512 Paths to the White House • Hacker News Board

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#61

Post by waterlesscloud » Sat, Nov 03, 2012, 8:47 AM UTC

crystalis wrote: post #53

anigbrowl wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see your point, but have a strong suspicion that the election would just be fought out on TV to an even greater extent, with more mudslinging and rumor-mongering. Traditional city/country campaign rallies would become a fixture, but mainly as audience competitions. But the internet and broadcast media would become more critical than ever, and accuracy or integrity haven't exactly been at a premium in large-scale el…

I'll take mudslinging and rumor-mongering over harmful subsidies to e.g., corn.

Things like subsidies to special interest groups would become even more common since the payoff in terms of votes would be higher. Increase the corn subsidy and you don't just buy Iowa but corn farmers everywhere.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#62

Post by btmorex » Sat, Nov 03, 2012, 8:54 AM UTC

arrrg wrote: post #48

leif wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obama's going to win. The only reason you hear pundits talking about it is because they get paid to talk about it. The media controls the messaging these days, not the candidates or the people, and it's in the media's interest to maintain as close a race as possible until the bitter end. That's why even the most partisan pundits, even when everything's in their candidate's favor, keep claiming that "this is such a cl…

Well, I don’t know. Calling it a tossup is very wrong, but Romney’s odds don’t seem that bad to me. Nate Silver, for example, gives Romney a twenty percent chance. That’s not bad. I would gladly pay $1,000 for a twenty percent chance to win a million.

Nate Silver gives Romney a ~20% chance of winning because there's a chance that the polls are systematically wrong. Each polling firm comes up with their own likely voter model and participation model. If they're are correct in the aggregate, there's essentially a 0% chance of Romney winning, but they might not be correct (and there were times in the past where they were systematically wrong).

Basically, don't confuse uncertainty about whether the polls are accurate with uncertainty about the election if they are accurate because if they're accurate then Obama will win.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#63

Post by waterlesscloud » Sat, Nov 03, 2012, 8:55 AM UTC

jashkenas wrote: post #32

cedrichurst wrote: post #2

Thanks Jeremy, Shan and Mike. I'm continually blown away by the data journalism you're doing over at nytimes on the election. It's truly an inspiration.

I've got nothing whatsoever to do with this one -- it's a Shan + Mike joint. But thanks for the kudos. We should have some fun stuff for y'all on Tuesday night...

It's a really nice project. There are some routes that are surprising and yet seem possible in reality. Those explain some of the choices the candidates have been making, particularly with "safe" states they can't really afford to ignore completely.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#64

Post by downandout » Sat, Nov 03, 2012, 9:19 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #60

Well I guess it's that time in the cycle again: for people to complain about the electoral college (disclaimer: I'm not American). Over the years in different elections in different countries I've heard this complaint [1] > The electoral college is incredibly unfair to voters who live in states that lean opposite their view. Translation: > It's unfair that I don't get my way even though I'm in the minority. Also, thi…

"> The electoral college is incredibly unfair to voters who live in states that lean opposite their view. Translation: > It's unfair that I don't get my way even though I'm in the minority."

You appear to be writing this off as a minor issue. It is not. If Mitt Romney wins 49.999% of the vote in any state, and Obama wins the rest, Obama is awarded ALL of that state's electoral votes. That hardly reflects the will of the people in the context of a national election.

IMO the solution, assuming there is a reason to keep the electoral college at all, is for each state to award to each candidate a percentage of its electoral votes commensurate with the percentage of votes that each candidate received in that state.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#65

Post by hristov » Sat, Nov 03, 2012, 9:22 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #60

Well I guess it's that time in the cycle again: for people to complain about the electoral college (disclaimer: I'm not American). Over the years in different elections in different countries I've heard this complaint [1] > The electoral college is incredibly unfair to voters who live in states that lean opposite their view. Translation: > It's unfair that I don't get my way even though I'm in the minority. Also, thi…

You are entitled to your dubious opinions but please do not try to change history. All newspapers agreed that Gore won Florida. What they said was that the Gore vs Bush decision would not have made a difference. That is because in his legal case Gore chose the wrong Florida counties where to request a recount. But if all votes were counted, Gore won.

And no the electoral college does not exist to avoid deadlock. Do you know what the chances of deadlock are in a popular vote of about 100 million people?

Oh and can you show me any documented case where someone gives homeless people cigarettes to make them vote for someone? How would that even work? You know you usually have to register before hand.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#66

Post by waterlesscloud » Sat, Nov 03, 2012, 10:06 AM UTC

usaar333 wrote: post #35

001sky wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, the FiveThirtyEight state-level probabilities are not fully independent This is interesting, are they linked in some manner to national polls, or is their something more nuanced?

538 derives their probabilities by running simulated elections. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/methodology/ Somewhat intuitively, the simulations themselves have concepts of "national movements", where a candidate can (with some probability) gain 1%, 2%, etc. across all states. The state probabilities are then derived from how many simulations/total candidate A won. However, partly because these simulations…

I wonder if that national movement concept explains that weird spike in his histogram at 330 EV. Maybe it's because there's some "movement" concept that tips several states at the same point?

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#67

Post by eze » Sat, Nov 03, 2012, 10:12 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #60

Well I guess it's that time in the cycle again: for people to complain about the electoral college (disclaimer: I'm not American). Over the years in different elections in different countries I've heard this complaint [1] > The electoral college is incredibly unfair to voters who live in states that lean opposite their view. Translation: > It's unfair that I don't get my way even though I'm in the minority. Also, thi…

"It exists to avoid a deadlock."

What do you mean? Tight popular votes at most require a runoff between the two most popular candidates. If anything, this [1] 2004 NYT article gives the traditional reason:

"The Electoral College's supporters argue that it plays an important role in balancing relations among the states, and protecting the interests of small states."

But it goes on to convincingly counter:

"A few years ago, this page was moved by these concerns to support the Electoral College. But we were wrong. The small states are already significantly overrepresented in the Senate, which more than looks out for their interests. And there is no interest higher than making every vote count."

For the record, I'm not American either, but if I were I'd feel much better and meaningful during presidential campaigns living in, say, Ohio or Florida, instead of New York or Texas.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/opinion/making-votes-count...

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#68

Post by baddox » Sat, Nov 03, 2012, 10:13 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #60

Well I guess it's that time in the cycle again: for people to complain about the electoral college (disclaimer: I'm not American). Over the years in different elections in different countries I've heard this complaint [1] > The electoral college is incredibly unfair to voters who live in states that lean opposite their view. Translation: > It's unfair that I don't get my way even though I'm in the minority. Also, thi…

There are problems with FTPT, but all voting systems are simply compromises between certain mutually exclusive criteria, all of which are generally desirable. You can't have all the desirable characteristics at the same time, as demonstrated by Arrow's impossiblity theorem and the Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem. Sure, FTPT has some disadvantages, but trading it for something like instant run-off voting introduces some new disadvantages. It's insufficient to argue that FTPT is strictly inferior. You really just have to argue for which criteria you think are more important. The third link is a great comparison of many different voting systems and criteria.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrows_impossibility_theorem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbard%E2%80%93Satterthwaite_t...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_runoff_vo...

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#69

Post by Osmium » Sat, Nov 03, 2012, 10:14 AM UTC

usaar333 wrote: post #35

001sky wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, the FiveThirtyEight state-level probabilities are not fully independent This is interesting, are they linked in some manner to national polls, or is their something more nuanced?

538 derives their probabilities by running simulated elections. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/methodology/ Somewhat intuitively, the simulations themselves have concepts of "national movements", where a candidate can (with some probability) gain 1%, 2%, etc. across all states. The state probabilities are then derived from how many simulations/total candidate A won. However, partly because these simulations…

Couldn't you get the results for all the different simulations and add up how often each combination arises and get probabilities that way?

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#70

Post by nitrogen » Sat, Nov 03, 2012, 10:18 AM UTC

lbarrow wrote: post #38

leif wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all about what kinds of questions get discussed and addressed during campaigns. The point of the campaigning process is chiefly to elect new representation, but secondarily (and closely so) to debate and test competing theories on the primary problems of the time. In the electoral college model, the concerns of the swing states get the most attention, for reasons which are far too numerous and obvious to go in t…

The game theory is not complicated at all for a first-past-the-post election with two candidates: candidates will cater to the median voter. There's even a theorem proving it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem "Skewing" a democratic political system towards regions with more people in them would be vastly, vastly preferable to our current system. A number of big warts in US policy can be explained, at…

From the article you quoted: The assumptions include a majoritarian election system in which political views are along a one-dimensional spectrum.

Political views are not along a one-dimensional spectrum. As soon as you add another dimension, FPTP elections favor extremism according to the visualizations I linked to elsewhere in the thread (http://zesty.ca/voting/sim/).