I should pay more attention, please help.

[prof_science]

Hello. Please don't flame me for my lack of attetion. Please just answer me this:

A lot of people have been citing the many counties in FL who have a large majority of democrats registered, but saw a large majority of votes for Bush. I will not cite any examples, because this is pretty well known.

Now, some have made the point that many of these "democrats" are registered thusly for historical or family reasons, a "dixiecrat" theory. They show that in 2000 these counties voted similarly, and I think I remember seeing evidence that some also voted similarly in earlier elections.

My question-- are there not exit polls from these counties (if, in fact, they do release exit polling results county to county) to provide evidence of how they voted? What is the present conventional wisdom-- never mind that, what is the current DU wisdom on these counties?

I'm concerned because Randi Rhodes and others keep citing this issue, but do not seem to qualify it with any alternate theories (e.g. "dixiecrat").
Thank you for your help.

[Cleita]

1. I was under the impresssion that the counties Randi Rhodes

is discussing are the ones that have real Democrats who are originally from the Northeast rather than those who are dixiecrats.

:shrug:

[Magnulus]

2. No stats

But OTOH, it would be a good place to hide fraudulent votes- in a Dixiecrat heavy area.

OTOH, we have Occam's Razor. The simplest solution is that Dixiecrats turned out in force to vote for their "war hero", George WBush.

[prof_science]

4. Thanks.

I didn't think there were any hard core stats.

And I sort of concur with your Occam's razor solution. I think, potentially, if they do investigate these counties, and they do, in fact, turn out to have voted for *, then this will blow up BIG TIME in the face of those wanting recounts. It will damage the more legitimate arguments against the validity of this election.

[kittenpants]

3. I don't know the exit polls for those counties, but FL as a whole was off

from the final count.