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In light of our last and this election, I was wondering if it was possible to ask for a small breakdown of how the election went and what the average voter looked like.

I understand that keeping privacy in regard we can't ask or even consider a full breakdown of everything that happened.

However there are some questions I have that are probably answerable without too much issue.

  1. How does rep figure in? Do lower rep people vote differently or not?
  2. Where does the majority of the voters come from, are they regulars here, or are they referred here from other SE sites? Did they read more threads in meta or are they only interested in the election?
  3. During the primary, how do most people spread their votes? Do they vote for a single person, some people or for everyone.
  4. During the primary, how are down-votes used? Do people who down-vote spread their votes around? Are there people out there who only down-vote?
  5. How does the traffic of the election compare to regular meta posts traffic, and to controversial meta posts?

As the votes are over 250, and our poor Evan Caroll has over a hundred down-votes, I'm sure these figures could be shown without compromising the anonymity of the vote.

I might be alone in my curiosity, but what can I say other than, I'm a cat person and I'd really like to know everything about anything shiny.

Update:
The community moderator election has now passed.

One thing is already clear, most people who vote don't read the questionnaire.
While the questionnaire received 300 views as of a few weeks after the election, it appears the votes on it were limited to around 15 people.
Meanwhile 793 people voted in the election.

This would mean that perhaps 1/3rd of the people who voted actually saw the questionnaire, and of those about 5% have an opinion on the questionnaire strong enough to vote on it.
Looking at meta involvement on ServerFault, around 15 people being active does sound closer to the truth than 793 people.

Is there any chance for hard figures surrounding the election?
Does this first impression possibly imply that the questionnaire is irrelevant to the actual voting?

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  • 1
    Can you hear the crickets?
    – EEAA
    Commented Sep 2, 2015 at 15:54
  • 3
    @eeaa I'm afraid not. The silence is too loud.
    – Reaces
    Commented Sep 2, 2015 at 15:55
  • 2
    To be fair some of the data can't be provided yet.
    – user9517
    Commented Sep 2, 2015 at 20:55
  • 1
    @Iain which is fair, and is a better answer than nothing. :)
    – Reaces
    Commented Sep 2, 2015 at 20:58
  • 19 upvotes is hardly silence.
    – chicks
    Commented Sep 13, 2015 at 14:22
  • @chicks Fair enough!
    – Reaces
    Commented Sep 17, 2015 at 6:11
  • Any progress on this? I still want to see if the Iain Principle holds.
    – user62491
    Commented Sep 24, 2015 at 22:19
  • @kce Nothing as of yet. Maybe if there is no response by next week I'll spend a few hours digging through data.se and see what I can find out from there.
    – Reaces
    Commented Sep 25, 2015 at 8:20
  • 2
    As I know, the primary correlation for the winners of an election is the reputation. Most people are voting for the candidates with high reputation.
    – peterh
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 14:20
  • @peterh I also think so, but I would like proof.
    – Reaces
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 14:35
  • @Reaces I think statistics could be relatively easily constructed from the previous elections. For example, if we would compare the logarithmic mean of the reputation of the winners to all candidates. (Ok, it would only show, that there is a correlation, but not that it is the most important.)
    – peterh
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 14:37
  • @peterh I would mostly like to know the correlation between the voters' reputation compared to the reputation of the person voted on. The main issue is though that from my end it would be very hard to get reliable statistics and get a full picture. While with the full database it would probably be a lot easier. I also assume that that some of these statistics are already known, and trivial to provide. Maybe if there is no response I'll do it myself, but as for now I'm content with waiting. Feel free to gather the stats on it though if you're inclined.
    – Reaces
    Commented Oct 1, 2015 at 14:41

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