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Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

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Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#81

Post by insane_dreamer »

Aren't percentages typically rounded? I don't see any US results where it's reported that X candidate got 51.31112341% of the vote even if that's correct. More likely they would announce 51.31% or maybe even just 51.3%.

In fact, just looked up these results by CNN: https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/president

So Biden is reported as receiving 51.3% of the votes which is reported as exactly 81,284,666 votes. Though clearly if you sum all the votes and calculate Biden's share, you would not get exactly 51.3% but some other number, perhaps 51.31112341% (couldn't do the actual math as the page only reports Biden and Trump's votes but I believe there were other very small candidates who must have received some small number of votes). And if you took exactly 51.3% of all votes you would not get 81,284,666 but some other number close to that.

So I don't follow what's suspicious here? (As to whether there was election fraud or not, that's a completely different question, not commenting on that here.)

Update: Never mind the above, I had in my haste misread/misunderstood the point of the article :/ (see reply below)

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#84

Post by notjoemama »

I recall having read about elections in Africa and the troubles they faced. I can't find it now, but there was one particular website offering a very detailed but rigorous approach to determining the legitimacy of elections. I'll offer this article from the BBC as a stand in for the criteria (from 2016):

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37243190

Vote rigging: How to spot the tell-tale signs

1. Too many voters

2. A high turnout in specific areas

3. Large numbers of invalid votes

4. More votes than ballot papers issued

5. Results that don't match

6. Delay in announcing results

I would encourage anyone from Venezuela to look into the history of elections in Africa. It is well documented and criteria well supported.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#86

Post by foobarqux »

sanex wrote: post #53
pydry wrote: post #23

Earlier 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.

Presumably in an urban area where the voting demographics are much different.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#87

Post by mihaaly »

user3939382 wrote: post #36

[flagged]

Thinking that the US state department controls math - and the Venezuelan vote system's integrity is above mathematics - is a new low.

A joke comes to mind: Children are giggling and misbehaving in class so the math teacher storms out: - If you do not pay attention then 80% of the class will fail the tests! Someone from back row: - Bollocks! We aren't that many in the class!

Was that you from the back row?

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#88

Post by worstspotgain »

alephnerd wrote: post #63
consumer451 wrote: post #33

This 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…

> As someone who worked in the space, stop. It's a waste of time as you're not in a position to make changes

We need people in the top 25% of the clued range to speak up. Otherwise the loud morons in the bottom 25% are at risk of being taken seriously by the middle 50%. Arguments don't need to be peer-review-quality every time someone speaks.

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#89

Post by foobarqux »

andrepd wrote: post #16
glass1122 wrote: post #7

[flagged]

If the results are legitimate, how come independent polls were giving 30 percentage points less to Maduro than he obtained? Why were international entities not allowed to observe? And what about the multiple instances of harassment of opposition candidates? I'm not a fan of US imperialism, but that doesn't mean you need to support any thug whose rethoric opposes the US, going so far as to deny evident reality.

Maybe you should look up who funded the "independent polls".

Re: Suspicious data pattern in recent Venezuelan election

#90

Post by verbify »

gmaster1440 wrote: post #69
dinobones wrote: post #22

Here'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?

This kind of mistake is easy to avoid. The problem is that there are a lot of potential mistakes that could be made, this is just one of them.
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