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Google Will Display Election Results As Soon As Polls Close (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google has been highly involved with connecting U.S. voters to timely information throughout this election cycle, by offering everything from voter registration assistance to polling place information in its search result pages. Today, the company announced plans to display the results of the U.S. election directly in search, in over 30 languages, as soon as the polls close. Web searchers who query for "election results" will be able to view detailed information on the Presidential, Senatorial, Congressional, Gubernatorial races as well as state-level referenda and ballot propositions, says Google. The results will be updated continuously -- every 30 seconds, as indicated by a screenshot shared by the company on its official blog post detailing the new features. Tabs across the top will let you switch to between the various races, like President, House, and Senate, for example. The results will also include information like how many more electoral votes a presidential candidate needs to win, how many seats are up for grabs in the House and Senate, and how many Gubernatorial races are underway, among other things. This data is presented in an easy-to-read format, with Democrats in blue, Republicans in red, and simple graphs, alongside the key numbers.
When the polls close, typically, in a US state, precincts start tabulating and releasing the data to a Secretary of State or similar state official. Then, the results are released via a web site. This process is not fast, though it is much faster than it once was. The bottom line is that it takes hours for most states to get all the precincts accounted for to the 99% mark. 100% is not going to happen election night, as absentee ballots are not counted at that point. The early vote mostly will be accounted for, but may not be separately broken out, depending on the state.
Google is going to have to wait the same as everyone else.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I like that Google is doing this, but I predict that there will be some hand-wringing from people who don't realize how this works.
Often times certain parts of a state report earlier than others, different sorts of people vote early in the day and late in the day, and this can cause states' results to fluctuate a lot during the night. It could look like Candidate A is winning all day long, only for B to overtake at the end.
I feel the same way about being able to trust the media as any thinking person does these days, but there is something helpful in the expert analysts that are hired by media outlets to make projections during the night. They know how individual precincts trend and what the early returns might portend.
I'm guessing there will be some hand-wringing online about some state where soandso was winning big until The Pentavorate hacked the servers and swung the results huge at the 11th hour.
From Censorship by Google
"During the 2016 Presidential Election, Google was accused by SourceFed for manipulating its results in favor of Hillary Clinton. They alleged that the recommended searches for the candidate are different than the recommended searchers to both Yahoo and Bing and yet the searches for both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are identical to both Yahoo and Bing. Furthermore, SourceFed placed the recommended searches for Clinton on Google Trends and observed that these terms were searched less than the recommended searchers for both Yahoo and Bing.[42][43] Later, on July 27, Google again faced controversy when Trump and Gary Johnson were left out of the Google search for "Presidential Candidates."[44] Google has responded with a statement that these omissions were as a result of a "technical bug" and has subsequently brought back the candidates.[45]"
[42] Hern, Alex (June 10, 2016). "Google Manipulating Search In Favor Of Hillary Clinton?". Techaeris. Retrieved June 10, 2016.
[43] http://www.washingtontimes.com, The Washington Times (June 9, 2016). "Google accused of burying negative Hillary Clinton stories". The Washingtion Times. Retrieved June 10, 2016.
[44] Fingas, Jon (July 27, 2016). "Google searches omitted key US presidential candidates". Engadget. Retrieved July 27, 2016.
[45] Brandom, Russell (July 27, 2016). "Google tweaks system after Trump left off search results for 'presidential candidates'". The Verge. Retrieved July 28, 2016.
The gamblers have already called the election:
https://electionbettingodds.co...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Curiously, the total money bet favors Clinton, while the total number of bets favors Trump.
In a situation where everyone has exactly one vote, it's not clear which measure has predictive power.
Google is going to have to wait the same as everyone else.
Only if the election is really close. That is unlikely.
Here is a quick cheat sheet:
If Donald wins in Pennsylvania, Hillary is in trouble.
If Hillary wins Florida, she will likely win the election.
If Hillary carries North Carolina, she almost certainly will win the election.
If Hillary wins in Ohio, she will likely win by an Electoral College landslide.
No other states matter.