Don't panic over Minnesota - we're probably still going to win!

[backscatter712]

How do I know? Why just ask our mathematically minded friend Nate Silver over at fivethirtyeight.com!

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/amid-epidemic-of-challenges-coleman.html

According to the latest counts provided by the Star Tribune and the Minnesota Secretary of State, Republican Norm Coleman appears to have expanded his narrow lead over Al Franken on Day 4 of the recount process. The Star Tribune now puts Coleman's lead at 180 votes, and the Secretary of State, 167 votes. (The Star Tribune's tally appears to be inclusive of all of the Secretary of State figures and is probably the more authoritative estimate). Coleman's lead had been 215 votes before the recount process began, but had become as small as 115-120 votes at other stages of the recount process.

It is unclear, however, whether the running counts provided by the Star Tribune and Secretary of State are any longer providing useful information. This is because the percentage of challenged ballots has now reached epidemic levels. Among the relatively small number of ballots added today to the Secretary of State's nightly estimate, the Coleman campaign challenged 14.2 ballots for every 10,000 cast, and the Franken campaign 12.2 for every 10,000 cast. This rate of challenges was almost twice that observed in Friday's counting, and 4-5 times as much as in the first two days of ballot counting on Wednesday and Thursday.


...


What I am suggesting, in other words, is that Ramsey County, with its lower rate of challenges, may represent the more natural state of affairs, and that Franken is in fact likely to gain quite a bit of ground in Hennepin and Saint Louis counties once challenges in those jurisdictions are resolved. Remember, either Coleman or Franken may wind up challenging potential Franken undervotes, depending on the initial ruling of the local elections judge. Likewise, either Franken or Coleman may wind up challenging potential Coleman undervotes.

...


Until such time as the the state changes its reporting process, or the incidence of challenges drops to a healthier level (such as was observed on Wednesday and Thursday), the running counts reported by the Star Tribune and the Secretary of State should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

In other words, it's gonna take a while for the challenged ballots to wind their way through the process and get resolved, and the large number of challenged ballots are monkeying with the reported counts we're seeing in the news. Once the challenges are resolved, the counts may end up quite different, hopefully in our favor.

Remember Al Franken's cheer... What do we want? PATIENCE!!! When do we want it? NOW!!!

[breadandwine]

1. As they say, remain calm. Do not panic. The landing craft will be explained shortly.

This news doesn't sit well with me. There may be excuses and explanations but by hook or crook Coleman is holding on to his lead with fewer and fewer votes left to count to make up the difference.

[wellstone dem]

2. I don't think this analysis is quite right

Franken challengers will not challenge any vote the judge assigns to Franken, same with Coleman.

The only vote that either may challenge are the "other" votes. Either votes for TP candidates, or where the judge says did not intend to vote for either.

Both parties are making very questionable challenges. examples from both parties below

http://blogs.twincities.com/politics/2008/11/want_to_see_some_more_ballots.html
http://blogs.twincities.com/politics/2008/11/want_to_see_some_ballots.html

The good news is that while Coleman widened the gap on Saturday, he also went ahead in challenges.

If you take the vote difference of 180 and subtract the difference in challenges, 28, the difference is 152. This assumes that most of the challenges have been to votes assigned to coleman or Franken. If one party has challenged more of the "other" votes it will make a difference.

Unfortunately, this doesn't look to good for Franken, but it is still possible, and many votes still to be counted in Ramsey and Hennepin counties.

On the otherhand, what a great check of Minnesota voting procedures. Many, many counties are coming up with no change from election night.

The main defect identified is the absentee ballot system. This may still be the defining piece of the puzzle, depending on how the election board (and maybe the courts) decide to handle these.

[backscatter712]

5. The number of challenges by itself is enough to potentially swing the election.

And with Coleman throwing so many challenges, it is likely that it's making him look better than he actually is doing. Sure both campaigns are throwing a lot of challenges, but what looks like what happened is that Coleman started throwing heavy numbers of probably frivolous challenges, then Franken got wise to it and started throwing more challenges in return. So Coleman got more of a lead, but won't gain further votes now that Franken's doing the same thing.

I guess we won't find out for sure what's going on until the challenges are resolved, probably some time in December.

[MineralMan]

3. I've stopped stressing about this.

Some years ago, the Twins were in the World series. I can't remember which year. Since my wife is from the Twin Cities (we've sinced moved there) we were following the series. Well, the seventh game was being played, and the score was tied at the end of the 9th inning.

My wife said, "Oh, heck...let's just go to bed. Both teams are equally good. It doesn't really matter."

We'll know who won sometime around the 19th of December. It will be punishingly close, and there will be court cases before it's finally resolved.

The bottom line is that we have Barack Obama in the White House, 57-59 Senators on our side, and a dominating majority in the House. We've won this series, and the outcome of the Minnesota race isn't really going to affect much at all.

I campaigned for Franken. I caucused twice for Franken. I'd like Franken to win. If he doesn't, though, it will make no difference in what gets done in the next few years.

We won! That's the feeling I want, and I'm not going to let this ultra-close race get in the way of my enjoyment of the victory.

[PeaceNikki]

4. Nate Silver's analysis has proven to be solid.

:thumbsup:

[backscatter712]

6. INTERESTING: Ballots clearly marked with votes for McCain and Franken are being challenged...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/23/11419/809/708/665429

While FoxNews is doing its best to smear Al Franken by questioning some of his challenges of poorly marked ballots, (while ignoring the fact that Coleman is doing the same thing), the Coleman camp kicked it up a notch and did the unthinkable.

Coleman is now challenging ballots that were clearly marked for McCain for president and Franken for Senate--because anybody who voted McCain HAD to have meant to vote for Coleman!!!

That's right folks. If you live in Minnesota and voted for John McCain, according to Norm Coleman, there is no way you could have voted for Al Franken. Your ballot is now jeopardized!

Let's hope the judges that handle the challenges don't have their heads up their asses...

[IDemo]

8. Question for Coleman: wouldn't the reverse be applicable as well?

Wouldn't a ballot clearly marked for Franken mean the voter actually meant to vote for Obama???

[backscatter712]

12. Hey, that logic and reason doesn't work on Republicans!

Didn't you know, they're immune!

[backscatter712]

7. WOOT! More math from Nate Silver!

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/projection-franken-to-win-recount-by-27.html

Yeah, I know, ABP, but definitely relevant to this thread.

Projection: Franken to Win Recount by 27 Votes

As we wrote yesterday evening, the ever-increasing number of challenged ballots in Minnesota is making it more and more difficult to determine the extent to which Al Franken is in fact gaining ground in the state's recount process. An analysis of precinct-by-precinct returns available on the Secretary of State's website, however, suggests that Franken's position is somewhat stronger than it appears, and that he may in fact be the favorite to prevail in the recount process.

Consider the following. In precincts where no challenges have been issued (these are the only precincts in which, in some sense, the results of the recount can be considered to be final and "official") Franken has gained a total of 34 votes, and Coleman a total of 6 votes, for a net gain by Franken of 28 votes. Moreover, in precincts where just 1 challenge has been issued, Franken has gained a net of 31 votes on Coleman, and in precincts where exactly 2 challenges have been issued, Franken has gained a net of 32 votes on Coleman.

[mdmc]

9. kick

thanks for the link

[BlooInBloo]

10. It's funny because you chose to excerpt a math-free portion of the blog post.

Here's the math:

"We can address this phenomenon more systematically by means of a regression analysis. In the regression, we are attempting to predict a variable I've defined as franken_net, which is the net gain by Franken per 10,000 ballots cast in that precinct. The independent variables considered in the regression are as follows:

t: the proportion of the two-way vote received by Franken in the initial count (e.g. excluding votes for third parties)

c_f: the number of challenges initiated by the Franken campaign per 10,000 ballots counted in that precinct

c_c: the number of challenges initiated by the Coleman campaign per 10,000 ballots counted in that precinct

In addition, the regression analysis contains interaction terms between each combination of two variables, as well as an interaction term for all three variables, all of which are statistically significant. The regression is weighted by the square root of the number of ballots cast in that precinct."


EDIT: Clarified subject.

[backscatter712]

11. Ow! I think I sprained my brain!

Statistics was not my strongest subject in college. Nate's better at that sort of thing than I am, or than most people, so I posted the translation into English.

[BlooInBloo]

13. That's ok. It's really not a stats-based post. It's just linear algebra...

mixed with Nate's mathematical creativity, and baked at 400 degrees for 2.5 hours.

Just remember the following phrase: "minimize the 2-norm of Ax-b". That's all Nate was talking about in the post - a simple 1-variable minimization calculus problem.