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512 Paths to the White House

nytimes.com

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Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#71

Post by spindritf »

hristov wrote: post #65
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 y…

> please do not try to change history. All newspapers agreed that Gore won Florida.

That's the funniest comment in this thread. I love the idea of history or truth as something established by consensus between newspapers. I don't mean to say that your conclusion is wrong but your method is somewhat lacking.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#72

Post by james-skemp »

seldo wrote: post #51

A really great way to show why Ohio is so important: 1. Give the democrats Wisconsin (I don't know why people are treating it as a swing state) 2. Give the democrats Ohio 3. Give the democrats any other state (except New Hampshire) Basically, as long as Obama takes Ohio, Obama wins.

Re Wisconsin, as someone who has lived in the state all his life, and been confident that we'd elect a Democrat as president since the mid-90s (and definitely in the last 12+ years I've been voting), I believe the state is swinging.

Walker's recall showed how red the state is, once the people outside Madison and Milwaukee actually vote. (Disclaimer: I live in Madison, and commented to others that I didn't realize Wisconsin had turned red.)

Obama is back in Madison shortly, but he really needs to head up to the north of the state. Unless he thinks he can carry it by getting the vote out in obviously blue areas.

On the other hand, I don't think he can sway people in two days, so getting people excited where he knows a vote will be a vote for him might be the best bet.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#73

Post by studentrob »

baddox wrote: post #68
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…

Most important to me would be a condorcet winner, something we do not have in FPTP (ftfy)

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#74

Post by abrahamsen »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #61
crystalis wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That would be around 1 million potential voters out of 235 million total. My suspicion is that attention would shift towards numerically larger special interest groups.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#75

Post by ZeroGravitas »

spindritf wrote: post #71
hristov wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

> please do not try to change history. All newspapers agreed that Gore won Florida. That's the funniest comment in this thread. I love the idea of history or truth as something established by consensus between newspapers. I don't mean to say that your conclusion is wrong but your method is somewhat lacking.

As a response to a claim about what the NYT reported it makes perfect sense.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#76

Post by caf »

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 two most important electoral reforms that the US could adopt would be to switch voting to Saturday, so that most people don't have to take time off work to vote; and to put the administration of federal elections in the hands of an independent, professional, non-partisan electoral commission.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#77

Post by corwinstephen »

Volpe wrote: post #58
khawkins wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a joke? What you're proposing is almost fundamentally contradictory to the principles the nation was founded upon. Banning bias? No "trashing" other candidates? No polling? No public endorsements? Incumbent can't run? You propose some of the most egregious restrictions on freedom of speech I've ever heard of. Only can use government money to campaign (and not their own)? Can only visit state capitals once? Ca…

While I agree with your points, I also think there are problems that should be resolved. - Historically, the majority of presidents have been rich and white. How do you fix that? - Candidates make heavy use of propaganda, there is no accountability to what is said. Is censoring information (i.e What China's PRC does) any different from glutting all forms of media with YOUR information so other information is harder t…

Pretty sure that's what he was trying to fix when he said candidates should be awarded a lump sum of money and nothing more can be used. It levels the playing field.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#78

Post by vsync »

downandout wrote: post #64
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…

> That hardly reflects the will of the people in the context of a /national/ election.

Federal.

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#79

Post by usaar333 »

Osmium wrote: post #69
usaar333 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes

Re: 512 Paths to the White House

#80

Post by dctoedt »

hristov wrote: post #65
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 y…

> 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.

Um, not quite; you've misstated the conclusion of the news organizations' study of the uncounted ballots. In a much-expanded recount, according to the Times wrap-up piece in November 2001 [1], Gore might have won in a few possible scenarios, but only by a teeny, tiny margin at best (smaller than the margin Bush ended up with). Even that possibility depended on the different counties' election officials recounting the disputed ballots in the same way that the news organizations' independent auditors did.

The Times had endorsed Gore --- as it has every other Democratic presidential candidate starting in 1960 [2]. Yet the lead grafs of the Times piece were commendably explicit: "A comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward. Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore."

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics/12VOTE.html

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/28/opinion/presid...

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