How much harm can ACORN do? About 66 Electoral Votes.
UPDATE: From the NYT, this is just precious:
On Oct. 6, the community organizing group ACORN and an affiliated charity called Project Vote announced with jubilation that they had registered 1.3 million new voters. But it turns out the claim was a wild exaggeration, and the real number of newly registered voters nationwide is closer to 450,000, Project Vote’s executive director, Michael Slater, said in an interview.
The remainder are registered voters who were changing their address and roughly 400,000 that were rejected by election officials for a variety of reasons, including duplicate registrations, incomplete forms and fraudulent submissions from low-paid field workers trying to please their supervisors, Mr. Slater acknowledged.
First, the 400,000 rejections makes sense in light of Obama’s Chicago project – he registered 150,000 and netted about 100,000. One-third trash.
Second, so NOW Project Vote – Obama’s group from Chicago – is an “affiliated charity” to ACORN? Always said before that the two had nothing to do with each other. Hunh. Go figure.
So the 1.3 million registrants are actually 450,000. A third the EV impact? I guess there’s no way to know how the valid ones spread out over the states.
Drop ACORN’s influence to 20+ EVs? Still important when we remember the 270-270 articles from September. But maybe ACORN is just a reminder of just how soulless the dems are when it comes to winning elections.
I surfed for the number of registrations that ACORN is doing by state. I found a cute little blog for some source data: The Brad Blog. Why the pejorative “cute”? He’s an ACORN apologist. Seems to not read outside his circle of thought. Oh well. Takes all kinds to run a country.
Let’s take his data even though we know it is understated from Pagan Power. To reconcile the sources of data, let’s make the fantastic leap that every ACORN registration in Bard’s post is legitimate. Yeah, I know, I laughed out loud just typing that. See my post on Obama’s own work drifting from “150,000 registrations” to “over 100,000.” Further, to heighten ACORN’s number (by reducing the denominator), I am ignoring the growth in population from 2000 to 2004 to 2008.
All of these “fudge factors,” I suggest, will give us a clearer picture of those states within which ACORN has a possibility of altering the outcome.
The first table is Brad’s data compared to 2004 total votes cast in those states. I used Table 4c (Column H – Total Voted – Total).
| State | Voted in 2004 | ACORN Registrations | Percent ACORN to 2004 Voted |
| California | 12,807,000 | 39,570 | 0.3% |
| Texas | 7,950,000 | 42,695 | 0.5% |
| Florida | 7,372,000 | 151,812 | 2.1% |
| Pennsylvania | 5,845,000 | 153,898 | 2.6% |
| Ohio | 5,485,000 | 247,335 | 4.5% |
| Michigan | 4,818,000 | 215,470 | 4.5% |
| North Carolina | 3,639,000 | 26,841 | 0.7% |
| Wisconsin | 3,010,000 | 31,203 | 1.0% |
| Minnesota | 2,887,000 | 42,581 | 1.5% |
| Missouri | 2,815,000 | 47,362 | 1.7% |
| Indiana | 2,598,000 | 23,090 | 0.9% |
| Arizona | 2,239,000 | 12,018 | 0.5% |
| Colorado | 2,097,000 | 65,969 | 3.1% |
| Louisiana | 2,067,000 | 12,452 | 0.6% |
| Kentucky | 1,930,000 | 14,200 | 0.7% |
| Connecticut | 1,524,000 | 20,081 | 1.3% |
| Nevada | 871,000 | 87,968 | 10.1% |
| New Mexico | 837,000 | 77,432 | 9.3% |
| Totals | 70,791,000 | 1,311,977 | 1.9% |
Now we need to resort the data and add the margins of victory in the 2000 and 2004 elections. Although I am using the raw numbers, the primary sort of states below will be by the ACORN Percent column above.
Source for 2000 Election results by state and for 2004 results. I am ignoring all votes not cast for W, Gore, or, Kerry in the margin calculations. A number in parenthesis “(999)” indicates a Republican win in that state – that is, the deficit ACORN has to overcome.
| State | 2000 Margins | 2004 Margins | ACORN Registrations |
| Nevada | (21,597) | (21,500) | 87,968 |
| New Mexico | 366 | (5,988) | 77,432 |
| Ohio | (165,019) | (118,601) | 247,335 |
| Michigan | 217,279 | 165,437 | 215,470 |
| Colorado | (145,521) | (99,523) | 65,969 |
| Pennsylvania | 204,840 | 144,248 | 153,898 |
| Florida | (537) | (380,978) | 151,812 |
| Missouri | (78,786) | (196,542) | 47,362 |
| Minnesota | 58,607 | 98,319 | 42,581 |
| Connecticut | 254,921 | 163,662 | 39,570 |
| Wisconsin | 5,708 | 11,384 | 20,081 |
| Indiana | (343,856) | (510,427) | 31,203 |
| North Carolina | (373,471) | (435,317) | 23,090 |
| Kentucky | (233,594) | (356,706) | 14,200 |
| Louisiana | (135,527) | (281,870) | 26,841 |
| Texas | (1,365,893) | (1,694,213) | 12,452 |
| Arizona | (96,311) | (210,770) | 42,695 |
| California | 1,293,774 | 1,235,659 | 12,018 |
| | | | |
| Totals | (924,617) | (2,493,726) | 1,311,977 |
Now let’s take the ACORN registrations as a multiple of the 2000 and 2004 Margins. I will average the margins and use that number at the denominator. The primary sort will be the highest multiple (using absolute values). I will also a column for Electoral Votes.
| State | Average Margins divided by ACORN Registrations | Electoral Votes |
| New Mexico | (27.5) | 5 |
| Nevada | (4.1) | 5 |
| Wisconsin | 3.7 | 10 |
| Ohio | (1.7) | 20 |
| Michigan | 1.1 | 17 |
| Pennsylvania | 0.9 | 21 |
| Florida | (0.8) | 27 |
| Colorado | (0.5) | 9 |
| Minnesota | 0.5 | 10 |
| Missouri | (0.3) | 11 |
| Indiana | (0.1) | 11 |
| North Carolina | (0.1) | 15 |
| Louisiana | (0.1) | 9 |
| Arizona | (0.1) | 10 |
| Connecticut | 0.1 | 7 |
| Texas | 0.0 | 34 |
| Kentucky | 0.0 | 8 |
| California | 0.0 | 55 |
Where ACORN has “registered” 0.3 of the margin or less, I am going to presume it will have no impact on the 2008 election.
Those states above that line have a collective 124 EVs. The net gain – ignoring the EVs already Dem - if they pick all of these states would be 66 EVs. That’s substantial.
UPDATE. I'm laughing. Some guy links to my post, and a responder goes off as he claims to be a statistical whiz, of course not backing it up with anything but liking stats and guessing sports things, and rips into me. Smile. When presenting the data above, I suggest that one "end zone" (to borrow a football term) is set at 66 EVs. Will ACORN pull that off? Of course not. Registered voters die or experience projectile vomiting on Election Day. Some people that ACORN registered may actually vote for McCain. But given the worst case, the damage could be up to 66 EVs. Most likely? I leave that to you stat wizards. All it takes is a couple of states, right? From my humble, uneducated perspective, to which I defer to the Wizard of Fantasy Football, it sure seems like ACORN registrations can play a role. Hey, hope you didn't draft Tom Brady. That would suck, eh?
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