A first-digit anomaly in the 2009 Iranian presidential election
A local bootstrap method is proposed for the analysis of electoral vote-count first-digit frequencies, complementing the Benford's Law limit. The method is calibrated on five presidential-election first rounds (2002–2006) and applied to the 2009 Iranian presidential-election first
round. Candidate K has a highly significant (p<0.15% ) excess of vote counts starting with the digit 7. This leads to other anomalies, two of which are individually significant at p∼ 0.1% and one at p∼ 1%. Independently, Iranian pre-election opinion polls significantly
reject the official results unless the five polls favouring candidate A are considered alone. If the latter represent normalised data and a linear, least-squares, equal-weighted fit is used, then either candidates R and K suffered a sudden, dramatic (70%±15% ) loss of electoral support
just prior to the election, or the official results are rejected (p∼ 0.01% ).
Keywords: 62P25; Benford's Law; Iran; bootstrap; presidential election
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: Toruń Centre for Astronomy, Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Informatics, Nicolaus Copernicus University, ul. Gagarina 11, 87-100 Toruń, Poland
Publication date: 02 January 2014
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