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Home > Statistics Every Writer Should Know > The Stats Board > Discusssion

2000 election
Message posted by S.Q. Jing on November 14, 2000 at 12:00 AM (ET)

In recent days, Floria is the foucus of US to see who will be the next President of US. Media reported that due to the poorly designed ballot, Gore may have been robbed of the approximately 1700 votes or, whatever, so and so votes. what is the basis for people talking about this in terms of statistical analysis? I would appreciate it if somebody can give me an explanation.
thank you.


READERS RESPOND:
(In chronological order. Most recent at the bottom.)

Re: 2000 election
Message posted by JG on November 14, 2000 at 12:00 AM (ET)

Statistical analysis and sampling theory allows us to make make probabilistic statements about populations from sample data. In fact, political polling, market research, etc. is based on this principle. The simplest versions of this idea are what happens when we toss a fair coin, what it means that a die is loaded, etc. Thus, given the general resulsts, it is obvious that most of the spoiled ballots as well as most of the Buchanon votes in west palm beach were meant for Gore. That is, it is 99% certain that if a voter was confused between Gore - who got 50% of the vote - and Buchanon - who got about 1% of the vote - he probably meant to vote for Gore.
We can think of the general result as a sample and the spoiled ballots as a population.


i disagree...you flaming liberal
Message posted by jimmy on January 4, 2001 at 12:00 AM (ET)

i disagree....you say that these florida counties say that 99% of the votes that people were confused over should have went to gore. if you'll look at the previous election results from these counties, the percentage vote for buchanan is a very logical and comparable number. i think that compulsive liars like al gore are just making things seem worse than they actually are.



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