Michigan

Michigan is competing with Florida for the Most Confusing Primary award. Both state parties moved their primaries forward to before Super Tuesday (for which they will presumably rot in hell) and have been punished by their national superiors.

On the Democrat side, the state has been stripped of all its 156 delegates and Obama and Edwards have pulled their names from the ballot. State officials expect their delegates to eventually be reinstated so the result here may ultimately count towards the final tally. Support Edwards or Obama? You can’t write in their names, because state officials have declared write-ins invalid and will throw out your ballot. If at least 15% of voters vote for “Uncommitted” in any district, they’ll  be represented by an unpledged delegate if the delegates are reinstated. Clinton will win this one by a long way, but look for Kucinich to pick up a slice of the anti-Hillary pie, since his is the only other high profile name on the ballot (unless you count Gravel).

Another option bandied about is for Democrats to vote in the open Republican primary for Mitt Romney (supposedly the weakest viable Republican). Up for grabs for the Republicans are 30 delegates (which will increase to 60 if the RNC rescind their punishment), which are allocated in the sort of overcomplicated way that characterizes this strange process. Although polling is very volatile – five candidates have led in different polls since August – the most recent show Romney and McCain duking it out for top honors with Huckabee close behind:

	Romney	McCain	Huckabee	Paul	Giuliani	Thompson	Unknown/Other
RCP Average	26%	25%	16%	6%	6%	5%	15%
Dec-Jan Average	23%	22%	17%	6%	9%	5%	19%

It’s a tough one to call, but I expect McCain will pick up more independents and pip Romney at the post.

What the Polls got right

After Clinton’s “win from behind” in New Hampshire, those who weren’t claiming Diebold conspiracies were left wondering how the polls could get it so wrong. One popular way the media uses to report polling data is by using the Real Clear Politics average. I see two problems with the Real Clear Politics average that contributed to the discrepancy between the polls and the final result: the averages don’t report the proportion of undecideds and when there are many polls, the average will be over a very short period of time. Case in point, the final Real Clear Politics average for New Hampshire sampled polls taken spanning a period of two days (1/5 – 1/7). The problem is that all these polls were taken after Iowa, when Obama was riding a wave of hype after his caucus victory. Here’s a look at how the average of polls before Iowa (and after November) and the average of polls taken after Iowa compare to the final primary results. (NB: the data is from Real Clear Politics, but unlike them I’ve included an Other/Undecided column).

New Hampshire Polls Dec 2007 – Jan 2008
	Obama	Clinton	Edwards	Richardson	Other/Undecided	Margin
Final Result	36%	39%	17%	5%	3%	3%
Pre-Iowa	28%	33%	17%	7%	16%	5%
After Iowa	38%	30%	18%	6%	8%	-8%

The polls taken before Iowa, therefore, picked the margin between Clinton and Obama far more accurately than the polls taken after Obama’s success. But it’s the level of Undecideds that tell the story. Undecided is a very nebulous, poorly-defined category. Ignoring the minor candidates, an “undecided” voter sounds like one that could be equally likely to vote for either candidate. In reality this group could be very different indeed. Many, probably most, of the undecideds would in fact have a preference (be it slight or major) for either Obama or Clinton. What I suspect happened is that those tending Obama were convinced after his success in Iowa and those tending Clinton either voted for her anyway or were convinced the night before when she showed us she wasn’t just a robot programmed to become President. That would explain Obama’s increase (slightly overstated, perhaps due to hype) and the undecideds’ decrease after Iowa and why Clinton picked up the undecideds on polling day.

What is clear is that pollsters need to start examining the undecideds more closely. I propose pollsters split the Undecided column into the categories talked about above: “tending towards candidate x”. Suppose they had done that, this is what the above table may have looked like:

	Obama	Clinton	Edwards	Richardson	Other	Tend Clinton	Tend Obama
Final Result	36%	39%	17%	5%	3%
Pre-Iowa	28%	33%	17%	7%	2%	7%	7%
After Iowa	38%	30%	18%	6%	1%	7%	0%

Ultimately, the same polls that seem so inaccurate could have told the story of the primary if they had had a couple more categories.

I have a love-hate relationship with polls. As a politics junkie I find them fascinating, but they also contribute the politics as a game. Voters want to back a winner, so minor candidates (who may have interesting, novel ideas) are marginalized not because of these ideas, but because they “can’t win”.

To be useful, polls have to be designed well and reported well. A design flaw in the polls (no tending x category) and deficiencies in reporting (ignoring undecideds) both contributed to the controversy over New Hampshire.

Exit Polls Confirm Results Valid

After the New Hampshire ballot “controversy” a few people have commented that comparing exit polls to final results would be a good way to settle the issue. Here’s a comparison of the exit polls from the TV networks to the final results. CNN, CBS and MSNBC all seemed to be using the same poll.

Democrats:

	Biden	Richardson	Kucinich	Dodd	Clinton	Edwards	Obama	Gravel
Final	0%	5%	1%	0%	39%	17%	36%	0%
Fox	0%	5%	1%	0%	40%	17%	37%	0%
CNN etc.	0%	4%	1%	0%	39%	17%	37%	0%

Republicans:

	Hunter	Paul	Romney	Huckabee	McCain	Guiliani	Thompson
Final	1%	8%	32%	11%	37%	9%	1%
Fox	1%	9%	31%	12%	37%	9%	1%
CNN etc.	1%	8%	31%	11%	36%	9%	1%

The results are obvious: if there were voting or counting irregularities, they did not change the results to any significant degree.

Sources

A few people have asked for sources for the statistics. County election results can be found here. Here’s a list of exit polls. A breakdown of Diebold-counted and hand-counted districts is here.

Superdelegates and Edwards

Forget Clinton, Obama and superdelegates, John Edwards could well determine who wins the Democratic nomination. Despite Obama and Clinton returning reasonably equal results in Iowa and New Hampshire, Clinton has a commanding lead in the number of delegates who will vote for her at the convention. This is because of the superdelegates, party officials who can vote for whomever they like. Superdelegates account for 792 out of the 4040 delegates who will vote at the convention. Amongst those who have pledged support, Clinton has a commanding lead. Here are how the results currently stand:

	Pledged	Pledged (%)	Super	Super (%)	Total	Total (%)
Clinton	24	35.82%	159	59.77%	183	54.95%
Obama	25	37.31%	53	19.92%	78	23.42%
Edwards	18	26.87%	34	12.78%	52	15.62%
Richardson	0	0.00%	19	7.14%	19	5.71%
Kucinic	0	0.00%	1	0.38%	1	0.30%

If these trends are extrapolated, no candidate will have enough votes at the convention to form a majority. Clinton, by virtue of her superior superdelegate numbers, will be ahead of Obama by about 300 votes. She will require a far smaller proportion of Edwards’s delegates in order to form a majority:

	Super	Pledged	Total	To Win	% of Ed. to win
Clinton	473	1163	1637	384	39.44%
Obama	158	1212	1370	651	66.88%
Edwards	101	873	974	1047
Richardson	57	0	57	1964
Kucinic	3	0	3	2018

Indeed, Obama will need to pick up at least two thirds of Edwards’s delegates in order to seal the nomination. In reality, things will probably pan out slightly differently. Edwards is likely to gain smaller percentages of the vote in the coming states, closer to 10% than 20%. My understanding of the convention rules is that Edwards can either instruct his delegates to vote for another candidate or allow them to vote with their consciences. If he lets the delegates vote by their conscience, it is likely, in my opinion, that Hillary will win.

Should Edwards Drop Out?

With Edwards short on money and with no realistic chance of winning the nomination, there has been much speculation amongst Democrats as to whether Edwards should remain in the race. Supporters of both Clinton and Edwards seem to think their candidate would pick up the Edwards vote. Edwards himself as said he will remain in the race. It would definitely be in his interests to do so. So long as the tussle between Obama and Clinton remains close, Edwards will enter the DNC as kingmaker: his delegates will determine the nominee. Edwards will then be able to offer his delegates to either Clinton or Obama, perhaps in exchange for his name on the ticket as Vice President or a future cabinet position.

Obama needs to stay in touch with Clinton, forget about superdelegates, and concentrate on wooing Edwards. Edwards supporters should stick with him but make sure he knows who their second choice is.

Diebold and New Hampshire

At the completion of the New Hampshire primaries, certain elements are are claiming an “astonishing” discrepancy between the results tallied by hand and those tallied by Diebold machines. Naturally reddit jumped on the bandwagon as fast as possible. Here are the results as of 96% precincts reporting (NB: others include Biden, Gravel and Dodd, CNN didn’t provide info for the rest of the field when I collated the data. The rest accounted for about 1% of the vote):

	Hand	Diebold	Difference
Clinton	35.17%	40.71%	5.54%
Obama	39.20%	36.24%	-2.96%
Edwards	17.71%	16.97%	-0.74%
Richardson	5.64%	4.40%	-1.24%
Kucinich	1.89%	1.25%	-0.64%
Others	0.49%	0.44%	-0.05%

At first glance, the results seem to backup the conspiracy theorists. Is it possible that Clinton’s vote could be so much greater in the Diebold Districts and every other candidate slightly less without foul play? Has Diebold rigged the count in Hillary’s favor? Or is there something else at play?

Whilst Hand Districts are more numerous than Diebold Districts, they tend to be in less populous areas and far fewer votes are hand-counted than tallied by machine. Note that this table currently excludes the 9 Hand Districts and 2 Diebold Districts that have yet to report results.

	# of Districts	Votes Cast	Votes/Districts
Diebold	95	222,464	2341.73
Hand	131	56,812	433.68

The discrepency may just be a matter of demographics: urban voters may like Hillary more than rural voters. So what happens when we looks at similarly sized districts? Here are the results in districts where between 900 and 1200 votes were cast.

	Hand	Diebold	Difference
Clinton	35.90%	38.09%	2.19%
Obama	38.00%	37.47%	-0.53%

The effect is far smaller when comparing similar districts, but probably not enough to arrest the fears of conspiracy theorists. In the end, Clinton won because she was more popular in the large precincts which happen to be tallied by Diebold machines. Correlation, not causation seems more likely to me.

	Votes Cast in Precinct
	Under 1000	1000-2000	Over 2000
Clinton	36.26%	39.20%	41.25%
Obama	38.02%	36.84%	36.29%
Difference	-1.76%	2.36%	4.96%

There are so many variables in an election result that to put Hillary’s win down to jiggery-pokery without any real evidence is over the top. Demographics of the turnout and McCain siphoning Independents away from Obama at the last minute are infinitely more likely to have affected the than Diebold skullduggery.

For democracy to work, the system must be transparent and maintain the confidence of its participants. Proprietary voting machines fail both these tests. American, as far as I know, are still capable of counting, so should return exclusively to the paper ballot.