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Live Presidential Forecast

nytimes.com

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Re: Live Presidential Forecast

#101

Post by JoshTriplett »

quadrangle wrote: post #98
keithnz wrote: post #88

Why isn't the president decided by the percentage of votes? Seems to me, there are a lot voters whose vote essentially are useless? I kind of understand the house and senate being more regional representation, but the president kind of represents all Americans, no?

Yeah, the entire system is screwed up by this insane electoral college. But majority-rule is insane even on a popular vote. The only good way to elect consensus candidates who serve everyone well is to implement score voting http://scorevoting.net/

Several systems work well for electing a good consensus candidate in a single-winner election, including Condorcet, Approval, and various forms of range voting.

Re: Live Presidential Forecast

#102

Post by smcl »

mattnumbe wrote: post #10

I feel that I'm an educated person, and I try to keep up with politics in America, but I really don't understand our system. How can some states be called with less than 20% of the votes being counted?

It's weird - I see "Reporting %" as a stat but it's not clear to me whether that means "percentage of possible votes counted" or "percentage of counties/constituencies counted". If it means the latter then I can absolutely see why 20% would call it, it just means there's lots of low-population counties. If the former then it's just speculation I think.

Re: Live Presidential Forecast

#103

Post by 75j »

castratikron wrote: post #93
keithnz wrote: post #88

Why isn't the president decided by the percentage of votes? Seems to me, there are a lot voters whose vote essentially are useless? I kind of understand the house and senate being more regional representation, but the president kind of represents all Americans, no?

It was originally designed to stop stupid people from throwing the election. We'll see tonight if it still works.

Which stupid people are you referring to?

Re: Live Presidential Forecast

#104

Post by up_so_floating »

ohwello wrote: post #99
Mikeb85 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among other things... There's real dissatisfaction among the working class which inspired people to support both Bernie and Trump, and to vote against the status quo.

I'm not satisfied being in the top decile of historical human well-being, let's shake things up and take a shot at some reversion to the mean.

It makes much more sense when you consider that the average frame of reference is on the order of tens of years, not tens of thousands.

Re: Live Presidential Forecast

#105

Post by PDoyle »

quadrangle wrote: post #98
keithnz wrote: post #88

Why isn't the president decided by the percentage of votes? Seems to me, there are a lot voters whose vote essentially are useless? I kind of understand the house and senate being more regional representation, but the president kind of represents all Americans, no?

Yeah, the entire system is screwed up by this insane electoral college. But majority-rule is insane even on a popular vote. The only good way to elect consensus candidates who serve everyone well is to implement score voting http://scorevoting.net/

I'm not sure it's the only way. There are ranked-ballot systems that are good too, like Single Transferable Vote.

The point is, first-past-the-post has almost every possible flaw you can have in a voting system.

Re: Live Presidential Forecast

#107

Post by mch82 »

75j wrote: post #103
castratikron wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was originally designed to stop stupid people from throwing the election. We'll see tonight if it still works.

Which stupid people are you referring to?

Intelligence isn't the deciding factor. Rather people judged by the electoral college to be unfit to serve as President.

Re: Live Presidential Forecast

#108

Post by stass »

up_so_floating wrote: post #91
keithnz wrote: post #88

Why isn't the president decided by the percentage of votes? Seems to me, there are a lot voters whose vote essentially are useless? I kind of understand the house and senate being more regional representation, but the president kind of represents all Americans, no?

You are not alone; many Americans have the same question.

And the answer can be easily found in e.g. Federalist papers and even Wikipedia.

Re: Live Presidential Forecast

#109

Post by walrus01 »

the_duke wrote: post #76
lucio wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their function is to entertain, information is an afterthought. It is not a managerial decision, all TV is directed by ratings, "entertainment" is what people want, so "entertainment" is what they give to them.

NBC news has reasonable coverage. Even Fox does it better. (As unbelievable as that is...) There's a reason I picked on CNN specifically.

Watch the CBC News live stream with Peter Mansbridge, it's quite calm, rational and hype free.

Re: Live Presidential Forecast

#110

Post by up_so_floating »

551199 wrote: post #106

Florida for Trump. Trump is the new President! Have a look at https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald to see what kind of people voted for Trump. MAGA! Edit: Downvote all you want doesn't change the outcome :)

I went to a Trump rally recently and found it truly unbelievable. Thousands of people, all demographics seemingly represented, lined up for hours despite the cold, dark night and horrible parking conditions. Trump was over two hours late, and the rally did not end until past 1am, but the energy and general goodwill towards each other persisted the entire time.
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