June 11, 2012

Stanton A. Glantz, PhD

With half the "extra" votes counted, Philip Morris and Reynolds' lead on Prop 29 has been cut by nearly half

At 4:43 am June 7, the morning after the election, the Secretary of State showed Philip Morris and Reynolds leading on Prop 29, with 50.7% no vs. 49.2% yes on Prop 29, a spread of only 63,176 votes, with about 1 million uncounted mail-in votes.

As of 5:55 pm on June 11, the Secretary of State showed that, with about half the votes counted, the cigarette companies' lead had narrowed to 37,096 votes, with 50.4% no to 49.6% yes.

I did a county-by-county analysis, using the election day returns to predict post-election returns (using linear regression), then estimated the number of yes votes remaining based on the number of uncounted votes by county.  The result shows a very narrow loss of 29, but the difference is well below the "margin of error" of the statistical estimates.

It's still too close to call.

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