“Don’t buy a single vote more than necessary.
I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.”
—Joseph P. Kennedy
While I doubt that any scientifically-oriented pollster has an algorithm to calculate the odds of so many major voting events resulting in virtual dead heats, I can assure you, the probability is almost zero.
Think about it.
This isn’t like a coin toss, where every toss has a 50-50 chance of coming up heads or tails. No matter how many heads come up in a row, the next toss will still have 50-50 odds of coming up heads or tails. That’s experimentally provable. Try it. I did. The more tosses, the closer the results conform to the 50-50 probability. In ten tosses, you might get 3 of one and 7 of the other, but in 1000 tosses, you can bet it’ll be very, very close to 500 heads and 500 tails. 50-50 results increase with the number of tosses!
Now we come to voting. Many fail to grasp that winning an election by, let’s say, 52-48% doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a true 4% difference. If side “A” had received just 2% fewer votes (50%), it would be a tie because that 2% likely would go to side “B,” resulting in “B” receiving 50% as well.
A 51-49% result would be even more likely a statistical tie given voting errors, counting irregularities, and plain ol’ fraud.
So how is it that so many elections result in a near tie? Think about the “Brexit” referendum. How plausible is it that the UK, with a voting age population over 50 million, is so evenly divided that, right down to the end, no one was able to accurately predict the result? How plausible is it that voters here in the US are so evenly divided? It is almost weirdly improbable. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen now and then. But with this frequency? Think of past elections you followed. Primaries. Referendum. Even weekly political polling defies probabilities!
Take the Clinton/Trump divide. With the number of people who hate Trump: “Never Trump” people, women against Trump, Hispanics against Trump, African-Americans against Trump, the media onslaught and all the rest, how is it that in poll after poll there is not even a 10% lead of the Clinton campaign? If you believe the media hype about how many voters claim to hate Trump, is this plausible? Mrs. Clinton ought to be leading Mr. Trump by 30+%! But if there is only a 6% lead for Mrs. Clinton, as polling averages seem to suggest, that’s just a 3% actual difference the Trump camp needs to make up. Well within the so-called polling margin of error.
Why are we not seeing true “landslide” victories? Where candidate “A” wins by a huge margin. Where a candidate takes 46 or more of the 50 States?
There’s something Twilight Zoney here. Skewed results? Skewed reporting? Cheating? Wishful thinking? Interviewees, for fear of seeming politically incorrect, reluctant to admit they actually like Trump? Or is it out-and-out fraud?
Fraud? One theory is that if polls showed one side or the other leading by 30% or more, voter passion would cool off pretty fast. Almost as fast as media ratings would plunge. Which means ad revenue would fall off as well. Nothing whips up passion and media ratings like a good, close, mud-slinging race like Clinton/Trump. Or like “Brexit” did. All commercial interests are happiest when the polls suggest a difference under 10%.
Knowing how easily it is done, do the media, polling organizations, fund raisers and the pundit class publish carefully manipulated polling data for their own benefit?
My grandparents, in the face of solid proof, still refused to believe that wrestling matches, “The $64,000 Question” and other contests, ball games, horse races, court trials, politics, and yes, elections, could be “fixed” or jury-rigged. Perhaps this is one reason I, on the other hand, have never been deluded by such Pollyannaish notions.
