I just thought about this. Paul got ~8% in NH and ~10% in Iowa. I’ve already described some of the reasons the NH number feels wrong but don’t believe there has been any fraud. In the least because there has no real evidence of it. The machine counting numbers are interesting for sure but without far more careful analysis I think it’s silly to claim fraud.

While listening to Free Talk Live’s January 9th, 2008 show from last night a woman called saying she was holding a Ron Paul sign at a Manchester polling place. She claims all day long vans showed up with people who were not registered to vote. She said that as far as she could tell they were Hillary people and supporters. In New Hampshire you can register on the spot and as far as I understand need to show identification and prove your residency. Probably like every state. However, they will allow you to simply sign an affidavit to prove you are a resident. In theory it’d be fairly easy to bus in people from around the state (outside would be more difficult) and have them just sign the paper. You could probably hop from township to township. Now, this would be easy to prove and no one is saying Hillary’s people did this but I think it’s surely worth investigating.

Something occurred to me while listening to this and Ian or Mark mentioning that New Hampshire had the largest donations per capita of all the states. The donations in dollars per capita are not all that interesting. It could simply be that those donating in NH to the Ron Paul campaign are giving more. Well what about donaters per capita? RonPaulGraphs.com has to use a polling method to collect it’s data. For number of donors and the amount raised that’s not much of a problem. They are cumulative. Names and locations however are fleeting. If you donate and it gets updated before the script scrapes the info again… you aren’t counted. I think it’s safe to assume that while incorrect the numbers gathered should be generally uniformly so. If not this exercise can obviously be disregarded.

According to RonPaulGraphs.com’s donor count by state page there are 69,798 uniquely captured donors. New Hampshire makes up 698 of those and Iowa 680. The donors per million graphs page claims the sitemaster believes those numbers are ‘50-60% the “actual” number.’ Lets ignore that and again assuming the unique donors per state are evenly wrong.

R=Republican, RP=Ron Paul, D=donors, C=Capita, RPV=Ron Paul votes, RV=Registered voters, TRVr=Total Republican Voters, TRV=Total Republican votes; 1) Both states Republicans are 30% of the registered voters

So what does this mean? Iowa’s Republicans stayed home. Almost 10% of those who did wonder out voted for Paul. New Hampshire Republicans did come out to vote overwhelmingly and didn’t much like Paul. Or a whole lot of Independents came and voted NOT Paul. Either way, NH gave Paul more votes per capita, more votes per registered voter, more donors per capita, and donors per registered voter. But IA had more donors per Ron Paul voter, more donors per Republican vote. NH however has a much higher donation per capita. Top of all 50 states + DC. Assuming that active Paul supporters will definately vote for him if given the chance… NH has more supporters. Unfortunately for the Paul supporters those supporting other candidates also have the drive to get out and vote. In Iowa more people are willing to let others run the show. It’d be nice if the number of Republicans vs Independents who voted for each candidate.

If you can derive anything else from the data field free to comment.

But more importantly: On Paul losing. SUPPORTERS, DON’T GET DISCOURAGED!!! I know you are. I can see it.

This is sad. Today is one of the worst day in donations on record so far. This isn’t about Paul. It’s about getting the freedom message to as many people as possible. And Ron Paul is the vehicle for that message right now. We need to stay in the spotlight as much as possible. Don’t give up now. To November and beyond!

UPDATE:

The graph shows an up tick in donations. Just after I posted this the campaign released this. As with many things put out by politicians I very much doubt this was actually written by Dr. Paul. Doesn’t have his style. But it’s great non-the-less. How many releases like this from candidates mentions economists and freedom fighters or quote Hayek? Even if you don’t support him… you have to admit it’s an interesting campaign.

Related posts:

1. On the supposed vote fraud in New Hampshire
2. New Hampshire Libertarian Party wins lawsuit over voter list
3. Ron Paul fundraising observations
4. Republicans closing primaries to push out independent Paul supporters
5. Michigan primary results

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 4:42 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.