5 posts tagged “election”

I cannot go to sleep, I am glued to the TV watching the results.  They are saying on Fox News that we may not know who controls the Senate tonight, but it is possible that we will.  I am going to give it at least another hour.  

Make sure your hanging chad is counted!  Go vote!

2006-11-07

Well tomorrow is the big day and we will finally know if Al-Qaeda will be celebrating a Democrat victory or if they will they be forced to stay on the run.  Well if you listen to the polls and main stream media then it is a lock for the Democrats.  So how accurate are these polls?  Well it depends...

One interesting feature is that a margin of zero (a tied poll) produces a 50-50 split in wins with remarkable accuracy. There is nothing I did statistically to force the black trend line to go through the "crosshairs" at the (0, .5) point in the graph, but it comes awfully close. So a tied poll really does predict a coin-flip outcome.

The probability of a win rises or falls rapidly as the polls move away from a margin of zero. By the time we see a 10 point lead in the poll for the Dem, about 90% of the Dems win. When we see a 10 point margin for the Rep, about 90% of Reps win. That symmetry is also not something I forced with the statistics-- it represents the simple and symmetric pattern in the data.

More practically, it means that polls rarely miss the winner with a 10 point lead, but they DO miss it 10% of the time.

A 5 point lead, on the other hand, turns out to be right only about 60-65% of the time. So bet on a candidate with a 5 point lead, but don't give odds. And for 1 or 2 point leads (as in some of our closer races tomorrow) the polls are only barely better than 50% right in picking the winner. That should be a sobering thought to those enthused by a narrow lead in the polls. Quite a few of those "leaders" will lose. Of course, an equal proportion of those trailing in the polls will win.

So read the polls-- they are a lot better than nothing. But don't take that 2 point lead to the bank. That is a failure to appreciate the practical consequences of the margin for error.

The good news is after tomorrow we will not have to listen to anymore polls, at least for a while.

Straw Election Hat and American Flag

I love Early voting.  Now all I have to do is sit back and wait for the results to come in.  I love election time!  This will be an interesting election, will the Republicans hang on or will the Democrats gain control?  I personally think the Republicans will maintain control, but unlike the MSM I am not ready to call it yet.