[CLUE-Talk] Iraq Stuph (More about the pres. then Iraq and longer then I intended...)

[Dave Hahn]

[snip]

> If Bush wins in 2004 without dispute then, grudgingly, I will recognize
> him as "my" president -- until then, he's just the resident as far as
> I'm concerned.
>
> Zonker

"Without dispute" - I'd like to hear about one presidential election where
there wasn't dispute.  It seems that people are either claiming that:
(1) Dead People are voting
(2) Mail in ballots are either not counted, counted twice or didn't arrive
on time
(3) The ballot was too difficult to understand
(4) The print was too small for some people to read
(5) If everyone voted so and so would have won/lost
(6) The vote was effected by a smear campaign that misinformed the voting
public
(7) The media presented a slanted opinion of the poll results and caused
people watching that hadn't voted to either not vote or vote differently
(8) The electoral college isn't representing what the American people want
(the theory of fractionalizing the electoral college votes to be
representative on a population basis)
(9) People don't understand how the electoral system works.  (So, does that
mean that people should be forced to have a functional understanding of the
election system before being allowed to vote? We require more education for
people to drive themselves to the grocery store then to participate in
selecting the leader of the country.  Of course, most people are willing to
be informed when the go to the store, the voting booth is another issue)

In many ways, the 2000 presidential election was a contest of who lost less,
not who won more.  The "first loser" being awarded the victory.

To that end, I found this analysis interesting:
(http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze3fs8i/air/whowon.html)

1. Introduction
    On November 7, 2000, Americans held an election to determine who would
be the next President of the United States. The four biggest vote getters
were Democratic candidate Al Gore with 50.16 million votes, Republican
candidate George W. Bush  with 49.82 million votes, Green Party candidate
Ralph Nader with 2.78 million votes, and Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan
with 0.45 million votes. If Americans had chosen their President based on
who got the most votes nationwide, Al Gore would have been elected.
    Instead, Americans choose their President based on who wins the
electoral college. The winner of the popular vote in each state is awarded
that state's electoral votes, which is equal to the number of Members of
Congress that state has. The number of electoral votes currently ranges from
3 for low-population states like Wyoming to 54 for the most populous state,
California. There are a total of 538 electoral votes, and a candidate must
win a majority (270) in order to be declared President of the United States.
If no candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the winner is decided by
the U.S. House of Representatives.
    In the 2000 election, the results were so inconclusive--in particular
for the state of Florida--that the winner of the election was not finalized
until December 13, 2000, when Al Gore conceded to George W. Bush. Even then,
many Americans were not confident that this result was correct. In an
attempt to boost the confidence of the electorate, we set out to analyze the
election data to determine who really won.

2. Methods and Results
    We used six different methods to determine the winner based on the
number of votes cast for the four major candidates in all fifty states plus
the District of Columbia.
    The first method (listed as "current" in the table below) is that used
today in the United States, where the winner of the popular vote in a state
receives all the state's electoral votes. George W. Bush wins using this
method with 271 electoral votes (1 more than necessary).
    In the next method ("popular"),  the 538 electoral votes are distributed
according to how many votes each candidate received nationwide. No one
achieved a majority (270 electoral votes) using this method.
    Many pundits expressed the opinion that votes for Ralph Nader resulted
in Al Gore losing the election. To test this theory, we gave all of Nader's
votes to Gore and all of Buchanan's votes to Bush ("two-way"). This resulted
in Gore taking Florida and New Hampshire from Bush, giving Gore victory with
a total of 296 electoral votes.
    A few pundits expressed the opinion that Pat Buchanan harmed George W.
Bush's election chances. To test this theory, we gave all of Buchanan's
votes to Bush but let Nader keep his votes ("three-way"). This resulted in
Bush taking Iowa, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin from Gore, giving Bush a
total of 301 electoral votes.
    Some pundits believe that the winner-take-all method of assigning a
state's electoral votes is needlessly destabilizing. To test this, we
apportioned a fraction of each state's electoral votes to each candidate,
depending on the percentage of the popular vote each received
("fractional"). We then rounded each candidate's nationwide results to the
nearest whole electoral vote. None of the candidates received a majority of
the electoral votes using this method.
    The final method assigned two electoral votes to the winner of the
popular vote in each state, and apportioned the other (whole) electoral
votes to each of the candidates depending on their percentage of the vote in
that state ("proportional"). Using this method, George W. Bush obtained 272
electoral votes, two more than necessary for victory.


      Method Gore Bush Nader Buchanan Winner
      Millions of votes cast 50.16 49.82 2.78 0.45 Gore
      Current 267 271 0 0 Bush
      Popular 262 260 14 2
      Two-Way 296 242 0 0 Gore
      Three-Way 237 301 0 0 Bush
      Fractional 260 261 15 2
      Proportional 259 272 7 0 Bush
      Mean±Sigma 263.5±19.0 267.8±19.5 6.0±7.1 0.7±1.0
      Deviation (sigma) -0.34 -0.11 -37.18 -269.30
      Confidence 36.6% 45.5% 6.40E-301 % *

    Since the six methods produced inconsistent results, we were forced to
average the data in order to determine the real winner. This averaging gave
267.8±19.5 electoral votes to George W. Bush, 263.5±19.5 electoral votes to
Al Gore, 6.0±7.1 electoral votes to Ralph Nader, and 0.7±1.0 electoral votes
to Pat Buchanan. The deviation from the required 270 electoral votes
was -0.11 sigma for Bush, -0.34 sigma for Gore, -37.18 sigma for Nader,
and -269.30 sigma for Buchanan. We solved the normal error integral (also
known as the error function) numerically in order to determine the
confidence level that each of the candidates achieved the required 270
electoral votes. We lacked the computing resources to calculate the error
function for Buchanan's -269.30 sigma deviation.

3. Conclusions
    In this paper we analyzed the results of the 2000 United States
presidential election. Republican candidate George W. Bush won the election
at the 45.5% confidence level. Democratic candidate Al Gore won the election
at the 36.6% confidence level. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader won the
election at the 6.40E-301 % confidence level. We were unable to calculate
the confidence level of Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan's victory.