The Anatomy of the 'Cheat'

Time to stand up infowarriors!

Many hours have been spent massaging NYT data to yield the dirty secrets. First, up the battlegrounds and some ugly charts. Ok, they're some scatter charts and I'll explain how to read it. (So hard.)

First we'll do an example of a non-cheaty state so we know what that looks like. So, what this stuff is: 3 party % of all votes (trying to see a steal). Our plots show Trump in Red, and Biden in Blue. The plots on the bottom show the a shotgun like pattern that exposes a cheat.

As you can see here in Indiana.. The 3rd party line doesn't cycle much. (too bad, not gonna win!) But, we see the scatter plots neither candidate is taking their votes really. Just normal movements across the charts.

Now we're going to look at a suspected cheater: MI. Oh boy, what's going on here? 3rd party jumping all over. Anytime there is a "cheat" going down you're going to see the scatter move down and the right. (Candidate gets votes by stealing from 3rd party) Fix for Biden seen.

PA? Surely... Lots of weird movement on our mainline, but we see Trump mostly gaining with 3rd or holding (no stealing). Slow downward to the right drifting again for Biden. Same Ole' cheat-y thing.

There's a big of 'buckshot' in this one. Sometimes the initial data fields are erratic and settle down, don't make too much of it.

Is the devil living in GA? Welp, not really. We see our 3rd party holding mostly at 1.0-1.3% and these look like normal election patterns to me. Biden and Trump both moving sideways like and leaving the 3rd alone. They're probably stealing each other's votes this time.

Wis-con-SIN. OK, so this is a really tight race and R and D are punching each other out. Notice that red and blue plots are nearly perfect mirrors. They're not picking on the little guy! If there is a cheat going on here it's not an algorithm.

FL maybe? Let's see.

It looks like a solid win in FL with no cheating really to be seen. Our 3rd party got to keep their votes. (yay!) The typical 'non-vertical' when the major party candidates are trading only their own positions.