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Electoral College Decision Tree

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Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#71

Post by rayiner »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #51
rayiner wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. 538 published an article after the election explaining that there were in fact systemic errors in the models; the result wasn't just random probability within models that were otherwise correct: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-missed-trump-... > While the errors were nationwide, they were spread unevenly. The more whites without college degrees were in a state, the more Trump outperformed h…

AFAICT the polls had a systemic error AND the 538 models included the possibility of a systemic error. It's really the only way that they could have given Trump a 28% chance in the first place. Of course, the polls themselves also acknowledge the chance of a systemic error. They're reported similar to +/- 2% 19 times out of 20. They make no claim that the 19/20 of multiple polls are not correlated.

The +/- in a given poll is measurement error derived from the sample size. They don’t account for systemic error.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#72

Post by bryanlarsen »

robrenaud wrote: post #53
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…

You are giving a little bit too much weight on Florida in your analysis and perhaps confusing the casuality a little bit. It's not just directly that the Floridians have that much influence, it's that knowing the outcome in Florida tells one quite a bit about, the direction/magnitude of polling errors across the nation. The 538 model factors in the outcome of Flordida's election with its own belief about the other st…

Where did I mention any causality?

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#73

Post by nradov »

dragontamer wrote: post #55
greenpizza13 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so terrifying. If you start giving Trump states which are tossups, like FL, the others which were tossups begin to lean red. Choose red for those and you're done. At that point you're in 2016 territory. We have an extremely broken election system.

You're not thinking like a pollster. Florida is currently projected to be Biden's win. So what happens if Trump wins Florida? It means the polls were wrong. Which means, you'd have to reconsider the state-polls in all the other states with that new information: that the country is slightly redder than polls today suggest. If Trump wins Florida, then there's a "hidden vote", so to speak, that's pushing Trump's victory…

There are numerous anecdotal reports of Trump supporters refusing to answer polls or giving intentionally misleading answers. But it's inherently impossible to know how prevalent that phenomenon is. Pollsters can't force voters to respond or give truthful answers.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#74

Post by bryanlarsen »

rayiner wrote: post #71
bryanlarsen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAICT the polls had a systemic error AND the 538 models included the possibility of a systemic error. It's really the only way that they could have given Trump a 28% chance in the first place. Of course, the polls themselves also acknowledge the chance of a systemic error. They're reported similar to +/- 2% 19 times out of 20. They make no claim that the 19/20 of multiple polls are not correlated.

The +/- in a given poll is measurement error derived from the sample size. They don’t account for systemic error.

19/20 does, though.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#75

Post by dragonwriter »

jedberg wrote: post #68
jstanley wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, it seems obviously dumb that the electoral college has an even number of members? Wouldn't making it an odd number prevent this possibility?

There is no way to make it an odd number because it's always an odd number (number of reps in the House) plus an even number (number of Senators) plus an odd number (minimum number of EC votes possible for a state, which is how DCs EC votes are defined). If you made the House an even number, they might have ties, so then they would need a way to break ties. If you gave DC fewer EC votes, then that just gives them eve…

> If you made the House an even number, they might have ties, so then they would need a way to break ties.

The House can and does have ties, even with an odd number of members; members abstaining or missing votes in the House are more common in the House than the EC.

You could extend the same EC voting arrangement to, say, (to pick an odd number of territories) Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands as D.C. has now.

Or adopt D.C. statehood, in which case then you have an odd number in the House + an even number in the Senate + zero.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#77

Post by rubidium »

greenpizza13 wrote: post #49
bryanlarsen wrote: post #24

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

This is so terrifying. If you start giving Trump states which are tossups, like FL, the others which were tossups begin to lean red. Choose red for those and you're done. At that point you're in 2016 territory. We have an extremely broken election system.

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.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#78

Post by foxhound6 »

vmception wrote: post #9
atonse wrote: post #2

Nerd Me: This is a really nice use of this visualization. Human Me: I saw all this stuff in 2016 and Trump still beat the overwhelming odds. (Yes 16% chance of winning is still a chance, I get it... there's just so much deja vu with all these visualizations and articles about his campaign imploding).

That's because people have caricatures of each other which are wildly inaccurate. If you talked to people you would understand that what they optimize for is not really related to the caricatures of them, its not the opposite of what "your side" cares about just completely different. When it is obvious that all the news comes from New York City and Los Angeles, and the world resyndicates that, while a large swath of…

> You would have bet the farm on the undervalued bet on the prediction markets.

This is what's frustrating about sites like 538. They have Biden as an 87% chance to win. A betting site I frequent has Biden's winning odds as -180 (1.556 for Europeans). If they really believe the accuracy of their models, they should literally be betting the farm on a Biden win.

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#79

Post by adobecs3 »

s_gangopadhyay wrote: post #45

I travel to "flyover" cities pretty much every other week, and I think the polls got it wrong again. Because of my transient nature and the fact that I'm neither black nor white, my coworkers and clients tend to speak more freely with me regarding politics. My conclusion is that the BLM/rioters have really screwed over Biden, and that not only will Trump win, he'll win by a landslide victory. This is all assuming the…

Indian collusion!

Re: Electoral College Decision Tree

#80

Post by SllX »

freeone3000 wrote: post #32
chromaton wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the House of Representatives would have an even number.

We could add a senator. Give it to DC.

Only way I’m on board with DC representation is if we give it to Maryland. Maryland would in effect gain a House seat during the next redistricting after.

Easier solution? Kill the cap on the House seats. Doesn’t require a constitutional amendment, doesn’t make a State out of DC (although I’m still onboard with returning it to Maryland, there is precedent for this as DC used to have part of Virginia), and it evens out representation in both the House and the EC without wrecking the Senate and the EC altogether.

Give the States a number of House seats per 50,000 people (preferably: per citizen), actually make it a range between 30K and 50K to make the number of seats as even as possible and always keep it an odd number. You get a House of 6Kish or so members, but the way I see it, that’s Congress’ problem.

You even out representation between the States so no one State is over or under represented in the House. You increase the cost of lobbying Congress. You effectively solve gerrymandering, it can still exist on the fringes but when medium to large cities can have between 4 and 9 Reps all to themselves it is much less of an issue and unlikely to have much of an impact on the election. You bring the House closer to operating on coalition politics.

Fringe benefits include the necessity for dorms and uniforms and satellite chambers for the House that members can vote from. You can even verify their identities through a combination of simple security measures and biometric sensors, similar to TouchID and FaceID.

Then for every additional House member, you also add one to the Electoral College. It’s not perfectly even because the Senate throws the equity distribution off, but it severely dilutes the EC count that correlates to the Senate.

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