Election season and statistics

The US primary season is now in full swing and it's as good an occasion as any to play with some data. Some interesting stuff from a statistical angle:

• Mapping the results from Iowa at Offensive politics (via Revolution Analytics). Some other interesting resources about maps in R: “R” you ready?, Baptiste Coulmont.
• Matt Asher runs a simulation to look at the difference between the first results reported on TV and the final count.
• Andrew Gelman has a series of posts on possible irregularities in the Russian elections. In fact, using statistical techniques to look for signs of fraud in election data seems to be a growing field, see e.g. Walter Mebane and The Forensics of Election Fraud.