November 07, 2004

"Who is this pretentious Brit and why is he writing to me?"

According to Andy Bowers of Slate, the Guardian's notorious Operation Clark County ("a crazy British plot") really did influence the election:

[G2 editor Ian] Katz ... said he knew all along that the letter-writing project could backfire. So, did it? Almost certainly, yes. In 2000, Al Gore won Clark County by 324 votes. And since Ralph Nader received 1,347 votes, we can assume Gore's margin would have been larger without Nader on the ballot. On Tuesday George Bush won Clark County by 1,620 votes.

The most significant stat here is how Clark County compares to the other 15 Ohio counties won by Gore in 2000. Kerry won every Gore county in Ohio except Clark. He even increased Gore's winning margin in 12 of the 16. Nowhere among the Gore counties did more votes move from the blue to the red column than in Clark. The Guardian's Katz was quoted as saying it would be "self-aggrandizing" to claim Operation Clark County affected the election. Don't be so modest, Ian.

Posted by Dr. Frank at November 7, 2004 08:39 PM | TrackBack
Comments

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but being from the area, I can say that the population is so small that even if EVERYBODY in Clark County would've voted for Kerry, Bush would've still won the state.

Posted by: Zaphod at November 8, 2004 06:39 PM

Yeah, and winning a county does't really "get" you anything anyway. Especially when we're talking margins as thin as the ones discussed here.

Posted by: Dave not Bug at November 8, 2004 09:16 PM

True, and maybe all of those Clark County voters would have voted Bush anyway, but it's pretty interesting (and hilarious) that the one county targeted by the Guardian went from blue to red after their letter writing campaign.

Posted by: punkmom at November 9, 2004 03:09 AM
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