Mathematics Says Romney and Santorum Tied In Iowa 457
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.'"
In other words... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So... what's the difference? (Score:4, Interesting)
Really? Because Santorum [spreadingsantorum.com] is about as right-wing nutjob as it gets, and Obamacare might just as well be called Romneycare, since it's very similar to the Massachusetts plan.
And yeah, Ron Paul is a different kind of RWNJ, the big difference is that he understands the futility of the drug war and is against foreign entanglements.
Fortunately for the country, we're not going to have to deal with any of it beyond the campaign, since Obama is going to be reelected.
Re:Higher Power (Score:2, Interesting)
The US has never been a republic. It's a large land mass with people on it.
I really wish people didn't base their civics knowledge on Sid Meier's Civilization.
Re:The Best of Our Government (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:So... what's the difference? (Score:1, Interesting)
Ron Paul represents a very slim portion of libertarians. Most of us think he is a whack job.
Re:OK...but (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:So... what's the difference? (Score:5, Interesting)
Note, however, that no one EVER says they are going to raise taxes on the rich. They raise taxes on the high income workers - because those people are a threat to the rich (they might catch up!), and they can count on sour grapes votes from the poor as well.
If we wanted to tax the rich, we would tax accumulated wealth, not income. Most high income people are struggling to build businesses, and taxes definitely adversely effect them. (I know, I'm in that boat)
Re:not a tie (Score:4, Interesting)
Right, the votes don't tell you which of them won. But that's different than a tie, which says they got the same number of votes.
The votes just haven't been counted carefully enough to know who won. But it's almost certainly not a tie.
The journalism prof said "Scientists know that when you can't tell the difference between the two things, they say that, as best they can tell, these are the same size." Which just goes to show that he doesn't understand statistics very well. The correct interpretation of the result is that you can't prove there's a difference between the two. That's a weaker conclusion than concluding that they are equal.