CNE Data Discrepancies
In this post I show discrepancies in the voting data published during Venezuela's 2013 Presidential elections.
(Note: this is a summary of a prior analysis and its update (in Spanish))
Of all the coverage on the Venezuelan presidential elections, it has been surprising that no attention has been paid to the two discrepancies between the results quoted by the National Electoral Council of Venezuela (CNE) during its first press release on the evening of April 14 [1], and its website [2] just a few minutes prior.
While the vote counts for each candidate were unchanged, two derived numbers (voter participation rate and book transmission rates) did change after CNE’s initial announcement:
- On Sunday night’s press release, Tibisay Lucena, president of the CNE, announced per-candidate vote counts (Maduro: 7,505,338; Capriles: 7,270,403; all others: 38,756), a voter participation rate of 78.71%, and transmission rate of 99.12%.
- That same evening, the CNE published official numbers on its website. Despite the fact that the per-candidate votes matched those of the press release, the participation and transmission rates had mysteriously changed to 79.84% and 98.58%, respectively.
It is unclear how the rates could have changed while per-candidate votes remained the same. The CNE owes an explanation for these discrepancies.
(I’m working on a full explanation of what each of the CNE released figures mean, to be published shortly).
[1] CNE Press Release, transmitted at 11:15 PM VET.
[2] CNE website screenshot, taken on Monday 4/15/2013 at 8 AM VET. The screenshot claims the data was last updated at 11:08 PM VET, shortly before the release. The CNE site has since updated its data.
