The 2000 U.S. Presidential election was very close and

Chapter , Problem 45

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The 2000 U.S. Presidential election was very close and hotly contested. GeorgeW.Bush was ultimately appointed to the Presidency by the U.S. Supreme Court.Among the issues was a confusing ballot in Palm Beach County, Florida, the so-called Butterfly Ballot, shown in the following figure.

                                             

Notice that on this ballot, although the Democrats are listed in the second row on  the  left,  a  voter  wishing  to  specify  them  would  have  to  punch  the  third hole—punching  the  second  hole  would  result  in  a  vote  for  the  Reform  Party (Pat Buchanan). After the election, many distraught Democratic voters claimed that they had inadvertently voted for Buchanan, a right-wing candidate.

The file PalmBeach contains relevant data: vote counts by county in Florida for Buchanan and for four other presidential candidates in 2000, the total vote counts in 2000, the presidential vote counts for three presidential candidates in 1996, the vote count for Buchanan in the 1996 Republican primary, the registration in Buchanan’s Reform Party, and the total registration in the county. Does this data support voters’ claims that they were misled by the form of the ballot? Start by making two scatterplots: a plot of Buchanan’s votes versus Bush’s votes in 2000, and a plot of Buchanan’s votes in 2000 versus his votes in the 1996 primary.