Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Electoral College Decision Tree

observablehq.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 373 posts

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#101

Post by rsynnott »

foxhound6 wrote: post #78
vmception wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because people have caricatures of each other which are wildly inaccurate. If you talked to people you would understand that what they optimize for is not really related to the caricatures of them, its not the opposite of what "your side" cares about just completely different. When it is obvious that all the news comes from New York City and Los Angeles, and the world resyndicates that, while a large swath of…

> You would have bet the farm on the undervalued bet on the prediction markets. This is what's frustrating about sites like 538. They have Biden as an 87% chance to win. A betting site I frequent has Biden's winning odds as -180 (1.556 for Europeans). If they really believe the accuracy of their models, they should literally be betting the farm on a Biden win.

> If they really believe the accuracy of their models, they should literally be betting the farm on a Biden win.

I mean, maybe they are; how would you know? (Though it would seem vaguely improper; not sure about the journalistic ethics take on this but it's at the very least not a great look.) Presumably the money a few 538 employees could bet wouldn't shift the betting markets very much.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#102

Post by pjc50 »

rubidium wrote: post #77
greenpizza13 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so terrifying. If you start giving Trump states which are tossups, like FL, the others which were tossups begin to lean red. Choose red for those and you're done. At that point you're in 2016 territory. We have an extremely broken election system.

The electoral college is designed (from the start) to prevent the larger, more populous states from dominating the country. Seems to be working as designed. And doing a good job as a system. Politics is extremely broken, yes. But I don’t think the electoral college is the fault.

Instead it allows the smaller, less populous states to have outsizes influence.

Possibly the systemic cause is the excessive influence of the presidency.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#103

Post by jedberg »

dragonwriter wrote: post #75
jedberg wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way to make it an odd number because it's always an odd number (number of reps in the House) plus an even number (number of Senators) plus an odd number (minimum number of EC votes possible for a state, which is how DCs EC votes are defined). If you made the House an even number, they might have ties, so then they would need a way to break ties. If you gave DC fewer EC votes, then that just gives them eve…

> If you made the House an even number, they might have ties, so then they would need a way to break ties. The House can and does have ties, even with an odd number of members; members abstaining or missing votes in the House are more common in the House than the EC. You could extend the same EC voting arrangement to, say, (to pick an odd number of territories) Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands as D…

> Or adopt D.C. statehood

That would only add two, unless you also had a reapportionment act. Same with adding Puerto Rico as a state.

Edit: As pointed out below, this is wrong. Since DC already has 3, it would actually lower the number by one, so this would in fact give an odd number.

> The House can and does have ties, even with an odd number of members; members abstaining or missing votes in the House are more common in the House than the EC.

Yeah, but when that happens, they just vote again. The are never deadlocked from a tie.

> You could extend the same EC voting arrangement to, say, (to pick an odd number of territories) Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands as D.C. has now.

It would make sense to do this for Puerto Rico, whose population is greater than 20 states. But all the other territories are smaller than the smallest state, and that would give them outsize power.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#104

Post by 0x964 »

dragontamer wrote: post #90
bryanlarsen wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. There are several paths where a Biden win could be called early on election night. For example, Texas has a large fraction of early voting and a small fraction of mail ballots. So the chance that Texas can be called early is quite high. And if Texas gets called for Biden, then the networks will call the entire country for Biden.

You're right that if Texas goes blue, I think its safe to say that Biden won the election. But I also think that Texas going for Biden is very small: Trump is still leading by 2% or so by official polls. Its important to push Texas a little bit since there's a chance for victory. In the most likely event: Texas goes red (as it has gone for the past several decades), and we're left wondering about Florida, Ohio, and P…

I think it would need to be a lot closer than 2%. Obama won Florida by 0.88% in 2012[0].

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidentia...

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#105

Post by rsynnott »

weakfish wrote: post #6
protomyth wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Trump beat any overwhelming odds. I think the polling was beyond horrible. A bit too many people put too much faith in the NYT and 538's methodology. I wouldn't expect the map to change too much between elections. Now, the 2022 (House & some Senate) and 2024 Presidential will be different because of the change in districting and electoral votes per state caused by the census.

I thought 538 was one of the few outlets to give Trump a decent chance? Granted, I was 16 but I seem to remember that being the case.

People _really_ struggle with probabilities (which is why 538's 2020 model page has a cartoon fox to remind them about probabilities, and headlines with visualizations). To a lot of people, saying "there's an 80% chance of THING happening" means "THING will definitely happen".

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#106

Post by jedberg »

dragontamer wrote: post #81
DennisP wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's going to be a fun toy on election night, as state results come in.

> election night, as state results come in. Not this year. With mail-in ballots, the ballots won't necessarily be finalized until a week or more after the election. Its necessary due to COVID19. But it will be until multiple days after the election before we know the true winner. A large number of states will certainly be called on election night (because many states, such as California, are far from competitive). Bu…

Florida counts quickly. Their absentees have to arrive before the polls close to count, and are counted right away with the day of votes.

If Biden has a decisive victory in Florida, it would be very reasonable to call the election the next morning (which would still be late night in the West).

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#107

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bobthepanda wrote: post #83
rubidium wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The electoral college is designed (from the start) to prevent the larger, more populous states from dominating the country. Seems to be working as designed. And doing a good job as a system. Politics is extremely broken, yes. But I don’t think the electoral college is the fault.

What is broken is not the number of electoral votes per state but the winner takes all allocation system of the EC. As it stands today winner takes all makes big states like California and small states like Wyoming equally uncompetitive since there’s a snowball’s chance in hell they will ever flip majority the other direction. Proportionally allocating a state’s electoral votes would level the state by state playing…

> you’d need either every state to agree or an amendment.

Neither of those is actually necessary because the states decide on their own how their electoral college votes are allocated. In principle Texas or California could allocate their delegates proportional to the popular vote of the people in that state.

Which might be in the interests of the people in that state, because then candidates would actually bother to solicit votes there. But you'd have to convince a local government controlled by one party to give about a third of the state's electoral college delegates to the other party.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#108

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau »

atonse wrote: post #2

Nerd Me: This is a really nice use of this visualization. Human Me: I saw all this stuff in 2016 and Trump still beat the overwhelming odds. (Yes 16% chance of winning is still a chance, I get it... there's just so much deja vu with all these visualizations and articles about his campaign imploding).

The funny thing is they have Wisconsin (my state) showing biden favored to win. Just look at the electoral college electors record. It's been a red majority since Bush. They even had a swing blue state turned red 2016 that helped cement the state vote. And these were affluent white liberals outside of Milwaukee.

This is just going to be 2016 all over again where somehow polling = "the correct prediction" when none it is taking into consideration the voting record of the electoral college. Just a general consensus among a biased selection.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#109

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau »

standardUser wrote: post #4
atonse wrote: post #2

Nerd Me: This is a really nice use of this visualization. Human Me: I saw all this stuff in 2016 and Trump still beat the overwhelming odds. (Yes 16% chance of winning is still a chance, I get it... there's just so much deja vu with all these visualizations and articles about his campaign imploding).

He "beat the odds" because most models were incorrect. They have been corrected. Are the models wrong again? Maybe, but it would need to be in a totally different way, and by a much larger margin than in 2016.

What model is factoring for my states electoral college voting record that clearly states trump is going to win even though the they predict it will be biden? 2018 only had a minimal increase in democrats elected (still not even a competitive minority) and the governor was a democrat (whom many people are meh on or despise). The only reason a democrat won was because there was no electoral college and Scott Walker was universally disliked after he destroyed unions. Eventually he hurt enough republican constituents that he shot himself in both feet.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#110

Post by jedberg »

SllX wrote: post #80
freeone3000 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could add a senator. Give it to DC.

Only way I’m on board with DC representation is if we give it to Maryland. Maryland would in effect gain a House seat during the next redistricting after. Easier solution? Kill the cap on the House seats. Doesn’t require a constitutional amendment, doesn’t make a State out of DC (although I’m still onboard with returning it to Maryland, there is precedent for this as DC used to have part of Virginia), and it evens ou…

If you combine DC and Maryland, it makes Maryland go from the 19th largest state to the 10th. DC is bigger than 19 states, why not let it have its own representation?

Edit: I mixed up DC and Puerto Rico. Forget what I said.

Post reply on HN