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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 *
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
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.
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.
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."
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.
Except in the US of A, where you can be President with less than 50% of the total votes, of course, due to a meaningless system (to the rest of the world, at least) of delegates.
The UK laughs at your 'less than 50%', when its last 'majority' government was elected with around 22% of the votes.
Except this time they didn't (most Christian Fundies will say that Mormons aren't Christian.
(Even though they are conservative on social issues)
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.
Except when you consider the error rate of counting the votes. This isn't even a matter of not RTFA, you didn't RTFSUMMARY.
.0001%, we can't declare a clear winner.
If the error rate in counting votes is higher than the difference between two candidates' votes, then we DO NOT KNOW who actually won. It is ENTIRELY POSSIBLE that a handful of votes could have been miscounted or misplaced somewhere along the line, the people who collect and count the votes admit this.
Also, it doesn't take 50% plus 1 to win, because there are more than 1 candidate in a primary. This isn't the general election bro...
He received 25.0001% of the vote, with the next candidate receiving 25% of the vote. If we can't be sure of that
However, since this isn't the general election, it is up to the Republican Party how to handle it, not the Supreme Court or any nonsense like that.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
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.
Considering that Romney is a Mormon and no Christian Fundamentalists consider Mormons to be Christian, let alone Fundamentalists and Santorum is Roman Catholic and only a slightly larger number of Christian Fundamentalists consider Catholics to be Christian and none consider them to be Fundamentalist that would be incorrect.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I love this phrase. It sounds meaningful, but it really isn't. It comes from people who figured out that democracy isn't all roses and rainbows, but have never experienced what life in a true tyranny is like.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
LOL... your country shits out candidates
You should check the Google results for "Santorum" and see just how accurate your choice of terminology is. :)
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
That this news put Mr. Santorum's followers in quite a froth.
To vote for him is to vote for more W's politics.
That statement applies just as much to Obama as it does to Romney, unfortunately.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
You're not really contradicting what the guy said. It's not as if Obama has strayed at all from his predecessor's policies on war, executive supremacy, and foreign policy.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It comes from people who figured out that democracy isn't all roses and rainbows...
This reminds me of an interview with a common man from a recent "Arab Spring" nation I heard on the radio. He was asked about an upcoming election. The translation: "How can this be democracy? There is no one who represents me!"
Welcome to the club buddy.
Yes Statically they tied. However Romney has 8 more votes.
The value of democracy isn't as much the best person wins, but the person who is most supported wins. Unfortunately there isn't really a fair voting system that cannot be manipulated.
When you have more then 2 choices often the one who stands out more will win. Not because he is better but there is less competition.
For this case Romney won because he was one of the few moderates. And Santorum got just as much (minus 8) because he was the few evangelical who didn't get mud thrown at him. While I seem Romney as the lest evil one there. However there were a lot of other people who had simular nutty ideas and their votes got split.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Except in the US of A, where you can be President with less than 50% of the total votes, of course, due to a meaningless system (to the rest of the world, at least) of delegates.
The UK laughs at your 'less than 50%', when its last 'majority' government was elected with around 22% of the votes.
And how many political parties does the UK have?
GENERATION 24: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
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
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?
Nonsense. If you want to spin something you use a) no statistics or b) incorrect or incomplete statistics. For example, the GP's 8>0 is spin - the actual numbers are 8+-1000* == 0+-1000*.
* value made up out of thin air.
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
Obama got the Arab League* to endorse the no-fly zone over Libya, and got the Europeans flying many of the missions, for a final cost of about $2 billion and no known American lives. Does that sound even remotely like either of Bush's wars?
* Which, mind you, is not only Arab and Muslim like Libya, but also mostly dealing with internal dissent themselves, and are obviously wary of Western intervention themselves. How eager do you suppose they were to throw Libya under the bus?
My favorite was "Santorum Surges From Behind in Iowa".
( 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?