In this article I compare the pre-election polling data with the vote share each candidate received to assess how accurate polls were before the first round of the presidential elections. I compare the actual election results to the vote share gained with... Citește mai mult
Before the first round of the Presidential Elections next Sunday, this article aims to provide an overview of the published public opinion poll results. There is no doubt that current president Klaus Iohannis, the candidate of the National Liberal Party (... Citește mai mult
Update: This text was originally published in 2016, when the elimination of the so-called radio-TV tax used to fund the public broadcaster (TVR) and public radio was being considered. Since 2017, the national broadcaster and public radio are funded direct... Citește mai mult
Update: This text was originally published in 2016, and it discusses a licence fee as the main source of funding for the Romanian public broadcaster (TVR). Since 2017, the broadcaster is funded directly from the state budget. The root causes of why TVR ... Citește mai mult
Can numbers tell us if any of the parties engaged in ballot stuffing? In the 2014 Romanian presidential elections, about 10 percent of those who went to the polls within Romania did so “on supplementary lists”, i.e., at another precinct than the one t... Citește mai mult
Known knowns and known unknowns During the first round of the 2014 presidential elections, 965,022 citizens – 10.09% of those who cast their ballots inside the country – voted at a different polling station than the one they were assigned to b... Citește mai mult
We started this investigation with two main questions: Is there anything seemingly aberrant about the temporary votes cast in the 2014 election, something that might point to ballot-stuffing? Does the data support the idea that either of the two main cand... Citește mai mult
In the previous section, we used a regression analysis to try to find any suspect patterns in how the supplementary lists impacted the vote share of Victor Ponta and Klaus Iohannis. We also found a few precincts where our model’s prediction falls fa... Citește mai mult
So far in our statistical investigation we have looked at the numbers from various angles, without finding any real evidence for widespread ballot stuffing by one side or the other, via the supplementary lists. As they say, though, if you torture the data... Citește mai mult
We waded into the murky waters of electoral statistics in order to figure out whether we can prove anything suspect is going on with the vote on the supplementary list. We wanted to find out the following: Is there any evidence of a systematic, atypical p... Citește mai mult