Tuesday, October 27, 2020

 

Here is a toy for election obsessives!

 


 FiveThirtyEight.com is really the place to be for America's election-obsessed population these days (a group that seems to include nearly everyone I know).

 They have a great interactive tool right now (you can access it here) that allows you to decide the outcome for a state (or several) and see how that changes the candidates' chances.  

If you change nothing, the current likelihoods prevail-- right now, that is Biden with an 87% chance of prevailing, and Trump with 12% (the final 1% covers a tie). BUT, if you just flip Florida for Biden, his chances of winning the race skyrocket to over 99%.

 Which means that we could actually have a good idea of who won by late evening one week from today. If Florida is called for Biden (and Florida is a state that usually gets votes in quickly, at least in the broad aggregate), it means he almost certainly is going to win.


# posted by Mark Osler @ 1:00 AM
Comments:
Hmmm. Intriguing. If I flip FL and NC to red, I get Trump up to 45 percent chance. That can't be right, can it?
# posted by Blogger A Waco Farmer : 5:07 PM
 
Perhaps most telling: PA is a 90 point swing in chances to win. I guess if Trump gets past FL, PA represents the grand prize.
# posted by Blogger A Waco Farmer : 5:12 PM
 
Oh my God, I can't stop. This is amazing! What a time sink this is gonna be during the next week.
# posted by Anonymous Amy Garrou : 6:23 PM
 
WF-- I think that is right. Once you pick those two states, the algorithm reacts to that by upping Trump's chances everywhere else, since outperformed the polls. And it is true about PA. They don't call it the Keystone State for nothing.
# posted by Blogger Mark Osler : 6:38 PM
 
I just can't go down this path. In my mind polls make people complacent. "He" has ahead therefore if I am too busy my not voting won't matter. Part of the reason we get the government we sometimes deserve.
# posted by Blogger Christine : 8:42 AM
 
He has a substantial lead...
# posted by Blogger Christine : 8:42 AM
 
Mark--the algorithm is very smart (and sensitive). Of course, this is all new for people our age. One thing I notice watching sports and the ESPN tracker. You will have a team with a 96 percent chance of winning--and then the other team will score a touchdown and the chance goes down to 55 percent. I'm sure that is right according to the algorithm--but, as someone watching the game, if you tell me one team has a 96 percent chance to win at some point I am thinking something entirely different. In my mind, one score should not shift things so dramatically. And, again, not arguing with the math, I am just observing that my mind is hearing something different when I see 88 percent chance than what it really means.
# posted by Blogger A Waco Farmer : 12:47 PM
 
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