comment #1

Rich S. says ...

Does Silver mention that 27 votes is almost certainly within the margin of error? That's one of the things that got us in so much trouble in 2000. If the margin of victory is within the margin of error, there is no way to be certain who won. It's for all intents and purposes a tie.

There should be a runoff, but I don't know if Minnesota electoral law provides for that.

comment #2

Deathtongue_Groupie says ...

Nowhere do you or does Silver in his piece mention the fact that the challenging of ballots is just the first step, it's not the end of those challenged ballots. They then go to a review board.

Most of the early ballots that were being shown (ie, before the media got bored with that angle) that were being challenged by Coleman were beyond any reasonable doubt intended for Franken. But instead of trying to overturn them during the first stage, the consensus was among pundits Franken's team wanted to let Coleman have his little moment instead of having him start yammering about a fixed recount like he was already hinting at.

Everyone knows Coleman is going to do it anyways, but this will at least give the Dems the ammunition to point to the process and say "It was all done on the up and up, you cry babies."

So there's a lot more votes coming when they take it to that level. Which is why the Minnesota reporters are already hinting at a probable Franken victory. They could see how laughable most of Coleman's challenges were.

comment #3

Deathtongue_Groupie says ...

"the consensus among pundits was" would probably make more sense to those not given to Yoda-speak

comment #4

Bass Ackwards says ...

"Does Silver mention that 27 votes is almost certainly within the margin of error? That's one of the things that got us in so much trouble in 2000. If the margin of victory is within the margin of error, there is no way to be certain who won. It's for all intents and purposes a tie."

Hurm? What is it that you imagine this means?

Its an election, they're counting votes, not taking a poll. If a margin of victory is small enough, as in this case, it may deem, or allow for a recount, maybe several depending on state law. But when the process has reached its conclusion, whatever that conclusion is, no one will say the margin is too small to declare a winner. If a candidate wins, they win, it doesn't matter if its by 2 votes or 20,000.

comment #5

Bass Ackwards says ...

"Does Silver mention that 27 votes is almost certainly within the margin of error? That's one of the things that got us in so much trouble in 2000. If the margin of victory is within the margin of error, there is no way to be certain who won. It's for all intents and purposes a tie."

Hurm? What is it that you imagine this means?

Its an election, they're counting votes, not taking a poll. "Margin of error" has no application here. If a margin of victory is small enough, as in this case, it may deem, or allow for a recount, maybe several depending on state law. But when the process has reached its conclusion, whatever that conclusion is, no one will say the margin is too small to declare a winner. If a candidate wins, they win, it doesn't matter if its by 2 votes or 20,000.

comment #6

Deathtongue_Groupie says ...

Bass - I didn't even catch that. I thought he was talking about the margin of error on the projection, not the final tally. Then I saw the line about "a tie."

So yes, it ain't horseshoes - a win is a win, no matter how slight the margin (ask Gore just how wide that margin is for a "squeaker").

comment #7

Rich S. says ...

No, "margin of error" is just that. It involves statistics, but has nothing to do with polling. Basically, is says that the more things you count, the less certain you can that the counting was correct. The more things you count, the larger the margin of error is. It takes into account human error, machine error, etc.

Let's say you're counting M&Ms. I give you approximately 100 to count. You come out with 98. The margin of error is very small because only one person is counting a small number of things. But you could have been tired, distracted, etc. So maybe the margin of error there is +/2. Your 98 was within the margin of error, so you can say your count was accurate.

But now I give you and 3 friends approximately 5 million M&Ms to count and I give 4 other people the same. (I could also ask you to separate them into colors, which would be an even more accurate example, but we'll keep it simple.) Your group comes out with 4,999,984. The other group comes out with 4,999,973. You can't say with certainty that you have 11 more M&Ms than they have, because it's well within the margin of error. So it's statistically a tie.

The fallacy that you can know with absolute certainty the winner of an election with millions of ballots when the difference is within the margin of error is the main thing that caused the 2000 election to drag on as long as it did. "Hanging chads," "butterfly ballots" etc. didn't really matter, because even taking all of them into account, it was still within the margin of error.

A coin toss was just as accurate as a recount, and I'm sure Gore would have accepted the victory had he won the toss.

comment #8

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comment #9

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