re: #420 lostlakehiker

It’s a model, and all models depart from reality, but the idea is to assume that the election is tight, because the nation is evenly divided. Nobody can influence a landslide, after all.

Now, how to model a tight election? Assume that all the voters flip a coin and then vote, except for you. You think it over, and decide.

Now, what are the chances that the election will be tied, and your vote gives your candidate a 1 point lead and so he wins? Slim, but slim in proportion to the square root of the number of voters. This goes back to the binomial distribution, and the fact that the mass is mostly found within one standard deviation.

Think of it like this: ten thousand and one flips of a coin. What is the chance that it’s tied 5000-5000, before the last flip? More like 1 in 100, than like 1 in 10000. Or, if you want more accuracy, zero point 8 percent.

Isn’t this scenario enormously contrived? And in it isn’t an individual voter in a small state still far more likely to end up deciding the outcome for their state and thus the election as a whole? In other words, according to your model, doesn’t every quadrupling of the population result in a doubling of the odds against any particular vote having a meaningful chance of determining the outcome?