Journal of Applied Statistics 41(1), pp. 164-199.
ISSN/ISBN: Not available at this time. DOI: 10.1080/02664763.2013.838664
Abstract: A local bootstrap method is proposed for the analysis of electoral vote-count first-digit frequencies, complementing the Benford's Law limit. The method is calibrated on five presidential-election first rounds (2002–2006) and applied to the 2009 Iranian presidential-election first round. Candidate K has a highly significant (p<0.15% ) excess of vote counts starting with the digit 7. This leads to other anomalies, two of which are individually significant at p∼ 0.1% and one at p∼ 1%. Independently, Iranian pre-election opinion polls significantly reject the official results unless the five polls favouring candidate A are considered alone. If the latter represent normalised data and a linear, least-squares, equal-weighted fit is used, then either candidates R and K suffered a sudden, dramatic (70%±15% ) loss of electoral support just prior to the election, or the official results are rejected (p∼ 0.01% ).
Bibtex:
@article{
author = {{Roukema}, Boudewijn~F.},
title = {A first-digit anomaly in the 2009 Iranian presidential election},
journal = {Journal of Applied Statistics},
archivePrefix = "arXiv",
eprint = {0906.2789v6},
keywords = {Simon Newcomb, Benford's Law, bootstrap},
year = {2014},
month = {jan},
volume = {41},
pages = {164-199},
doi = {10.1080/02664763.2013.838664},
url = {http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02664763.2013.838664}}
Reference Type: Journal Article
Subject Area(s): Voting Fraud