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Electoral College Decision Tree

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Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#281

Post by jki275 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #87
dragontamer wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

Biden will not win Texas.

If Biden were to win Texas, the GOP would be finished forever. Polls notwithstanding, Biden has as much chance of winning Texas as Trump has of winning California.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#282

Post by nl »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #87
dragontamer wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

It's more likely that Biden wins Florida and had enough margin in PA for it to be callable than Texas gets counted enough and is competitive for Biden.

It would be astonishing statistically if Biden doesn't have a good margin in PA or FL but is competitive in TX.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#283

Post by jki275 »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #151
nick_gur wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TX and FL going blue? Have you seen the early voting? Rs are LEADING in Miami-Dade, a Clinton county. Voter registrations are crazy for GOP in FL and the D-R voter gap is only at around 130,000 (used to be 650,000 when Bush won FL in 2000) Other than polls, I have yet to see any indication that FL will go blue despite going red in 2016 and then electing an R Governor on 2018.

Be careful. Those counts are for registered party, not vote. R membership has been slipping in the last few years and an exceptionally high number of prominent Rs have endorsed the D candidate. This year, those ballots are likely to break more toward D votes than the party registration suggests.

The people you're calling "prominent" are essentially pariahs in the Republican party. Literally almost no Republican cares what they have to say.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#284

Post by nl »

newacct583 wrote: post #254
snapetom wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Most people believe more Democrats are voting via mail (Trump had been criticizing mail voting).

We do know how many registered voters from each party are voting in some circumstances.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/23/early-voting-number... is a decent overview

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#285

Post by jhallenworld »

runawaybottle wrote: post #265
confidantlake wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument never made sense. In a one person one vote system, the concept of a state never comes into play. It is a national election, states are irrelevant. Under the electoral college system, states actually come into play. There could be a case where a state grows large enough in population to get 51% of the electoral votes. If that state had a winner take all system, then that state would choose every presiden…

Eh, we had a bifurcation of slave states and free states, and a legacy of that in the segregated south. Do you know what would have happened if the majority of the population lived in those states? You’d have a racist executive branch for decades. Popular vote working exactly as you want, but you wouldn’t be singing the popular vote tune when what’s popular is not stuff you believe in. Just some quick googling, not a…

What you say is true, but why do you think the present system is better? Arbitrarily weighting different people doesn't really make any sense unless you think it somehow gives more weight to correct or better people.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#286

Post by kadoban »

conanbatt wrote: post #270
confidantlake wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument never made sense. In a one person one vote system, the concept of a state never comes into play. It is a national election, states are irrelevant. Under the electoral college system, states actually come into play. There could be a case where a state grows large enough in population to get 51% of the electoral votes. If that state had a winner take all system, then that state would choose every presiden…

Everyone gets 1 vote, but not all votes are worth the same. That is true for any voting system.

That seems like an odd claim to me. In a nationwide popular voting system, what votes aren't worth the same?

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#287

Post by jhallenworld »

confidantlake wrote: post #261
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.

This argument never made sense. In a one person one vote system, the concept of a state never comes into play. It is a national election, states are irrelevant. Under the electoral college system, states actually come into play. There could be a case where a state grows large enough in population to get 51% of the electoral votes. If that state had a winner take all system, then that state would choose every presiden…

At least it's better than the situation we have with the Senate, where a voter in Wyoming is 68 times more represented than a voter in California. We are seeing the damage from this right now: the minority is having their way in Supreme Court appointments.

"James Madison made the following comment about the Senate:

    In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The Senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, the people ought to have permanency and stability.

    — Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787"

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#288

Post by tempestn »

Balgair wrote: post #210
bryanlarsen wrote: post #24

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

That tool has been a total productivity drain on me since it was launched. When I play around with it, the real 'turning point' states tend to be PA and FL. You can fill in the likely EC votes and the chances don't really change all that much. I mean, CA going Blue is not a surprise. But when you fill in PA or FL for Donny, then the whole race changes. If FL or PA go Red, then Donny has ~1/3 chance, if one goes Blue,…

Wisconsin too. Any of the states right around the tipping point, really, as you'd expect.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#290

Post by Fezzik »

nl wrote: post #280
ianai wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the problem with the polls are their error bars. 538 hopes they’re eliminating those error bars through a number of different tactics - like averaging the polls. That should do something like increasing the N and decreasing the error. But that’s assuming the methods used to generate the surveys are themselves fully unbiased and representative of the underlying population. On the other hand, seasoned pros are…

> On the other hand, seasoned pros are saying if the polls are wrong this year then it’s time to hang up the towel on the polling profession entirely- I haven't heard anyone say that. Polls are always wrong, it's how wrong that is important.

Election polls are almost always right for the only ultimate answer that matters: who is going to win[0]. They also accurately predict the margin of victory. Same link. Polls, in general, are typically measuring tendencies or preferences, which they also (tend to) accurately capture. So saying they are always wrong doesn’t really make sense, as they are not trying to be right in an absolute sense. The error is with the reader who misconstrues what the poll is measuring and how it is doing so.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_polling_for_Unite...

Edit: slight elaboration.

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