A first-digit anomaly in the 2009 Iranian presidential election
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 sim 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%pm 15%) loss of electoral support just prior to the election, or the official results are rejected (p ∼ 0.01%).
- Publication:
-
Journal of Applied Statistics
- Pub Date:
- January 2014
- DOI:
- 10.1080/02664763.2013.838664
- arXiv:
- arXiv:0906.2789
- Bibcode:
- 2014JApS...41..164R
- Keywords:
-
- Benford's law;
- bootstrap;
- Simon Newcomb;
- Statistics - Applications;
- 62P25
- E-Print:
- 36 pages, 19 figures, 11 tables