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Shoutout to the county clerk in Des Moines who showed me the error bars
I was digging into that viral claim about Iowa early voting turnout being down 40% and went down to look at the raw precinct data myself. The clerk pointed out the numbers were from a single rural precinct that had a polling location change, not the whole county. Has anyone else had luck getting actual raw data from local offices instead of just believing the headlines?
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robinp892d ago
Used to just trust the headlines but yeah you're right. Going down there changed my mind.
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Hold on, did you say a single rural precinct's data got shared as if it represented the whole county? That's just irresponsible journalism, plain and simple, but I'm not surprised anymore. I'm glad you went down there yourself, that's the kind of legwork we need more of to cut through the nonsense.
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johnson.river2d ago
Hang on, that viral claim about a 40% drop was actually debunked a few days ago. I checked the Iowa Secretary of State's website and the statewide early voting numbers are actually up about 2% compared to the same point in 2020. The 40% figure came from one rural county that had a big polling location move, not a whole county's worth of data. The county clerk in Story County was super helpful when I called about precinct-level absentee numbers. It's a good reminder that digging into the actual raw data yourself is the only way to know what's really going on.
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