 votes, Gore 5, and Nader 1. In 1996, it voted for Bob Dole with 18 votes to Clinton’s 8. Perot’s and Browne each received 1. In 1992, Bush Sr. received 15 votes, Perot 8, Marrou (Libertarian) 5, and Clinton placed fourth with 2 votes.

I performed my civic duty this morning, casting my ballot at my local precinct. In a non-battleground state, at 7:30 in the morning, the line was only about six people long, with perhaps 20 voters in the actual room. We use AccuVote optical scanning machines that read paper ballots in which voters fill out ovals. In my opinion, this is a good system - they are relatively accurate and the method has preserves a paper trail in the event that there is a machine malfunction or some other desire for a recount.

The ballot itself did not have many offices up for election - and most of those that were did not have competition. There was only one candidate for each Sheriff, Representative in General Court, and Councillor (all Democrats). Our Representative in Congress, Barney Frank (D-MA), did not have a Republican opponent, although there is one Unenrolled (i.e. MA term for Independent) candidate also for Representative in Congress representing the fourth district.

The plan for Election Week: Starting Monday, the main election result database will be off-line. Site members with Individual, Group, or Student licenses will continue to have access. This is necessary in order to reduce server load and conserve on bandwidth. I apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause.
Election predictions will close at 11pm EST on Monday. The polls close on the Mock Election at 5pm EST on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, I plan to update the time-line once every 30 minutes at about 10 past and 40 past each hour. State and county-level results will be posted once states reach ~ 90% precinct reporting, but not starting until around 10pm. On Wednesday morning, preliminary state and county data will be on-line. County maps will also be available. CD maps and data are only availble for those nice states with boundaries that do not cross county/town lines.

The 2004 election results will be available linked from the home page and the 2004 index page ( the national link page). Note that non-site-members will see ads with these pages. This is temporary during the high-bandwidth days. On Tuesday, the 2004 menu options will also appear in the main database for members to access.

I’ve created a map and Web page that details the closing times for polls in each state. On election night, a 2004 version of the 2000 Election Night Timeline will be maintained showing the call times for each state. The overview map of the poll closing times is shown below.

The latest Survey USA Maine Poll shows a significant gap in support for George W. Bush and John Kerry between Maine’s two congressional districts: Kerry +4 in ME1, Bush +5 in ME2, a nine point gap (caveat - the poll lists “Northern Maine and “Southern Maine” and it is unknown how well these line up with actual congressional district boundaries). The previous entry showed that in 2000, the difference between the results for Gore and Bush in the current districts is 4.4 percentage points.

The table below shows the trend data for the election results from 1980 through 2000 in the current districts:

The next table shows the difference between each congressional district and the statewide total by year:

The trend graphs for each district are shown below:

Maine Trend Graph: Congressional District 1 vs. Statewide

Maine Trend Graph: Congressional District 2 vs. Statewide

Although its difficult to conclude any solid trend in Maine from these graphs (the strength of Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996 and Nader in 2000 certainly masks some of the Republican/Democratic trends), there does appear to be a slight trend in voting behavior over the last decade - increasing the difference between Republican and Democratic voters between the two districts (CD2 becoming more Republican and CD1 more Democratic). While I don’t believe it to be nine percentage points as the SurveyUSA poll suggests, I think it bears watching and could result in a split Electoral Vote allocation if the statewide result is close.