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Mathematics Says Romney and Santorum Tied In Iowa
Hugh Pickens writes "Presidential candidate Mitt Romney received eight more votes than candidate Rick Santorum or 0.007 percent of the total number of caucus votes in the Iowa caucus, 'eking out a victory' on the path to winning the Republican nomination for president but experts in statistics say Romney and Santorum actually tied. 'From a statistical point of view, you can't say Romney won any more than you can say Santorum won,' says Charles Seife, a professor of journalism at New York University who studies election error. That's because in the Iowa caucus, where voters marked their choices with check marks or by writing the candidates' names in by hand, the error rate in counting the votes, which is also done by hand is orders of magnitude above the victory margin — around 0.5 to 1 percent. There are several sources of error that could easily render eight votes meaningless." (Read on for more.)
Hugh Pickens continues: "First, ballots sometimes stick to the bottom of ballot boxes when the boxes are overturned, and fail to be counted. Next, election officials occasionally misread messy handwriting, or tally their totals incorrectly. Finally officials can misjudge who a voter intended to vote for: 'You'd be surprised how often people place a check mark in an ambiguous place,' says Seife. Whether it's statistically significant or not, any official declaration of victory can have big ramifications. With political pundits regarding Romney's 'victory' as evidence that he's in a good position to win the Republican nomination, the failure to recognize a statistical tie in Iowa could impact the future of the country. 'It's Romney, not Santorum, who can head to New Hampshire claiming the win,' writes Nick Rizzo. 'But if you just counted the exact same votes all over again, there's a good chance the result would be different.'"
Let the Supreme Court decide.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Mitt the anti Christ or Mr Frothy Santorum? This is a choice?
* Carthago Delenda Est *
I'm gonna call the "winner" the guy that got to most [counted] votes... won.
Never let a mediocre career stand in the way of a good time
Mitt Romney + tanning bed = Barack Obama.
The world is round, p <= .05.
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
And yet... no appeal? No call for a recount? Either the Republican primary rules don't allow for it (and I'm not familiar enough with them to know), or else Santorum has noted the lessons of Florida 2000 and decided that risking a "sore loser" reputation wouldn't do him any good in what's still an ongoing contest.
It's a non binding vote. A straw poll. It's already totally and completely meaningless.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
There's no recount. The scores are final. Romney still won. News at 11.
All the republicans candidates look much the same to me, except Ron Paul. They seem to be all playing it safe, avoiding saying anything too out-of-the-mainstream at such a critical time.
last time it did not go too well
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
Perhaps nobody cares because Iowa is fairly meaningless. In the grand scheme of things, carrying (or not carrying) Iowa doesn't affect your ability to gain the nomination. You need a lot more than that, and the margin better be more than 8 votes. Just saying.
Both are the same. They will take what they can and never give back.
Seriously, it's Iowa, the only thing this one's good for is showing who definitely should not run, and even that's questionable.
They really should run all the caucuses in just a few days. There's no good reason, other than lots of opportunities to bribe, err, donate to your favorite candidate, that these should run more than a day or two for all 50 states. But, that would go against the political machine and those that keep it greased purposes.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
You can't call it a tie because statistics determine the margin of error to be greater than the vote difference. It makes much more sense to say the winner cannot be determined. A tie means they had the same number of votes and that is extremely unlikely.
Even recognizing the certainty of there being some error, that Romney has 8 more votes means he is more likely to have been the true winner if that error were eliminated. Assuming the error is equally likely to benefit Romney as it is to benefit Santorum. That suggests something other than "a tie" to me. The most accurate thing might be to say, "We don't know whether Romney or Santorum won, but it's slightly more likely that Romney did."
This really demonstrates the best part of our voting process.... Tyranny of the Majority
The media requires a winner. Someone must win the race. If they reported on issues and such instead of concentrating on who is winning we'd be in some other universe.
The only thing that matters is the number of delegates the canidates won. Romney, Santorum and Paul each won 7 delegates. Gingrich and Perry each won 2 delegates. Currently Romney has the most delegates because he has support from delegates not tied to elections. Romney has 18, Santorum has 8, Paul has 7 delegates total.
A first-past-the-post system doesn't allow for margins of error or miscounted ballots. There is either a winner or the law provides for a recount. If such a recount shows Santorum won, then he did. Unless there's a second recount, etc etc. The situation is binary and doesn't allow for such subjective phrasing.
LOL... your country shits out candidates faster than i can memorize their names... xD
The biggest problem is the amount the media exaggerates the importance of the Iowa straw poll(because they have 24 hours and websites to fill). Before the 24-hour news cycle, how many people actually cared about the Iowa straw polls? Now it's all everyone talks about, which means that "winning" is all the more important because it is essentially the biggest free commercial you can give yourself. Look at the massive amount of free press that Romney is given because he won. Same with Obama in 2008, He barely won the Iowa straw poll, but the media blew that all out of proportion and essentially anointed him the winner.
Monstar L
This has nothing to do with math or statistics. Iowa always goes for the Christian fundies.
the republicans moved a number of counting into the back office. With neo-cons in control and fearing Paul, that says a lot.
It's an actual count. That means that "statistical" margins of error are completely useless here. This is not a political statement. Voting is counting, not polling.
Statistically of course it was a tie. But elections aren't decided statistically. It takes 50% plus 1 vote to win.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Mathematics says 8 > 0. Lies, damned lies, and statistics, ya know.
In your Land of The Free (TM), where is the freedom?
You have two parties every year sparring for the Presidency, but you have many, many political parties, why don't they get a voice?
More to the point, why do you DUMBASSES (TM) continue to talk about the two party monkeys and VOTE for them? YOU are the stupid wastes of flesh who will NEVER awaken, you continue to suck off the American Dream crack pipe illusion.
PS: George Carlin was murdered for exposing the BIG SHOW and our OWNERS.
Hold a popular vote and then select from among the candidates randomly, weighted by their popular vote percentages.
In a two candidate race that both get 50% of the vote, the electorate has essentially said "We don't clearly know who's better." So flip a coin and go with that one. In a three way race where the 'spoiler' candidate receives 20% of the vote, select him as the winner with a 20% probability.
Pros:
* The majority doesn't completely drown out the rest.
* Less susceptible to small counting errors. (i.e. the OP).
Cons:
No chance of this being perceived fair. The conspiracy theorists are going to go apeshit the first time a 20% winner gets elected.
Revision:
Perhaps use a non-uniform distribution to push the percentages further towards the extreme--e.g. a winner of 80% of the electorate should probably be chosen 95% of the time.
When people vote for the frothy substance consisting of feces and lube that dribbles out of asses after anal sex, maybe it's a sign that there are no viable candidates.
But either way you look at it we lose.
I hate to see it, but the Repuplican party is becoming more and more polarized, and that's not good for the country as a whole.
This signature is a waste of 42 characters
What makes you think Mitt got even 50% of the vote?
He won by plurality.
Couple things - the Iowa Caucuses aren't a 'vote' - they are a poll. It's very informal, and the idea is to get a close approximation of the support for the candidates. Last minute voting was common, I saw someone drop a ballot more than once, and the 18 year old kid making irritating comments behind me ended up doing the official tally.
And all of that is ok. Despite how it sounds, the people there did take the process very seriously- I was impressed with the discussion that took place. - it did what it was supposed to do, which was give a good idea of where support lied with people who cared enough to show up. The Democrat caucus process is a lot more organizationally rigorous. Same result either way.
Mathematics says it was a tie only because mathematics bet on Santorum and is a sore-loser.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
What candidates hope to get out of Iowa, mainly, seems to be being able to say they won an election, or did way better than expected (e.g. Santorum), essentially in the hopes that it will persuade primary voters in other early primary states (NH, SC, FL, etc) to jump on the bandwagon and vote for them.
Which is sad. If you're just going to vote for the candidate everyone else is voting for, why bother voting at all, especially in a primary? Primaries should be all about voting for your *favorite* candidate, not the guy you think might win if you can just push him over the top.
Mathematics doesn't say anything about the race, some people are saying something about the race using an appeal to mathematics to prop up their argument.
However,
1) Elections are not decided statistically. By the rules of the game all vote counts are supposed to be exact. Obviously, in reality the people involved are not perfect and neither are the counts, however, that error does not automatically mean that elections follow the rules of statistics.
2) While the margin of error may make the justice of the win uncertain, the parties involved have accepted the results and moved on. It's no different than a questionable call from a ref at a sporting event...the winner is still counted a winner whether the ref was right or wrong.
3) If we were using statistics, then the fact that one contestant received a higher vote count than another, even if it is within the margin of error, would mean that the vote counts do not overlap. So statistically it is still a win even though the margins of error overlap.
4) The rules of this election (like most) do not allow ties. Someone must be winner. As such, their whole point is nonsensical or incorrectly stated. Even if both candidates received exactly the same number of votes one of them would have to be declared a winner and all the others losers.
Umm, Last I looked the margin of error for the caucus vote was listed at 2.0% to 3.7% not 0.5% to 1.0%.
Which means that it was a three way tie.
My numbers came from the reports at NBC and CBS so they are published news reports and not direct statistical data, and you can decided how much you want to trust the news from NBC and CBS.
Personally, with a difference of less that 3% of the vote between the three I am looking forward to the next caucus vote. It is a bit exciting to see where this goes.
8 votes are statistically irrelevant, but still 'every vote counts'.
At least as long as the difference is statistically significant.
There are several sources of error that could easily render eight votes meaningless."
Yes. Cheif among them would be the political process.
Except that I'm 99% certain that Romney will win based on the Republican establishment's preference of him over the others (who are seen as too extreme).
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
How bored are you as a statistician that you this is what you shoot for FTW?
That this news put Mr. Santorum's followers in quite a froth.
Seems like, if anything, a delegate system helps to (somewhat arbitrarily) decide who the winner is when you have a statistical tie like this. Unfortunately, error is a reality - some people will accidentally check or fill in the bubble, or hit the button for the wrong candidate.
Hopefully, if you're using machine counting, the counting would be error free (at least, as long as the machine wasn't hacked to "adjust" the vote a little bit towards the "right" candidates).
As we saw in Florida in 2000, people will b*&%h about a very close popular vote forever, based upon errors and whatnot, and will say that whoever won "stole the vote".
With a delegate system, you essentially get a second level of determination - so, we don't have a clear winner based upon the popular vote because it's too close. Let's apportion "votes"/delegates based upon the population of each state (and as some states do, you can even split the delegates proportionally), and see who has the most delegates.
Yes, that means, in essence, that some votes end up counting more than other votes, but it doesn't seem like a completely irrational way to try to resolve the tie.
Even if you had an "ideal" electronic system which was not rigged in any way and couldn't be hacked. . .
Some people would still accidentally push the wrong button or otherwise make the wrong choice. But, when it comes to voter error, at a certain point, you have to say a vote cast is a vote cast and if you screwed up, too bad (that's assuming the UI isn't screwed up and is detecting your touches at the wrong candidate on the touch screen and registering them for that wrong candidate).
Ok, what did he win?
Answer: Nothing.
This is roughly equivalent to saying Romney won the exit polls. These numbers are not what will determine Iowa's delegates. It's too close to give you any reliable information on the real results (in June). And the reality is this is a contest in which a tie is possible. Two or even three candidates could conceivable walk away from Iowa with the same number of delegates.
Republicans do not believe in math or science!
Statistics and its rules, including margins of error, do not apply when the sample size is equal to the population. "Margin of error" does not mean "probability that someone messed up". It means the margin by which the statistical sample is likely to be different than the population. When the sample is the population (in this case, every caucus members vote was counted, and therefore the sample is indeed the population), then the statistical margin of error is zero. Whoever posted this either doesn't understand statistics or purposely misused the word "margin of error" in order to get a rise out of other people who don't understand statistics.
I don't get why people consider Romneycare the same as Obamacare. I'd think right-leaning people (of all!) would consider it completely different (despite the similarities) precisely because it was done at a state level rather than federal. That cuts right through all the constitutional/legal controversy.
We should be seeing "federal govt is the right place to do everything" Democrats conflate it with Obamacare (and therefore think of Romney being "their man" to a similar degree as Obama), and "states rights" Republicans all praising the idea for distributing power correctly, making Romney somewhat of a role model for them too. (I'm speaking purely in terms of the health care issue, not anything else.) Romney ought to be scoring points with everyone on this. Instead, the parties once again reverse all the stereotypes and as a result, everyone hates him for Romneycare instead of loving him.
It's hilarious how things backfire, when you mistakenly hold that Republicans are conservatives and Democrats are liberals. The parties just aren't like that.
Is it only I that gets an icky smirky on the sentence: "the total number of caucus votes in the Iowa caucus, 'eking out a victory' " rather than on the news?
Put incorrectly, they tied.
Put correctly, the differences in the counts were not statistically significant and given the distribution types (of some modified Possion/Gaussian/etc) there is a *very* low probability that they were numerically equal.
No, my understanding of statistics goes against your claim. Neither Romney nor Santorum won significantly more votes than the other.
The Iowa "vote" is just a straw poll. The caucus ended in a three way tie with Paul getting 7 delegates, Romney getting 7 delegates, and Santorum getting 7 delegates. The last four delegates are split between Gingrich and Perry.
Not that I had one, but even with only 8 votes difference, a single vote would have done nothing.
Statistics say the two candidates are tied. Mathematics says that x+8 > x.
The number of votes from a precinct might total about 30, so it is easy to tally up the 4 or 5 votes each candidate gets and there is no pressure or complications involved in marking a little ballot. People actually watch the counters do the counting and many even video record the counts and ballots. Unless the guy typing in numbers into the state tally messes up, the votes are perfectly counted. Now the sample size is very small compared to the total number of voters, so it really is meaningless in predicting who will have support when the real elections take place. The numbers you get to see are not the total caucus goers votes but only the winner announced for each precinct. By having 3 of my friends show up, our guy won my precinct by 1 vote with a total of 12 people voting. Now in reality, the support for my guy is not that high among all voters.
The book Proofiness made a similar argument on recent very close elections like MN Senate and 2000 White House.
While it is not our current law, the argument made was that from statistical view it would make more sense to treat such a close tally as a tie and follow procedures of what happens if it was actually a tie. For example, I believe the MN law would have drawn lots. As others have pointed out, the policial process of selecting delegates doesn't need these to be separated - though in this case we through our media treat this as a horse race and hence there there is this human desire to have a winner of that race.
Then I should have said "mentioned this enough for most people to notice".
So you've rephrased:
the mainstream media hasn't mentioned this enough for most people to notice because all they can see is the horse race.
There's a reason for that:
"Fear -> anger -> hate -> suffering" -- Yoda, The Phantom Menace
"Suffering -> perseverance -> character -> hope" -- Paul, Letter to the Romans
"The horse race -> ratings -> advertisers -> profit" -- Cable news executive, my behind
Paul, Santorum, and Romney each got the same number of delegates. So regardless of what the count was it is a three way tie going into NH.
The summary is completely incorrect (haven't read the article). What statistics says is that from the vote you can't tell whether Romney or Santorum is more popular among eligible caucus goers. The rules for determining delegates from the caucus are independent from the statistics of popularity. In this particular contest, this is only the first round and so it's hard to estimate how the final delegate count will end up. CNN estimates that the delegates will be split 7-7-7-2-2 for Romney, Santorum, Paul, Gingrich, and Perry, respectively. The AP, based on what appears to be a more careful examination of the rules estimates that the delegates will be split 13-12 for Romney and Santorum. (The AP estimate is based on congressional districts and since Paul and the others didn't carry any of the districts, they don't think they'll get any delegates). However, even the later caucus rounds are non-binding and delegates don't have to stick to someone who does poorly later on. What this means is that the entire point of the Iowa Caucus is media perceptions. What's more, since this is a caucus, the second part of the blurb makes no since, especially the part about ballots sticking. In caucus you count supporters, not ballots and they aren't secret anyway.
No one got elected.
First, ballots sometimes stick to the bottom of ballot boxes when the boxes are overturned, and fail to be counted
Can this really happen ? Where I vote, every vote is paper-based - but one of the things checked by the people doing the counting is that the number of registered voters matches with the number of ballots. Furthermore, it is quite easy to see any ballot sticking to the bottom since the ballot boxes are transparent. Of course, double errors can happen, but this does not seem as a big deal as the summary presents it.
Very true. It's important to remember that when it comes to commercial media, news or otherwise, their product is viewer attention and their customers are the advertisers.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
If the GOP splits, the small government splinter group might end up combining with the Libertarians. But still: Republicans take away your social liberty. Democrats take away your economic liberty. And if vegetarians eat vegetables, what do Libertarians eat?
This is increasingly a winner-take-all society in which winning the count is all that matters. It doesn't correlate strongly with competence (as we all know from Florida), but it does correlate strongly with outcome.
This is an interesting academic discussion, but entirely irrelevant to the process. The Iowa caucus vote is non-binding, so it's really just more of a suggestion. Think of it as a big straw poll.
The actual result that came out of Iowa is a 3-way tie. Romney, Santorum, and Ron Paul each got 6 delegates.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
There are several sources of error that could easily render eight votes meaningless.
Great, so not only can someone claim "it's useless to vote, 1 vote won't make a difference among millions", but now they can claim "it's useless to vote, there are enough sources of error that my 1 vote means nothing".
My favorite was "Santorum Surges From Behind in Iowa".
It does not matter. They each got 7 representatives to the electoral college so regardless of what the popular vote was, where it truly counts, they tied.
I hope they tied them well and gagged them too.
No one has 'won' Iowa. This election did not determine anything that matters come convention time. It simply was there for each precint to designate delagates to the county converntions, which happen in a couple months. Then the counties have their votes, and send delagates to the state convention (which I think I read was in JUNE). At that point, the state convention determines who 'wins' the states delagates to the convention. What this means is that if someone drops out of the race between now and the other conventions, the delagates assigned to them Tuesday will change their votes, which again can change any result we think we may already have. This is why primaries are so much better than caucauses.
" 'From a statistical point of view, you can't say Romney won any more than you can say Santorum won,'"
And in reality, neither one of them won, because the vote was heavily tampered with.
The point of these things, is to get a couple of fake voters to create a rigged result, so that people hearing it are pushed into thinking thatâ(TM)s what the people actually want, so that the prophecy fulfils itself. (In other words: Those who saw their candidate lose, will get more hopeless, and those who saw their candidate win, will get more confident, skewing the whole thing, and creating a feedback loop.)
( Mathematically, speaking that is, and how could math possibly be relevant to vote counting? :-) )
The results were clearly within the margin of error of the counting (including recounting) techniques.
The only fair way to have decided it (other than a re-run) would have been a coin toss or equivalent.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2603836&cid=38587006
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2603836&cid=38587006
"Democracy" when describing America is usually used these days to refer to something vaguely resembling a democratic republic, where the electorate in swing states gets to vote for national leadership and everyone else gets to vote for state leadership. Most of the voting decision is actually delegated to two political parties--almost all of it is in state elections. Similar systems exist in other "democracies" I am aware of, although there are some significant variations (the number of parties, for example, or the option of votes of no confidence).
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
It is important to note that the Supreme Court's ruling was nonprecedential--it applied only to that one election, that one time.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Having the primaries spread out over time helps to diminish the deficiencies of plurality voting. If all primaries occurred on the same day, voters would have to choose between picking the least-awful of Romney and Santorum vs. "wasting" their vote on Paul. However, because the primaries are spread out over time, early voters can vote for whomever is their favorite candidate, then later voters get to use those results to see who realistically has a chance of winning. For example, now that everyone knows Bachman is out, future voters can stop wasting their votes on her and vote for someone else instead. ...and the results of the coming primaries will now help voters to decide if they should try to support Ron Paul or simply vote for the lesser of two evils.
It's hardly as good as condorcet voting, but undeniably an improvement over holding all of the primaries on the same day.
Actually, an interesting fact: Gay marriage is legal in Iowa.*
*Since Santorum would be unlikely to condone sex outside of marriage.
"Americans" as a whole don't think anything, except on extremely rare occasions. Certain Americans believe, mistakenly, that a Republic is a Democracy.
IIRC, Caesar's dictatorship represented the fall of the Republic. Ah yes--Wikipedia indicates that the demarcation between the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Empire is a little hand-wavy, but that Caesar's appointment as permanent dictator is one of the classic identified moments.
The Roman Republic began five centuries earlier.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2603836&cid=38587006
Statistics is a form of philosophy that uses Math as a tool. In this case they are talking about what is significant in the numbers if you were doing a statistical analysis. Well, the election wasn't a statistical analysis. If the counts are different, one guy wins and the other loses.
Canada Party video
Bain shuns spotlight as Romney takes the heat
Look what I just found on pastebin, not much innovation there, just a bog standard Windows network, no wonder that company is in the toilet.
Google 'bain.and.company site:pastebin.com`