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Electoral College Decision Tree

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Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#251

Post by newacct583 »

mmaunder wrote: post #213
bryanlarsen wrote: post #24

Another similar tool, with very different visualization. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-biden-election-ma...

Interesting that the tool above makes it appear that Trump has a much longer journey to win, and this tool shows that if he wins FL and PA, he's 92% likely to win the election. Guess, as always, the lens you're using affects your interpretation of the data.

Winning both FL and PA when the polls show you down by 3 and 5.7 points respectively is pretty much the definition of a "long journey" statistically.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#252

Post by dllthomas »

bleepblorp wrote: post #91
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.

Protecting against the tyranny of the majority is just a politer term for enabling the tyranny of the minority. The systemic disenfranchisement of the majority of the American population--through the electoral college, senate, and supreme court-- is precisely why so much of American politics is broken. Forcing the the majority to live under the rules set by a minority that has a completely different way of life does…

Protecting against tyranny of the majority simply by changing the weight of votes is replacing it with tyranny of the minority, as you say.

Other checks on the tyranny of the majority, like protecting the rights of individuals (in light of shared values) in the face of a majority decision to violate them is hard to characterize as tyranny at all.

Requiring legislation to pass two bodies with different weights is an interesting move which isn't precisely the former; it deserves a weakened version of the same criticism, and it is not entirely clear whether it pays dividends to make up for it. I agree with the implied premise that decisions are more likely to be good ones if they look good from more angles.

There is much ink spilled in apologia of the current system around how the needs and experiences of those in cities are very different than those of people in rural communities, and the system needs to avoid being blind to either. I don't think that's entirely misguided but it smells a bit of special pleading; there are other ways we can slice the electorate that would likely lead to comparable (or larger) differences in needs and experiences, and we don't change the weights in light of that.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#253

Post by newacct583 »

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…

A 2% victory would absolutely be called on election night. That's actually quite solid, and most states don't even allow for requesting recounts unless the tally is within 1%.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#254

Post by newacct583 »

snapetom wrote: post #229
WaltPurvis wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you seen the early voting? Rs are LEADING in Miami-Dade, a Clinton county. Define "LEADING" please, because the actual numbers for voting in Miami-Dade county [1] as of today are: Mail Voting Rep 83,605 Dem 158,788 NPA 82,533 (NPA = No Party Affiliation) In-Person Early Voting Rep 61,273 Dem 61,548 NPA 35,296 Totals Rep 144,878 Dem 220,336 In what way does that constitute Republicans "LEADING"? [1] https://cou…

"Leading" is incorrect, but modeling has assumed D's need a 70-30% advantage in mail voting. This is because of polling regarding COVID where R's are less worried about early IPEV and more likely voting on election day. The current numbers are nowhere near that, so I wouldn't be surprised if Florida is red.

Uh... whose modelling? We've never had a pandemic election, I think it's fair to say no one has any idea which demographics are more/less affected by an early voting drive. All we can say is that a whole lot of people are voting early.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#255

Post by parsimoniousplb »

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.

> They have been corrected

This sounds like something a soviet comission would declare after an accident. What went wrong and how was it corrected? You needn't know, it has been corrected.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#256

Post by bobthepanda »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #180
bobthepanda wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well no state would actually do that of its own free will because it would disadvantage what parties they actually voted for. If two states with 10 electoral votes each are both currently winner takes all, but one votes green and one votes purple; and if only the green state changes to proportional allocation, you move from a scenario where both parties got 10 votes each to a scenario where the green state went 6/4 f…

But it would benefit the people of that state, because it would force both of the candidates to give the people of that state more of what they want, since that can now make the difference between California's 55 electoral votes going 30 to one candidate and 25 to the other, or 45 to one candidate and 10 to the other. And Presidential elections have been decided by less. Moreover, both of the parties are a product of…

It wouldn't really benefit the people of that state.

> If Republicans started getting 20 of California's delegates, Democrats would change their policies until they were getting those 20 back somewhere else.

So what you're saying is they'd change tack to not pay as much attention to California, which is supposedly going to benefit Californians.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#257

Post by jessaustin »

gdubs wrote: post #231
bryanlarsen wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should the number have been, then? The final results were essentially a tie with Trump winning the tie breaking coin toss. So 50/50 is right in hind sight. Te systemic error could just have been as easily in Clinton's favour as Trump's, so the number should have been smaller than 50% for Trump. Maybe not as small as 28%, but they weren't far off, IMO.

The model predicts a chance of winning, it doesn’t reflect the final vote percentages. In other words, a win is a win, regardless of whether it’s by a few votes or a landslide. That’s what the 80/20 represented. This is different than the polling averages. Though, electoral vote percentages are captured in 538’s model — they show a spread of possible win scenarios based on many numbers of runs of the model.

One could imagine such a non-linear model, but one wouldn't consider it well-behaved or even particularly useful for aiding one's understanding of reality.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#258

Post by codezero »

pavlov wrote: post #218
speeder wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The signature verification part was dropped by court. And to be honest I don't understand why.

I’m 40 and trying to imagine what my signature looked like twenty years ago. Probably rather different. It would suck to have my vote thrown away because some overworked election worker looks at it for a second and decides the letter P is bent the wrong way compared to the 1999 version.

Agree strongly, also, nobody ever told me my signature was significant. I’ve never had a “signature” and nobody has ever told me I needed to. The scrawl on the back of credit cards used to be checked in 2000-2010 but not since, and even then I just scribbled.

Learning that votes are thrown out based on this just shows how “special” the US system is. I assume historically they just decided “hard to read” names got thrown out.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#259

Post by AmericanChopper »

Gwypaas wrote: post #216
icegreentea2 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but for all systems that isn't directly proportionate to popular vote (that means no geographic grouping of representatives), that's true. Parliamentary systems, and both American house of representatives suffer from this failure mode - it's not particular unique to the American presidential election. Finally, I would not defend the EC as a particularly good system, and certainly from a campaigner's standpoint…

You will never get it completely right but at least do something with a true grounding in math aiming for the most precise outcome. Every vote, in every election, should count for something and not only be a participation point on all other levels than local because you live in a gerrymandered district in Chicago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster/Sainte-Lagu%C3%AB_me...

Every vote in every election does count. The current selection of states that vote so consistently for one party is a trend that goes all the way back to... Bill Clinton’s election. It’s not anomalous in history at all, and you have no reason to believe that in the future California wouldn’t go back to being a sure bet for Republicans, and Texas a sure bet for Democrats. If a person thinks their vote doesn’t count because of the state they live in, they haven’t been failed by the electoral college, they’ve been failed by their own ignorance of history.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#260

Post by rayiner »

hellotomyrars wrote: post #241
speeder wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The signature verification part was dropped by court. And to be honest I don't understand why.

The idea of it is kind of farcical to being with. How do you verify hundreds of thousands of signatures in the first place? It might be a science at a forensic level for investigations, but at this scale? I don't think so. Also while I'm not going to imply I'm a typical case, I am not capable of writing a consistent signature due to a neurological condition. I think I still deserve a vote.

Is it farcical? Signature verification is the only thing they use in Maryland. You just go up and write in your address and sign. I don’t know how reliable signatures are but people assure me that not requiring ID is fine because there are signatures: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/poli...

> Such signature comparison has long been deemed sufficiently reliable to legitimate absentee ballots and provisional ballots, and there is no reason to believe that it is any less reliable for confirming the identity of individuals voting in person.

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