[EL] “Presidential Primary Voter Turnout at 30% with Republican Increases and Democratic Decline”

Mon Jul 25 06:48:25 PDT 2016

I appreciate the citations to my work in FairVote's report, which I
regrettably missed when clicking through the press release (which has no
mention). However, I find the first page of the report disingenuous. Here
is the statement where the report's data come from:

"In this report, we draw on data from FairVote’s comprehensive Popular Vote
Totals 2016 spreadsheet that tracked votes cast in primaries and caucuses
during the 2016 nomination contest."

The backhanded mention to my work on the report's first page only states:

"The 2016 presidential primary season is completed, and more than 60
million Americans cast a ballot in a primary election (approximately 27% of
the adult citizen population, using the United States Elections Project’s
estimates of the voting eligible population)."

This doesn't explain to a reader that the much of the data analyzed comes
from me, as is eventually described in the methodology statement on p. 15
of the report. I would appreciate if FairVote would be more transparent in
the opening of the report as to the data sources.

I've always had a strong commitment to open source - software or data. What
particularly troubles me is that FairVote would write a full-length report,
using much of my data, without reaching out to me in advance. Despite the
words of kindness from Rob, what FairVote did with this report was simply
not nice. So, reluctantly, I will revise my use license so that in the
future explicit permission will be required for reports such as this.

============
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Associate Professor, University of Florida
352-273-2371
www.electproject.org
@ElectProject

On Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 5:01 AM, Rob Richie <rr at fairvote.org> wrote:

> Good morning, Michael. This woke me up faster even then my cup of coffee!
>
> On behalf of the team that did the report, I certainly apologize for the
> typo and incomplete citation in the spreadsheet with the data - which is
> now fixed. I'll also make sure the online news release adds a cite too.
>
> The good news is that we do feature (and correctly name!) the US Elections
> Project in the main report itself.  See the highlighted hyperlink on page
> one and the first sentence of the methodology section on page 15
> https://fairvote.app.box.com/v/PrimaryVoterTurnout2008-2016
>
> You do great work on turnout, and we regularly point that out -- we link
> to your cite multiple times on the opening page we have on turnout in
> general at fairvote.org
>
> Since the report has been brought up, I'll mention:
>
> * The report includes a focus on states that held contested primaries for
> president in both 2008 and 2016, and the potential impact of laws that can
> affect voter access (early voting, Election Day registration, open
> primaries and voter ID), with some useful findings that I hope some people
> will read.
>
> * The spreadsheet Michael links to (you can get there from
> PopularVote2016.com) should be useful to researchers -- lots of data,
> including what the team could find from caucus states and with links to the
> sources.
>
> * That sheet was started as a way to track an interesting stat -- the
> number of votes cast for presidential candidates after they withdrew. It's
> rather astounding, actually. As mentioned in the report "In the Democratic
> contest, 110,243 votes were counted for Martin O’Malley who had already
> withdrawn from the race. In the Republican contest, 1,768,884 votes for
> withdrawn candidates were counted after they had withdrawn from the race,
> including 626,441 votes when the nomination contest was still in doubt. In
> all, 6% of voters cast ballots for withdrawn candidates. Based on
> comparisons of votes cast early and on Election Day for active candidates
> and withdrawn candidates in Arizona, the great majority of these voters
> would have cast their ballots differently is aware that their preferred
> candidate was no longer in the race."
>            Rubio won 11.6% of the vote in Arizona, for example, but our
> analysis showed that in the state's largest counties, his share of the vote
> cast early was more than 20 times greater than his share of Election Day
> votes. We've been suggesting that early voters in presidential contests be
> able to cast a ranked choice ballot, as UOCAVA voters have been doing
> recently in five states' congressional primaries that may go to runoffs,
> but people might find the numbers interesting in themselves.  Candidates
> who won more votes after withdrawing than when active include Bush,
> Christie, Paul, Fiorina, Huckabee, Santorum, O'Malley and Gilmore.
>
> Apologies again for that spreadsheet citation snafu, Michael, and time for
> that cup of coffee.
> Rob Richie
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 12:57 AM, Michael McDonald <
> dr.michael.p.mcdonald at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> A link to my VEP data used to compute the headline turnout rate can be
>> found by clicking through the tabs of the spreadsheet provided by FairVote:
>>
>>
>> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uayHHRfD-4iqrha52NGMvgOmrqQ5LqrX3Oihl109Ea0/edit#gid=1560475088
>>
>> FairVote has the added to the indignity by getting my website URL wrong.
>>
>> Let's be clear: The headline would not be possible without me. Few people
>> are going to click through to see the source of the data. This sort of
>> attribution does not conform with the required attribution I post on my
>> website:
>>
>> http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/faq/permission
>>
>> The New York Times, Washington Post, and 538 - among others - are
>> generous with attribution when they use my data. I work with organizations
>> like the Non-Profit Voter Engagement Network to produce similar reports,
>> and they also are generous with attribution. Rob Richie (nor anyone else at
>> FairVote) never even reached out to me about the report, something just
>> common decency dictates.
>>
>> I expect an apology and prominent placement of attribution on any
>> materials FairVote generates from my VEP data.
>>
>> ============
>> Dr. Michael P. McDonald
>> Associate Professor, University of Florida
>> 352-273-2371
>> www.electproject.org
>> @ElectProject
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Rob Richie
> Executive Director, FairVote
> 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 240
> Takoma Park, MD 20912
> rr at fairvote.org  (301) 270-4616  http://www.fairvote.org
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>
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