Searching for "The Shift" Part 8

This is the seventh in a series of analyses of the election results to see whether or not the Cubans are abandoning the GOP. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. Part 4 is here. Part 5 is here. Part 6 is here. Part 7 is here.

In Part 1, I analyzed the precincts that are located in the 33175 zip code. According to 2000 census estimates (the latest info I could get) the zip code is 56.6% Cuban. We discovered that in those 14 precincts John McCain obtained 68.7% of the vote.

Well I went back to the 2004 election results and found that in the same 14 precincts George W. Bush obtained 71.8% of the vote. That's a shift of 3.2%.

There are some pretty big caveats to this analysis however. First off some of the precinct boundaries have changed and even the locations of the precinct houses have changed. However the precincts still generally represent the same areas. The next caveat is that absentee ballots were reported differently back then. They had something called absentee precincts. Nowadays all ballots are attributed to the voters precinct regardless of whether the voted absentee or on election day (or early voted).

Until next time, I'll be searching for the shift.

UPDATE: This post was edited to reflect the revised election results as of 11/14/08.

Posted by Henry Louis Gomez at November 21, 2008 11:40 PM