A Mathematician Looks at the Election: Does Bush have a Mandate?

[cquark]

Well-known mathematician and author of Innumeracy, John Paulos, has an article about the numbers in the latest election and whether all the hype about a Bush mandate means anything.

George Bush's election has generated far too many ill-founded conclusions about the US electorate. Despite Bush's assertions to the contrary, the voters certainly did not give him a mandate to further "traditional moral values" (or, indeed, to do anything else).

No deep theorem in arithmetic is needed to see that the 51% of the electorate who voted for him constitute a bare majority. The outcome looks even more questionable in the electoral college. Bush received approximately 130,000 more votes than John Kerry in Ohio, so if 65,000 Bush voters in the state had switched, we'd now be talking about president-elect Kerry.

Looking back over recent elections strengthens the view that no seismic realignment of the electorate has occurred. Of the last four presidential elections, the Democratic candidate has received a greater popular vote in three and a greater electoral vote in two.

Excuse my mathematician's obsession with coin flips, but consider this. There is a large bloc of people who will vote for the Republican candidate no matter what, and a similarly reliable Democratic bloc of roughly the same size. There is also a smaller group of voters who either do not have fixed opinions or are otherwise open to changing their vote.

To an extent, these latter people's votes (and thus elections themselves) are determined by chance (external events, campaign gaffes, etc).

So what conclusion would we draw about a coin that landed heads two or three times out of four flips (or about a sequence of two or three Democratic victories in the last four elections)? The answer, of course, is that we would draw no conclusions at all.

One reason we tend to draw far-reaching conclusions about elections is the charming superstition that significant events must be the consequence of significant events.

This psychological foible is illustrated by an experiment in which a group of subjects is told that a man parked his car on a hill. It then rolled into a fire hydrant. A second group is told that the car rolled into a pedestrian.

The members of the first group generally view the event as an accident; the members of the second generally hold the driver responsible. People are more likely to attribute an event to an agent than to chance if it has momentous or emotional implications. Likewise with elections.

Another argument against the claim that the electorate has undergone a drastic change derives from so-called statistical regression models. [clink on link above for discussion of Fair's statistical regression model.]

 

[maddogchen]

thats nice, try convincing Bush of that.

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: maddogchen
thats nice, try convincing Bush of that.

I think that would be difficult. Didn't he say the word "mandate" in reference to him losing the popular vote in 2000?

 

[Pliablemoose]

I agree, it was a coin toss & it landed on the edge, the "mandate" could be construed as congress having a Republican majority though...

 

[Alistar7]

Thanks, found the mathematician's email, asked him for the mathematical definition of sin, and for his opinion on the intelligence level of anyone who thought that was even possible. Waiting for his response so that I can forward it to cyclowizard........

 

[Uhtrinity]

Well, duh 😉

 

[Red Dawn]

Originally posted by: Alistar7
Thanks, found the mathematician's email, asked him for the mathematical definition of sin, and for his opinion on the intelligence level of anyone who thought that was even possible. Waiting for his response so that I can forward it to cyclowizard........

Well you know vwry well that CsycoWizard, being a professional student..err..reseacher, would just find some report from Anal Roberts University and use it to try and debunk the mathematician's claim.

 

[CaptnKirk]

Recently Bush said he wanted to unite those who had not voted for him in the election.

When asked what he ment by 'Unite', he said he mis-spoke.

He actually said 'Ignite'.

 

[BaliBabyDoc]

Originally posted by: Pliablemoose
I agree, it was a coin toss & it landed on the edge, the "mandate" could be construed as congress having a Republican majority though...

Unlikely, there was a perfect storm of sorts for the Democrats:

1) Mass retirement of shady (Breaux-LA), senile (Hollings-SC), approaching senility (Gram-FL), downright crazy (Miller-GA), and busy doing his hair (Edwards) southern Senators was going to be difficult to overcome.

2) DNC was largely focused on the White House since they had little faith in capturing enough House or Senate seats.

3) Many Dems ran as far and as fast as possible AWAY from Kerry and the national party. On the flipside, many GOPie candidates were tossing Bush's salad. Even bad teams can beat good individual talent.

Toss in some quality fear mongering: gays, terrorists, OBL (oh not him), Muslims in groups larger than 2, stem cells, and fuel efficient/low emission cars . . . and you've got a prescription for a fake mandate provided by a slim majority of the voting population.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: BaliBabyDoc

Originally posted by: Pliablemoose
I agree, it was a coin toss & it landed on the edge, the "mandate" could be construed as congress having a Republican majority though...

Unlikely, there was a perfect storm of sorts for the Democrats:

1) Mass retirement of shady (Breaux-LA), senile (Hollings-SC), approaching senility (Gram-FL), downright crazy (Miller-GA), and busy doing his hair (Edwards) southern Senators was going to be difficult to overcome.

2) DNC was largely focused on the White House since they had little faith in capturing enough House or Senate seats.

3) Many Dems ran as far and as fast as possible AWAY from Kerry and the national party. On the flipside, many GOPie candidates were tossing Bush's salad. Even bad teams can beat good individual talent.

Toss in some quality fear mongering: gays, terrorists, OBL (oh not him), Muslims in groups larger than 2, stem cells, and fuel efficient/low emission cars . . . and you've got a prescription for a fake mandate provided by a slim majority of the voting population.

to to mention texas "redistricting"

 

[Pliablemoose]

Wonder if they're going to stop @ Texas...