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Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
61–70 of 536 posts
Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#62Here's this re-explained with a simpler example. Imagine you have 1,000 votes. You want to show that your political party got 60% of the vote, so, you claim: My party: 600 votes Opposition: 300 votes Other: 100 votes Presto, we got a good breakdown. The people will buy it.... It makes sense that 600 is exactly 60% of 1,000, because this was an artificial example. But in the real world, we don't get 1,000 votes. We ge…
What's wrong with announcing results with rounded percentages?!
The didn’t announce the percentages, they announced the vote counts.
Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#63This is a bit of an aside, but as a geopolitical news junkie, what I keep searching on Google News is: Venezuela election Lula How his government reacts is going to be a major factor. Given Lula's past dedication to Chavezism, his post-election reaction has made me hopeful for change in Venezuela. What is directly related to TFA is that both the USA and Brazil want to see the voting data. https://www.reuters.com/worl…
> Given Lula's past dedication to (sic) Chavezism
Brazil has quasi-presidential system, but it's Chamber of Deputies has the actual power.
In the 2000s, Lula's PT was the largest party (usually around 20-25% of the total seats) and could as such strongarm smaller leftist parties into a governing coalition with an absolute majority.
Lula won the presidential election in 2022, but his party PT was the 3rd largest, and center-right parties have created a vote sharing agreement with his party.
The anti-Bolsonaro center-right parties have 172 seats in the Chamber, Lula's governing coalition has 226. You need 257 to have a majority. This means Lula has to severely tone down his rhetoric otherwise a subset of the independent parties would defect to Bolsonaro's coalition.
> but as a geopolitical news junkie
As someone who worked in the space, stop.
It's a waste of time as you're not in a position to make changes, nor are you reading primary or peer reviewed secondary sources.
If you insist on continuing, use a mix of
- Academic books (generally HUP, OUP, UCUP though the occasion PUP is alright)
- White Papers from top tier think tanks (use the UPenn Rankings [0])
- Axios and Politico - their target readership is aimed directly at those working on the Hill or Hill adjacent
Just sticking with these 3 types of resources should be enough.
Also, IGNORE anything on Twitter, Reddit, or HN (ironic ik). The lesswrong/credibledefense/zeihan types are all idiots ime. Using an "objective" tone doesn't make rubbish "objective"
[0] - https://www.bruegel.org/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploa...
Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are plenty in Venezuela, all speaking Spanish to each other. You would never ever run into one online on a predominantly English speaking website or in America/Europe in person, but you might encounter one of the upper classes. I used to work with one of them. She complained that Chavez stole her family's second home. I presumed her family, like America, also supported the attempted military coup shortly after…
I spent 5 weeks in Venezuela this year.
Good for you. I spent 4 weeks there too a few years ago.
Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another way of writing it out: How likely is it that you'd get these votes distributions 51.2000000% 44.2000000% 04.6000000% exactly? With all of those clean 0s? Very low. But it's also possible that there was sloppy reporting and the vote counts were re-processed at some point in the chain and rounded to one decimal place.
The numbers are definitely sus, but what if they were 52.2543689% 44.2689426% 04.6345625% How likely is it that you'd get these votes distributions exactly with these exact tails? Compared to all other possibilities?
Basically the same 1/verymany chance, but that doesn't matter. The difference is that there's no particular reason to choose these numbers to start with. There _is_ a reason to choose nice round, but not too round numbers: that's what humans do.
Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's wrong with announcing results with rounded percentages?!
Nothing. The problem is when you obviously picked the rounded percentages that sounded good first and then calculated the number of votes from that.
Not necessarily. If the person announcing was given the number of votes and rounded percentages, then this could explain it. For example, in my country, they always report only turnout as a percentage with a single decimal and the share of each candidate/party with up to 2 decimals, never the number of votes - who cares about the absolute numbers anyway?
Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#67Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#68Here's this re-explained with a simpler example. Imagine you have 1,000 votes. You want to show that your political party got 60% of the vote, so, you claim: My party: 600 votes Opposition: 300 votes Other: 100 votes Presto, we got a good breakdown. The people will buy it.... It makes sense that 600 is exactly 60% of 1,000, because this was an artificial example. But in the real world, we don't get 1,000 votes. We ge…
My favourite part of my math education, solutions were always nice. Compute the eigenvalues of a random-looking (but still integers) 4x4 matrix? Oh, it's sqrt(2), I probably didn't make an error in the calculation. Then came the advanced physics / mechanics exam. It threw a wrench into our beautiful system. The results were just about anything, incredibly ugly, like the real world :yuck: :vomit:
Except in the real world we are allowed to offload the computation to a computer and have more time to double check things. Nice solutions are necessary due to time and resource constraints that exist within an educational setting.
Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#69Here's this re-explained with a simpler example. Imagine you have 1,000 votes. You want to show that your political party got 60% of the vote, so, you claim: My party: 600 votes Opposition: 300 votes Other: 100 votes Presto, we got a good breakdown. The people will buy it.... It makes sense that 600 is exactly 60% of 1,000, because this was an artificial example. But in the real world, we don't get 1,000 votes. We ge…
If I'm in charge of forging a presidential election, how difficult is it for me to use realistic, "ugly" numbers to sell it more effectively?
Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing. The problem is when you obviously picked the rounded percentages that sounded good first and then calculated the number of votes from that.
Not necessarily. If the person announcing was given the number of votes and rounded percentages, then this could explain it. For example, in my country, they always report only turnout as a percentage with a single decimal and the share of each candidate/party with up to 2 decimals, never the number of votes - who cares about the absolute numbers anyway?
But they did report the absolute number of votes.