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Electoral College Decision Tree

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Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#221

Post by CameronNemo »

russellbeattie wrote: post #203

Here's a fact: Regardless of who wins the electoral college, Biden is going to receive at least 5 to 6 million more votes than Trump. This isn't a biased prediction, it's based on national polling which has proven itself to be accurate to within a couple points. This makes sense, given the law of large numbers. Biden is currently up +10, though this will drop before election day. Hillary ended up winning with 48.2% v…

Ask your state legislature to adopt a new system!

https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

Especially if you live in Michigan, Arizona, Virginia, or North Carolina.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#222

Post by CameronNemo »

rayiner wrote: post #42
bryanlarsen wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-biden-election-ma... If Biden wins Florida, then it's a >99% chance of a Biden victory. But if Trump wins Florida, it's a 58% chance of a Biden victory. So Florida is essential for Trump, but not for Biden. Biden has a 70% chance in Florida. So I wouldn't say the fate of the world rests in the hands of Floridians. However, an early Biden win in Florida could all…

If Trump wins Florida and Pennsylvania, there is a 92% chance of Trump winning.

PA results will not be known on election night, Florida results will.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#224

Post by bryanlarsen »

roywiggins wrote: post #188
bryanlarsen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

538 gave Clinton an 86% chance for a brief period of time after the Access Hollywood tapes but before Comey's press conference. I wouldn't call that a lock, but maybe some would.

Yeah, and then nobody bothered to watch as her chances drifted downward every subsequent day until the election... and they drifted down because the polls changed and the model got more information. It's not really fair to say the model was wrong- it just wasn't clairvoyant. Really, Trump won by a hair's breadth. 538 shouldn't have given him a huge chance to win- he just barely scraped through. It's a genuinely hard…

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.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#225

Post by dillondoyle »

dragontamer wrote: post #138
dillondoyle wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The polls aren't wrong and the state polls in 2016 weren't on the whole wrong either - one problem is there were too few. Right now there are a tons of Florida polls and they are basically all within the margin right now.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/ There are plenty of polls. The 2016 issue was that those polls were __correlated__. They were NOT independent polls, but somehow all the polls made the same mistake across the board. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/election-update-why-our... > Assumption No. 4: State outcomes are highly correlated with one another, so polling errors in one state are likely t…

sure. but their post analysis says that national polling in 2016 was CLOSER than 2012. and state polls were even closer - but there weren't as many as this cycle

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-real-story-of-2016/

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-are-all-right...

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#226

Post by toast0 »

russellbeattie wrote: post #203

Here's a fact: Regardless of who wins the electoral college, Biden is going to receive at least 5 to 6 million more votes than Trump. This isn't a biased prediction, it's based on national polling which has proven itself to be accurate to within a couple points. This makes sense, given the law of large numbers. Biden is currently up +10, though this will drop before election day. Hillary ended up winning with 48.2% v…

Do you (does anyone?) have a projection for what the popular vote would be if we had a popular election? You'd need to make a lot of assumptions about voter behavior, of course, but it would be a lot more interesting than adding the votes as cast in the various state elections.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#227

Post by mmarvick »

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.

The difference is that the FiveThirtyEight tool is taking into account the coupling between the outcomes. They project Trump's odds of winning PA at 13%, so if he does win PA it's likely he's doing better than expected in other competitive races. The originally linked tool is just showing all the combinations of outcomes for these 12 competitive races.

Sure, Biden would win the election if Trump won PA and FL but then lost Ohio and Georgia. But what are the odds that Trump wins PA and then loses Georgia? Unlikely.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#228

Post by DennisP »

timdierks wrote: post #179
elicash wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All but 8 states can start processing ballots before election day. Unfortunately, 3 of those 8 are MI, WI, PA. So it may take longer for those. Florida will likely be an early sign, since those mail ballots get processed and counted early. IF (and this is a big if) Biden carries Florida on election night, then it's actually possible we know who wins that night.

At least in NY, I don't see how this is possible because I can send in an absentee ballot and then invalidate it by voting on election day in-person. So I don't see how they can open any of the secrecy envelopes, let alone count any ballots, until they've determined if the ballot in the envelope should be counted, and they can't do that until they get the poll book back from my election site at the end of in-person v…

Yep I'd guess NY is one of the eight. In NC they process in advance, and if I vote with both methods, they arrest me for a felony. The state attorney general and BoE had to point that out to everyone after Trump suggested people try it.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#229

Post by snapetom »

WaltPurvis wrote: post #182
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.

> 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.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#230

Post by UncleMeat »

remarkEon wrote: post #201
rayiner wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false for several different reasons. There were two initial proposals for Congress: the New Jersey Plan and the Virginia Plan. (Virginia, of course, being the leading slave-owning state.) Under both plans, the President would have been elected by Congress. There were concerns that having Congress elect the President would jeopardize separation of powers. So the Electoral College was created, with one elector…

I remember reading about all of this in AP US History back in high school, and it's going to forever confound me that we seem to have uninstalled this history from our collective memory.

You should be careful about that. The College Board's APUS curriculum is heavily criticized by the americanists I know and it can be a grave error to assume that you've got the full picture from a high school textbook.
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