The Capitol Fax Blog » Dillard’s numbers are wrong, AP is right

Dillard’s numbers are wrong, AP is right - he trails by 406

Thursday, Feb 4, 2010

* My interns and at least one commenter found a big problem with Kirk Dillard’s numbers last night. As you already know, Dillard’s campaign claims that the AP results were wrong. Instead of trailing Brady by 406 votes, as the AP has it, they say Dillard actually trails by a much smaller 115 votes. The difference is important because it’s far easier to overcome a 115-vote margin with late absentees, provisionals and a recount than 406.

But as my interns Barton Lorimor and Dan Weber discovered, the Dillard campaign spreadsheet has a big error. They have this total for Vermilion County…

DILLARD 708
BRADY 680

And here is the Dillard campaign total for Danville, which is in Vermilion County, but has its own election board…

DILLARD 708
BRADY 680

Same numbers. Strange. So, the interns checked it out. Here are Vermilion County’s actual numbers from its website…

KIRK W. DILLARD 1212
BILL BRADY 1475

And Danville’s actual numbers…

KIRK W. DILLARD 708
BILL BRADY 680

The Dillard campaign inadvertently inputted Danville’s numbers twice. Oops.

OK, so here is the Dillard campaign’s final tally…

BRADY 154,468
DILLARD 154,353

But, because of their Vermilion/Danville error, we have to add 795 votes to Brady and 504 votes to Dillard and you get this total…

BRADY 155,263
DILLARD 154,857

Instead of a 115-vote spread between the two, it’s 406 votes - exactly what the AP has…

Brady , Bill 155,263
Dillard , Kirk 154,857

* Meanwhile, Champaign County Clerk Mark Shelden took a shot at guessing the number of returned absentee ballots…

I’ve talked with a few people about how many absentees will be returned in time to be counted in the February 16 canvass of votes. I looked at the 2008 primary for some basis. In the 2008 primary [Champaign County] had 86 absentee ballots that were counted after election day. That was out of 209 absentees that were outstanding.

But further breaking that down demonstrates how important it is to know what types of absentees are outstanding. Absentee ballots automatically sent to the military and overseas voters were returned at a 59% rate that election and just 23% of those outstanding on the day of the election ended up showing up in time to be counted.

Ballots that were affirmatively requested by voters were returned at an overall rate of 91% and 60% of those outstanding on election day were returned in time to be counted.

Dividing the absentees that way and applying those rates of return, we can anticipate about 47 absentee ballots being returned and counted on the 16th. I have no idea about the number of provisional ballots.

Using those numbers, comparing it statewide and talking to others, Shelden added this estimate in an e-mail…

I think we’re talking 2-3 thousand statewide.

Considering the overall Tuesday turnout, about half of those will be Republican ballots. Still, Shelden looked at 2008, a presidential year. This year’s voter interest was far lower.

* In other news, the Champaign News-Gazette compared Brady’s numbers to the last time he ran four years ago…

Four years ago, in a five-way Republican gubernatorial primary, Brady won only 22 (all downstate) counties. This year he won 79 of them. They certainly weren’t the biggest counties (the greatest number of votes he got in any county was 10,238 in McLean, his home county), but he won a lot of them.

Meanwhile, the six other GOP contenders divvied up the vote in the six-county Chicago area. McKenna was first with 104,863 votes, followed by Jim Ryan (90,870), Kirk Dillard (80,645), Adam Andrzejewski (56,625) and Dan Proft (41,444).

Brady was a distant sixth (23,304), finishing ahead of only Bob Schillerstrom (4,672), who had dropped out of the race two weeks earlier.

And the Trib lays out the recount rules…

If a losing margin is within 5 percentage points of the winner’s total, a candidate can demand a “discovery recount.”

In a discovery recount, the losing candidate can petition the clerk’s office to retabulate votes in up to a quarter of the precincts of the candidate’s choice.

If the discovery recount uncovers evidence of missed votes or other problems, the candidate can then opt to ask the Illinois Supreme Court for a full recount, a process Orr said can take months to complete.

* Related…

* Skype a big winner in governor’s race: Around the time he nosed ahead of early leader Andy McKenna and fellow State Sen. Kirk Dillard, NBC-Ch. 5 interviewed Brady live on the air via Skype in a connection that looked more like something viewers are accustomed to seeing from foreign correspondents stationed in war-torn countries overseas.

* Brady has overcome a recount before

* Close primary races show real cost of not voting

* In Republican battle, Dillard not conceding

* GOP governor primary race still a squeaker

- posted by Rich Miller

24 Comments

- trafficmatt - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 9:17 am:
Great job Barton & Dan.

- Oswego Willy - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 9:18 am:
Dillard was asked by Fox Chicago about the status and this time Dillard said “When the dust settles …”

I guess the sun is now out of the picture…

To the post;

Dillard should wait for the absentees to come in, but Dillard needs to “own-up” to the corrected numbers, verify the work/numbers calculated and verified by Rich’s crew and AP and then wait for “the dust settles”

Dillard needs to get ahead of his rhetoric/ cliches’ and just let the votes be counted. People are cringing every time he (Dillard) himself comments. You have a press flack Kirk, let ‘em handle it.

- wordslinger - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 9:20 am:
–If the discovery recount uncovers evidence of missed votes or other problems, the candidate can then opt to ask the Illinois Supreme Court for a full recount, a process Orr said can take months to complete.–

How do you raise funds for November if that comes to pass? Joint Brady/Dillard funders with the state party holding the cash til a final decision?

- Will County Woman - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 9:23 am:
So the republicans need to think about this because they run the risk of burning up time on the clock. they needed to have started campaigning yesterday. since dillard does not want to concede, which is understandable under the circumstances, he and brady both need to be getting their early messages out to all illinoisans and their messages should be the same or complementary against quinn-slc.

when either dillard or brady eventually have to step aside, the other will have lost no time in attracting media attention and getting his early message out.

- Interesting - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 9:24 am:
If there are 1,500 Republican ballots, Dillard has to BEAT Brady by 400 votes.

These ballots are going to mirror the larger results to an extent.

- PPHS - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 9:24 am:
How close was the Thompson election in 1982?

I found a link. That challenge wore on several months and now it doesn’t seem that close.

The last governor’s race to go to a recount was the 1982 general election battle between then-incumbent GOP Gov. Jim Thompson and Democratic challenger Adlai E. Stevenson III. The race was decided in Thompson’s favor by 5,074 votes by the Illinois Supreme Court.

As I recall, Stevenson had a goofy Lt. Gov. candidate paired with him.

- cassandra - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 9:25 am:
I love Skype. It’s the future–and already here.

Maybe those highly paid Quinn state bureaucrats who are so fond of traveling about the state racking up per diem and hotel fees could start using Skype instead. Save a bundle. Oh wait. Quinn doesn’t want to save a bundle. He wants
to handle the budget from “the revenue side.”
That’s us middle class taxpayers.

- Will County Woman - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 9:33 am:
Brady sounds very resourceful, as any good business man should be.

so, ryan, adam a, proft and mckenna just all took their toys and went home? the GOP party chair needs to step up his game because the clock is ticking and we shouldn’t be hearing radio silence on the GOP side.

- Secret Square - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 9:35 am:
I use Skype frequently to talk to family. It’s extremely cheap — I pay about $3 per month for unlimited calling in the U.S. and Canada, plus another $12 every 3 months for the number itself. That’s a total of about $7 per month. Sure beats those $60 and $70 a month phone bills I used to pay… even if the video connection does sometimes look like it’s coming from outer space :-)

- Alex Carbo - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 9:46 am:
still waiting for that mckenna concession.

- washedmyhands - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 9:57 am:
Mr. Dillard was on WGN radio 720 this morning. In explaining the close race, he remarked how some $8.50 per hour clerk could make a mistake. By Mr. Dillard’s tone…there was disdain for the low paid clerk. A caller later took Mr. Dillard to task, who then begged off and said someone making a $1 Million an hour could make a mistake too. Sure…but the damage was done. I’m sure he was tired, his Dad has just passed away, sore about being behind, etc….

Both Mr. Dillard and Mr. Brady should wait until the ballots are counted (provisional, absentee) and both vow in public NOW - no recount. Let the chips fall where they may - and let the best guy win. Then they should shut their yaps until we know. No more off-the-cuff remarks by Senator Sundown. What Illinois needs is a thoughtful statesman….not another politician in a long line of talking-head politicians.

Thanks Mr. Miller for the last few days of coverage - beyond excellent.

- Jeff - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 10:00 am:
I agree that Dillard is probably beyond stressed out, so he should probably stay off TV for now. He’s only behind by 0.05% right now, so you never know what will happen by the time the race is official.

- HappyToaster - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 10:19 am:
This isn’t Gore vs. Bush or Franken vs. Coleman.

After a general, the state and national parties can go all in with as much money, time and lawyers as needed.

As a practical matter, going to the mats in a primary recount is mutual assured destruction. Sure Dillard might be able to flip the result. But fund raising will tank, it will honk off Brady voters and knock media messaging into the weeds.

Count the provisional and absentee ballots and whomever is behind will need to call it an election.

- wordslinger - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 10:40 am:
–As I recall, Stevenson had a goofy Lt. Gov. candidate paired with him.–

Grace Mary Stern?

- Illinois Repub - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 10:44 am:
So now we learn we’ve been fed more disinformation from Dillard. His ego’s been writing checks that the truth won’t cash.

At this point, I would be very, very suspicious if a few hundred votes just magically appeared somewhere for Dillard. Brady and his people had better keep their wits about them.

This is nothing like Florida in 2000. There is no suspected fraud, no butterfly ballots, no hanging chads.

Dillard is really starting to sound like a bitter loser, flailing around trying to grasp at straws.

Dillard ran a terrible campaign and Brady beat him. I think it’s as simple as that.

- Dillard's Hubris - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 10:50 am:
D’oh! Better hope Dillard doesn’t count on his internal vote counters to conduct a recount. Dillard should rule out a recount, let the chips fall where they may, and be prepared to congratulate Brady if the votes hold up. The GOP can’t afford a protracted, intra-party fight. The party need to come together quickly, especially since there’s a real opportunity to defeat the Dems. with badly damaged Quinn and that goofy Cohen.

- the Patriot - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 11:01 am:
Dillard had better man up and think about the big picture. His rhetoric is causing those of use who would have supported him if he pulls it off think about walking away. Time to find some class. I can’t believe I am saying this but go talk to Dan Hynes. Just ask that all the votes be counted and let the process run. But the assurances that you will win are getting annoying and sound suspicious. Also, don’t run the party into the ground further and ruin any shot you have at statewide office down the road.

- been there - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 11:14 am:
Adlai Stevenson’s 1982 running mate Grace Mary Stern was a respected veteran state senator.

When Stevenson asked the Illinois Supreme Court for a full recount, the court refused. The deciding no vote was cast by Justice Seymour Simon, whom Stevenson had refused to nominate for a federal judgeship when Stevenson was a U.S. senator.

- just sayin' - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 11:32 am:
It’s somehow fitting in Illinois that the campaign (Dillard’s) that got the endorsement and big money from the largest teachers’ union, can’t do basic addition.

Kirk Dillard, please look into the camera and say, “I am definitely not smarter than a 5th Grader.”

- PPHS - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 12:13 pm:
Sorry. I am thinking of the running mate for Neal Hartigan. Mark Fairchild. Thanks. Just ignore. :)

- Secret Square - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 12:25 pm:
The LaRouchie, Mark Fairchild, WAS Adlai’s running mate in 1986 (until Adlai bolted and formed the “Solidarity Party” to get away from him). The recount battle was in 1982, and Grace Mary Stern was Adlai’s running mate that time.

- shore - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 12:41 pm:
As I have said before. wttw should buy a skype, put miller on the program more often so that the folks in winnetka and wilmette who are paying for the station can get top shelf analysis instead of the goofs they generally have on now that samuels and calloway have left.

- pipersls - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 3:05 pm:
I see one advantage to long recount process. It will delay the start of usual round of “attack ads”. After all, you have to have a target. With any luck, we may get a few months of relief….

- wordslinger - Thursday, Feb 4, 10 @ 3:15 pm:
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…. The SOI has some issues it’s going to have to deal with during this nine-month general election campaign.

The GOP Senate Caucus is going to be awfully interesting this summer. One of those Senators is going to be like a shadow governor (what does Radogno do?). The other Senator is going to be looking at his colleague and thinking “you only beat me by a few hundred votes.” Some heightened egos at play there.

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