Young Mathematically Simulates Florida Presidential Vote Recount

In a study conducted during the recent presidential vote recount in Florida, Peyton Young and co-author Christopher Carroll estimated the net number of votes that Vice President Gore would likely have gained if the partial hand count of votes in Miami-Dade county that was terminated on Wednesday, November 22, 2000, had been complete. Using Monte Carlo simulations, Young and Carroll estimated that the total gains that Vice President Gore could have expected if the recount in Miami-Dade had been completed would have been between -70 and 250 votes. They estimated that the probability that Gore would have overtaken Bush's lead (and thus won the election) was substantially less than fifty percent. The analysis of Young and Carroll was reported on the cover of the online version of CNN during the height of the recount controversy. For a copy of the study, click here. For a copy of the CNN story, click here.