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27 Votes
27 VOTES....Nate Silver says that in Minnesota precincts where no challenges have been raised, Al Franken is gaining votes. In precincts with more challenges, he's not doing as well:
In other words, the fewer the number of challenged ballots, the better Franken is doing....We can address this phenomenon more systematically by means of a regression analysis....The independent variables considered in the regression are as follows: t...c_f...c_c...In addition, the regression analysis contains interaction terms between each combination of two variables, as well as an interaction term for all three variables.
....Now, we can attempt to solve this equation at the statewide level. When we plug in a t of .499956 — Franken was picked on just slightly very less than half of the ballots during the initial count — we get a value for franken_net of .837. That is, Franken will gain a net of .837 votes for every 10,000 cast. With a total of 2,885,555 ballots having been recorded in the initial count, this works out to a projected gain of 242 votes for Franken statewide. Since Norm Coleman led by 215 votes in the initial count, this suggests that Franken will win by 27 votes once the recount process is complete (including specifically the adjudication of all challenged ballots).
I will just say this. If this turns out to be right — if Al Franken really does win by 27 votes — then I suggest we eliminate elections entirely and simply allow Nate Silver to tell us who our congressional and presidential winners are in the future. It would be a lot cheaper, and probably just as accurate.
POSTSCRIPT: Nate weasels a bit at the end, warning us that "the error bars on this regression analysis are fairly high." Sure, sure. I'm not buying. Franken by 27 votes, my friends.
Don't know if I buy it either, but I would take it. Gladly.
The guy is indeed amazing.
I'm going to go out on a limb and boldly predict that the 2008 Minnesota U.S. Senate election will NOT be decided by precisely 27 votes. You heard it here first.
Will there be any eating of hat-like baked goods is Silver is wrong?
Nate is smart, but you can't do the kind of analysis he's doing because the challenges aren't arbitrary. Both teams have a system for doing them. There's video on the web if you want to look.
It's not going to be decided until the Canvassing Board.
It's an analysis that involves statistics and concomitant uncertainties. The 27 vote margin, I'm sure, is swamped by the uncertainties. The most we can say at this point is that it is too close to call.
That's terribly unfair to Nate, and anyway, Asimov was ahead of you by 53 years. Franchise, Asimov, 1955
Go Al! You're good enough, smart enough, and doggone it, we we deserve you!
(There was an article presenting the challenges of both sides, and the article showed both sides came up with some pretty dumb ballots to challenge. But Coleman's were worse!)
I remain unconvinced until such time as Silver unveils STASSEN.
If Franken does in fact win by 27 votes or some other small margin, let me say that this should become a major counter example to the claim that a person's vote doesn't matter. Surely, there would be at least 28 people in Minnesota that wanted to vote for Coleman but didn't think it would matter in the end.
Man, this Nate Silver guy is EVERYWHERE.
Is this some sort of trojan horse thing?
To be fair -- this is like saying that a player will hit at 320 of the next 1000 at bats given that his batting average is .320. It's obviously not the right number, just the best guess.
Also -- props to Nate should go for trying to illuminate what's going on with the running vote tallies. What looks like Coleman gaining ground is just more votes being disputed.
This means that when those disputed votes get resolved, they should, in all likelihood, go to Franken.
In other words -- Nate is making a very interesting prediction based on clever use of the numbers available to guess how many of the "extra" disputed ballots would are going to go Franken's way given how well Franken does when very few votes are disputed.
One caveat -- given that different voting methods are used across counties, there's reason to believe that the regression Nate runs is based on some assumptions that aren't necessarily true (i.e. disputed ballots look the same across counties).
Even when our journalists admit that they are leaving aside the issues to talk about the horse race, their analysis is something anyone high school senior could spout.
Nate has raided the bar. It was a low bar, but he's raised it to where most employed political reporters can't touch it.
In four years, the coverage will be different.
Spy Cam Jan maps Arizona cars using automated license plate scanning.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/11/23/20081123autotheft1123....
Thank you, Spy Cam Jan for making me safer.
I'm pretty sure the reason he threw out the number 27 was to make clear that, although his model predicts Franken, it's by such a thin margin that it is still essentially a toss-up.
I'm pretty sure the reason he threw out the number 27 was to make clear that, although his model predicts Franken, it's by such a thin margin that it is still essentially a toss-up.
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
To point out the obvious, this is basically laying a marker on the table in a case where it's a toss-up. The uncertainty on that number is almost certainly a hundred votes or more. If Franken wins, then a claim will be made that Silver called it. It seems like a cynical move to me.
Perhaps a purely theoretical question, but: what if it is a tie?
The theory is that a recount and challenge system is simply to produce the most accurate tally, through the adversarial approach. A third party -- the canvassing board, right? -- is an arbiter, and God help us, the courts.
But what if they wind up exactly even? Do they flip a coin? A cage match?
jerry: Thank you, Spy Cam Jan for making me safer.
Doubleplusgood.
Under MN state law, if the Coleman and Franken are tied, then, yes, it does come down to a coin toss. Seriously. The questions that will fill the 24/7 airwaves should this highly unlikely event occur: who picks the coin? and who tosses it?
Yes, but what if the coin lands on its edge?