This evidence is reasonably (though not overwhelmingly) convincing: Waukesha County’s turnout rate was too low according to some versions of the model, but it was a modest outlier rather than an extraordinary one. Put differently, if there hadn’t been some concrete reason to suspect that the original figure was off, I don’t know that it would have raised any red flags from a statistical perspective.
Nevertheless, if you want to allege that there’s a conspiracy afoot, the statistical evidence tends to work against you. Waukesha County’s revised turnout figures are pretty normal for Waukesha County, a wealthy, white suburban county that usually votes at high rates, whereas its original figures were at the low end of reasonable expectations, given the way the rest of the state voted.
Also of note is that the number of votes that Ms. Nickolaus says she failed to count in Brookfield, amounting to 11 percent of the county total, is in line with the proportion Brookfield normally represents: the city supplied 11 percent of Waukesha County’s total vote in both the 2008 and 2010 general elections.
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