A first-digit anomaly in the 2009 Iranian presidential election

Boudewijn F. Roukema

Journal of Applied Statistics, 2014, vol. 41, issue 1, 164-199

Abstract: 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% ).

Date: 2014
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:japsta:v:41:y:2014:i:1:p:164-199

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DOI: 10.1080/02664763.2013.838664

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