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Re: Electoral college probablities
Posted:
Nov 2, 2000 4:26 PM
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In article <3A002FEC.4AEE86C3@echip.com>,
Bob Wheeler <bwheeler@echip.com> wrote:
>If p is the popular vote proportion and if p is
>the same for all states, then the expected
>electoral total is 540p with a variance of
>540p(1-p). Assuming normality, this gives the
>probability of erroneous electoral result as 0.32
>when p=0.51, 0.085 when p=0.52, and 0.03 when
>p=0.53. Hence, a popular-electoral mismatch seems
>unlikely when the popular vote exceeds 50% by two
>or more points.
Unless I misunderstand your assumptions here, this is wrong.
You seem to be saying that each state has probability p of
a "correct" electoral vote. This would work if the
state's electoral vote was decided by one randomly chosen
voter, but that's not what happens.
The problem as I interpreted it had p = 0.5, i.e. each
voter votes "randomly" with equal probabilities for the
two candidates. And the conclusion is that the probability
of a mismatch is about 0.2.
Robert Israel israel@math.ubc.ca
Department of Mathematics http://www.math.ubc.ca/~israel
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2
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