Media Spin

From here:

The former head of a Republican consulting group has pleaded guilty to jamming Democratic telephone lines in several New Hampshire cities on Election Day two years ago.

The jamming involved more than 800 computer-generated calls and lasted for about 1 1/2 hours on Nov. 5, 2002, the day voters decided several races, including a close Senate contest between outgoing Gov. Jeanne Shaheen and GOP Rep. John E. Sununu, who won by fewer than 20,000 votes.

This leaves the impression that the Republicans "stole" this election with "dirty tricks."

However, let's dig a little deeper in order to search for the truth here.

New Hampshire had, in November 2002, 690,159 registered voters. Only a little more than a quarter of NH voters are registered Democrats. The rest are either Republicans, Independents, or registered with some third-party.

In order to believe that this little "dirty trick" cost the Democrat Jeanne Shaheen the election, you must also believe that 90 minutes without access to telephones cost Democrats roughly 20,000 votes. 20,000 votes is roughly 3% of registered voters in the state.

Now let's figure in the turnout factor. 50% turnout is probably being charitable in an off-year election (I don't have the exact figures). That would mean roughly 350,000 people voted in 2002. 20,000 is roughly 6% of that figure.

We must dig still deeper in order to get a clearer picture. One assumes that the Democrat Party in New Hampshire was calling only registered Democrats on Election Day. So, 25% of 350,000 is roughly 90,000 voters. And 20,000 is over 22% of 90,000.

In other words, if one assumes that the GOP "stole" the NH Senate election in 2002, they must also assume that a mere hour and a half outage of the phones at the Democrat Party's HQ on Election Day cost them nearly a quarter of their base's vote! (And I'm sure the campaign workers ended up just using their cell phones to overcome the problem anyway, pretty much mooting the intended effect of this attack.)

The media will not dig this deep, however. They will just imply that Republicans use illegal methods to steal elections. (And remember, this guy wasn't even a part of the official campaign!)

This is why people hate and distrust the media. Sometimes, they almost make Michael Moore look credible by contrast.