I’m not sure why I’m so masochistic as to beat this dead horse, but I am astounded that some have difficulty grasping the point I make.
What can I do to convince? USE ALL-CAPS? Boldface? Colorado and New Hampshire have almost identical electoral weight, given the present-day split of state redness and the the assumption that GOP wins 269-269 tie. Alaska and Texas do not.
I tried to present this all clearly and rigorously. Compile any plausible list of swing states and examine cases. With the exception of the Colorado+Wisconsin parlay – which gives GOP victory when Wisconsin+New Hampshire does not – CO and NH have equal value. It’ll sound snarky but at this point I’m just curious what level of mathematics proficiency my detractors would claim.
The math involved is simple but (sorry) the point you seem to be making is trite. Sure I can big boldface too:
No, not based on present-day split of state redness. Based on a hypothetical shift to redness from the last election as an assumption, a very narrow assumption, out of the gate. And considering that those close to the national mean from the GOP direction are not in play but those no father on the Democratic side all are.
Did the boldface help make it clearer?
Depending on the close election Florida, Ohio, and even North Carolina might be in play. Two of them went to Obama last time. Ohio was within 1% of the nationwide result, Florida within 2%, and even North Carolina was within 5%. Shifting relative to the nationwide result by even 7% between elections is not outrageous. Those three are all realistically swing states in close election.
As comparison Nevada and Wisconsin were both more than 4% Bluer than the national norm in 2012. They were over 5 and over 6% more Blue than the nationwide norm in 2008.
No, there is no rational a priori reason to consider Nevada and Wisconsin swing states from Blue to Red but to consider all three of Florida, Ohio and North Carolina’s Redness as absolutes. One can imagine in a close election that individual states might move up or down by 5% in their relative to national norm positions. Thus Florida, Ohio and North Carolina are no less factors in a 50/50 election than are Nevada, Wisconsin and the rest.
Rank order may not be sticky election to election.
Yes. If the Democrats win Florida OR Ohio OR North Carolina then they are extremely likely to win the election, making Colorado and New Hampshire irrelevant. This is more or less implied in my post #5 above. Stated differently, in that case, the values of Colorado and New Hampshire are the same – zero each!
In the cases where the Democrats get none of afore-mentioned big swing states, the election will be close. Iowa and Nevada, with 6 votes each, would have equal value. The “curious arithmetic fact” is that Colorado and New Hampshire, with 9 or 4 evs, have the same value as those 6-ev states.
You’re free to deny that this arithmetic fact is “interesting” or “curious” – fine. YMMV, yadda yadda. But you seem to be denying that the arithmetic is correct. Wrong.
Duh!! Otherwise we could just poll Colorado: D.C. and the other 49 states would be irrelevant.
Having said that, state rednesss does not change quickly – I’d present numbers to demonstrate that but we’d need some general agreement about arithmetic first. Note that Nate Silver quanitifies part of this variation with his “elasticity” parameter. I did use elasticity to prepare a list of swing states, though the particular list is largely irrelevant to the “curious arithmetic fact.”
But if you’re 4 points down, you need the touchdown.
The point is that there is no likely scenario where Colorado’s 9 ev will have any more value than Iowa’s 6 ev. Yet there are plenty of likely scenarios where Virginia’s 13 or even Wisconsin’s 10 will win it for the GOP when Colorado’s 9 ev would not.
WI 10, CO 9, NH 4. Yet in almost all likely scenarios where the election is close enough for these states to matter, Colorado has the value of New Hampshire, despite that its raw EV count is almost as large as Wisconsin’s. “9 is closer to 4 than it is to 10” :eek:
Sorry if I’ve gotten snarky. Let’s assume you understand the arithmetic. Are you disputing that the arithmetic fact stated in the previous paragraph is “interesting”? Fine; can we just agree to disagree?
Silver is very clear that elasticity (having relatively lots of swing voters) does not mean that the state is likely to be a swing state.
Swingable elastic states turn on persuasion; swingable inelastic states go by turnout.
Silver has already calculated how fast state relative redness can change just between 08 and 12 here. From more Red by 15% to more Blue by 12. And that is with the same person running and winning. Colorado was relatively Red by 8% in 2000 and by 2008 had shifted by 10 Blueward. Virginia also had an 8% relative Blueward shift over that time, Indiana 9. And some the other way. Not so slow.
Yes, we can agree to disagree about how curious it is. The short version I guess is that if the GOP has a good day and win North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio, then the next state they are likely to win is Virginia. If they do then any of Colorado, Iowa, or New Hampshire is likely to be the potential tipping state. Pennsylvania a bit less likely. And others less likely than that. That some tipping states would be more than needed to just barely win I don’t find as curious as you do and we can leave that there.
My point stands. If you make the assumption that there will be a razor thin margin of difference in a presidential election, then any state can swing the victory to one party or the other. That is not an unusual observation.
If two teams with equal strength meet in the NCAA finals with one team down by a point and a shooter takes a shot at the buzzer, we can agree that the ultimate goal, the national championship, comes down to the particular shooter’s skills and the defense put against him. Is that a fair outcome without giving regard to the entirety of each team’s skill throughout the season, the tournament, and even the game? Probably not, but when you are that close, anything matters.
As such, it is not unusual that Colorado, New Hampshire, or 600 votes in Florida might be the difference, even if we say that nationally we shouldn’t care about New Hampshire. We might not care, but for the close results in ALL of the other states in the aggregate. Your observation, respectfully, is not all that insightful.
