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2009-02-08T21:25:00.000-05:00

short story: dcweatherboy has it right. there are...

2008-11-20T18:38:34.643-05:00

short story: dcweatherboy has it right. there are two many unknowns to be confident in any prediction.

longer story: the numbers are sufficiently confusing to make my head hurt. hopefully the following summary is useful (from Star Trib numbers posted this morning)

Changes not attributable to challenges
Coleman 37
Franken 101
Total 138

Challenges by Coleman 146
Challenges by Franken 123
Total 269

Total change
Coleman 160
Franken 247
Total 407

what these numbers do tell us is that uncontested change is 1/3 of the total, and 2/3 of the change that has occurred is due to challenges. probable prediction #1: the recount itself will not resolve the election. it will be the resolution of the challenges that does that.

my understanding is that challenges are basically a free good. "Frivolous" would mean no chance whatsoever from the standpoint of either campaign. In pure economic terms, as a rep of either campaign, I ought to challenge any ballot that has even a 1% chance of being overturned. The problem with that approach is that it the challenger is likely to lose credibility.

Who knows what the optimal strategy is? The review board will know the incentive is to be aggressive with challenges, so the board is likely to have a somewhat skeptical posture. From the challenger's perspective, one's expectation going in is prevailing on less than 50%. A good outcome would be prevailing on less than half, and picking up some you don't expect to.

From this, it is possible to speculate (although some knowledge of how these review meetings go would help). As a general strategy, the challenger would want a mix of credible reasoned challenges, less credible ones that can leverage the credible ones, and then maybe some longshots (say in the 25% range) sounds about right.

There is also media strategy both before and after. As the leader, the Coleman campaign has a stronger incentive to reinforce the impression that Coleman continues to lead. Given how close this thing is, part of the argument to the review board will be to tread lightly and not reverse the results of the recount, while downplaying how much the results have been affected by the use of challenges. to put it another way, the Coleman campaign would have reason to adopt a more aggressive strategy than the Franken campaign, and both would be expected to use an aggressive, rather than limited challenge strategy.

Frankin is now leading at a rate of 2.83 votes per...

2008-11-20T17:38:25.846-05:00

Frankin is now leading at a rate of 2.83 votes per 1 pecentage of votes counted. If he continues at this pace, Franklin will have a net of 283 votes and will win. This is before any challenged votes are counted or absentee votes that are in dispute.
Hope it holds. Looks good.

I know you guys would like to predict out who wins...

2008-11-20T16:56:38.319-05:00

I know you guys would like to predict out who wins but let's admit it. No one knows at this point :) It's too close

Looks as though someone already did what I just as...

2008-11-20T16:38:47.712-05:00

Looks as though someone already did what I just asked, but I'm too statistically illiterate to know whether those formulae take into account the fact that the challenges are likely total garbage.

Steve, what of it? What do Franken's chances look like if we assume the challenges will yield a negligible net change (and therefore that Franken is actually within 99, rather than 159, votes)?

Nate,I'm sure I'm not the first to wonder whether ...

2008-11-20T16:34:11.025-05:00

Nate,

I'm sure I'm not the first to wonder whether Coleman's purpose in challenging ballots (60 more than Franken as of 4:20 p.m. EDT) is intended to retain an artificially inflated de facto lead as long as possible, in the spirit of the "possession is nine-tenths of the law" principle, in the event of a favorable court ruling or other bizarre special-teams play down the line.

(That was sort of convoluted, but I think you got it.)

As of this comment, Coleman leads by 159 ballots with 30 percent of precincts and 22 percent of votes counted (unless I've got that backwards). If you remove all challenges, eliminating Coleman's consequent net gain of 60 votes, Franken is actually within 99 votes. Having closed the gap by nearly 60 percent already, Franken would seem well positioned to overtake Coleman.

In light of the now-widely-circulated claim that most challenges on both sides of the recount are frivolous, do you think you might be able to jury-rig a magical formula for intelligently guessing the number of such challenges actually likely to bear fruit? Or are there too many variables?

The notion in my ocean is that Coleman is desperately trying to preserve doubt. Would you mind setting your number-cruncher on a path of doubt-destruction?

Assume that Coleman says "Hey, that vote that was ...

2008-11-20T16:33:25.657-05:00

Assume that Coleman says "Hey, that vote that was counted for Franken... that really shouldn't be counted for anyone." In this case, the number of Coleman ballot challenges goes up by one, and the number of votes for Franken in the recount goes down by one.

But assume that Coleman says "Hey, that vote that wasn't counted for anyone... that really should be counted as a vote for me." In this case, the number of Coleman ballot challenges goes up by one, but the number of votes for Coleman in the recount does not go up by one?

Why would they presuppose that the challenge will be successful, in its effect on the recount totals, in the first case but not in the second?

For the sake of being able to evaluate how Franken is doing, I'll continue to assume that all of the ballot challenges are of the type that question a previously-recorded vote for the opponent -- and that 25% of these challenges will be upheld. (Not that I believe that this is accurate - I just find these assumptions more likely to be true than the Star Tribune's assumptions). If correct, Franken has already gained 161 votes on Coleman (115 "actual" votes gained through the recount process, and a projected 46 more to be gained after the canvassing board makes all of their evaluations).

Go Al!

Steve,Don't forget about the challenged ballots. ...

2008-11-20T16:27:28.745-05:00

Steve,

Don't forget about the challenged ballots. Coleman is challenging a lot more than Franken, and some say many of his challenges are frivolous. This is probably strategic on his part, and it's skewing the results so far.

A squeaker Franken projected to lose by 38 votes ...

2008-11-20T16:25:03.439-05:00

A squeaker Franken projected to lose by 38 votes

Total Already counted Uncounted
421,756 2,001,078
Odds of any change 0.051% 1,236 1,021
Odds of a net change due to recount 0.041% 994 821
Franken % of net change 58.4% 580 479
Coleman % of net change 41.6% 414 342
Franken vote 166 137
Current Franken deficit 175
Estimated Franken margin of loss -38

I probably made this more difficult than it needed to be, but here goes. I also don't know if my table will display correctly. I downloaded the Star Tribune’s numbers from yesterday. Given those results the odds of any change – either an addition or subtraction-is .055% (a change of 5.5 votes per 10,000 ballots cast).
One of the earlier posts points out that there is a known issue with a particular type of machine. I excluded the St. Louis county results on that basis, which reduces the estimated rate of change to .051%.

However, since there are changes in both directions, I based the net change for either candidate on the results. With St. Louis excluded, Coleman had a net of –87; Franken a net of –69. The net change is 20% lower than the estimate of any change.

Of the net change, Franken pulled 55.8% vs carrying 47.7% of the vote counted. Franken did better for the uncounted vote, carrying 50.3%. I gave Franken the same margin.

Carrying that out with the uncounted vote, Franken picks up 138 votes vs. a current deficit of 175. This estimate is very sensitive to assumptions, and the likelihood of any vote change varies widely between counties. The exclusion of St. Louis in total is extreme where yesterday’s count gave Franken +23 vs. +1 for Coleman. That lowered Franken’s ratio from 65% to 55%. The election is tied at a ratio of 60.7%.

The Coleman campaign has increased the rate of the...

2008-11-20T15:18:54.765-05:00

The Coleman campaign has increased the rate of their challenges, but most of the increase seems to be coming from Hennepin County. Maybe Coleman's people got worried about what they were seeing in Hennepin?

OleEmmy said... "If there is an exact tie, the win...

2008-11-20T15:04:11.297-05:00

OleEmmy said... "If there is an exact tie, the winner is chosen by "lots." That could be a coin toss, drawing a card from a deck, or drawing straws. Its in the MN constitution."
Can we have a robed priest call upon the Urim and Thummim?
I'd love to see Franken win this on a coin-toss, just so I can twit the Republicans with how obviously this was "God's will", but it would be even better if we could have a ceremony with a lot of "thypedu" (theistic hype, mon Dieu!)

@dcweatherboy, It depends what the challenges are ...

2008-11-20T14:50:12.131-05:00

@dcweatherboy,

It depends what the challenges are for. Is Coleman challenging the validity of ballots that had previously been counted for Franken? Or, is he challenging the failure to include ballots for him that had previously not been counted? The more of the former type of Coleman challenges, the better for Franken. The more of the latter, the better for Coleman. Without knowing more about the challenges, I don't think we can definitively say.

wv: rufert, the name of the new dog Obama promised his girls.

So it went to 156. 21% in.It looks like Coleman h...

2008-11-20T14:43:12.611-05:00

So it went to 156. 21% in.
It looks like Coleman has challenged 210 and Franken has challenged 143. I guess this is good since Franken has challenged 1/3 less than Coleman according to what Nate said. Does this make sense? Let me know! I am curious if I have this right!

http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/senate/

I assume many of the challenges will ultimately go...

2008-11-20T14:13:32.556-05:00

I assume many of the challenges will ultimately go against the challenger (many objections seem a stretch). That should be good news for Franken, because Coleman's people are challenging a lot of votes in St. Louis County, which would have narrowed the overall gap considerably.

Nice to see Minnesota values voter intent. Good on ya!

BTW, thanks Don et al for the updated total. This is more addictive than March Madness!

down to 168 now (before noon Thursday)

2008-11-20T13:14:20.517-05:00

down to 168 now (before noon Thursday)

Squirrel -Assumptions are, of course, the source o...

2008-11-20T09:54:04.599-05:00

Squirrel -

Assumptions are, of course, the source of inaccuracies in these projections. And all assumptions are, by definition, not true. But we are forced to make assumptions one way or the other, no matter how tough or treacherous it may be to do so, to make any guess as to the meaning of the data that have come in so far. If we quote the counts as listed in the Star Tribune, we are implicitly assuming that every challenged ballot will be thrown out. I find this assumption to be no more legitimate than the assumption that they will all be reinstated - or that 25% of them will be reinstated. And it is interesting to see the great impact that varying these assumptions has on our interpretation of the data.

LIZARD PEOPLE/PALIN 2012!

2008-11-20T09:18:41.349-05:00

LIZARD PEOPLE/PALIN 2012!

One reason the Republicans are so desperate to kee...

2008-11-20T09:02:59.333-05:00

One reason the Republicans are so desperate to keep Franken out is because he has advocated a number of times on his radio show for the repeal of Taft-Hartley. I believe he has every intention on making this an issue should the EFCA pass. The reason this scares the Republicans to death is because Taft-Hartley allows states to enact so-called "right to work" laws.

Observing this from outside the US I must admit th...

2008-11-20T04:35:03.186-05:00

Observing this from outside the US I must admit that this is finally a demonstration of the core principles of a representative democracy where every single vote (cast legally and in a clear enough way) must count...

wish the same principles had been applied in 2000 in Florida already to prevent the humiliation of democracy advocates around the globe and to spare us the last eight years of incompetence and bigotry!

Mark Ludwick:You're leaving out the fact that eith...

2008-11-20T03:29:12.056-05:00

Mark Ludwick:
You're leaving out the fact that either campaign can challenge ballots that were previously NOT counted as well. According to http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2008/11/19_challenged_ballots/
some ballots (or at least 1 anyway) have been challenged by BOTH campaigns (both ovals were filled, so it was previously not counted).

Given that and the fact that the campaign reps could have vastly different "standards" for what to challenge, I think it is rather treacherous to try to guess what will happen with the challenged ballots.

It should be safe to assume that each candidate will "gain" some votes from the ballots they challenged. Trying to guess at what rate they will gain (and if one side will gain at a higher rate) is gonna be pretty tough.

Go, Al

2008-11-20T02:34:00.845-05:00

Go, Al

Jimmy Kimmel just called nate a wiener .

2008-11-20T01:20:40.446-05:00

Jimmy Kimmel just called nate a wiener .

Comments on FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: [UPDATED] On First Day of Recount, Franken Gains N...

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short story: dcweatherboy has it right. there are...

Frankin is now leading at a rate of 2.83 votes per...

I know you guys would like to predict out who wins...

Looks as though someone already did what I just as...

Nate,I'm sure I'm not the first to wonder whether ...

Assume that Coleman says "Hey, that vote that was ...

Steve,Don't forget about the challenged ballots. ...

A squeaker Franken projected to lose by 38 votes ...

The Coleman campaign has increased the rate of the...

OleEmmy said... "If there is an exact tie, the win...

@dcweatherboy, It depends what the challenges are ...

So it went to 156. 21% in.It looks like Coleman h...

I assume many of the challenges will ultimately go...

down to 168 now (before noon Thursday)

Squirrel -Assumptions are, of course, the source o...

LIZARD PEOPLE/PALIN 2012!

One reason the Republicans are so desperate to kee...

Observing this from outside the US I must admit th...

Mark Ludwick:You're leaving out the fact that eith...

Go, Al

Jimmy Kimmel just called nate a wiener .

Comments on FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: [UPDATED] On First Day of Recount, Franken Gains N...

forex systems trading forex auto forex trading for...

酒店經紀人, 菲梵酒店經紀, 酒店經紀, 禮服酒店上班, 酒店小姐兼職, 便服酒店經紀, ...

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short story: dcweatherboy has it right. there are...

Frankin is now leading at a rate of 2.83 votes per...

I know you guys would like to predict out who wins...

Looks as though someone already did what I just as...

Nate,I'm sure I'm not the first to wonder whether ...

Assume that Coleman says "Hey, that vote that was ...

Steve,Don't forget about the challenged ballots. ...

A squeaker Franken projected to lose by 38 votes ...

The Coleman campaign has increased the rate of the...

OleEmmy said... "If there is an exact tie, the win...

@dcweatherboy, It depends what the challenges are ...

So it went to 156. 21% in.It looks like Coleman h...

I assume many of the challenges will ultimately go...

down to 168 now (before noon Thursday)

Squirrel -Assumptions are, of course, the source o...

LIZARD PEOPLE/PALIN 2012!

One reason the Republicans are so desperate to kee...

Observing this from outside the US I must admit th...

Mark Ludwick:You're leaving out the fact that eith...

Go, Al

Jimmy Kimmel just called nate a wiener .

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