6 out of 6
Give me a break
So, you decided not to read the thread. Interesting choice.
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That’s the problem. The numbers are a little murky because the actual number of coin flips hasn’t been provided.
The Des Moines Register listed 6 coin flips that actually took place, and they stated that those coin flips were won by the Hillary surrogate/supporter present at that specific caucus.
The NPR story chose to claim some nameless Iowa Democratic Party official said, 'In fact, there were at least a dozen tiebreakers — and “Sen. Sanders won at least a handful”, but provided no examples of these alleged Sanders win. Did the NPR author verify the Iowa Democratic Party official’s claim? Or did they just accept whatever a party official told them?
IMHO, the Des Moines Register article wins the dual of proper journalistic reporting.
In regards to the actual coin flips, 18 people were involved in the 6 flips specified in the Des Moines Register article. 6 Bernie surrogates, 6 Hillary surrogates, and 6 tossers (that title should amuse the British readers). It’s not claimed that a Hillary surrogate called every flip, or that a Bernie surrogate called every flip. Neither is it claimed that the callers always called heads, or always called tails, or something between the two. Regardless of which surrogates called the flips, regardless of which side of the coin they chose, the end result is that Hillary won 6 out of 6 coin flips.
Given that every flip of a coin has a 50/50 chance of landing on one side or the other, plus the caller having a 50/50 chance of calling the correct side, there is a 100% chance that the coin flip will fairly decide a winner of each, and every, coin flip.
Has anyone from the Sanders camp challenged that statement? Because until someone makes that claim that there were six and only six coin tosses, this is a non-story. Yes, the story as written is not fully documented, but if all of the important parties accept the statement I’m not sure there’s any point in digging further.
We are agreed. Actual numbers not provided, situation is a little murky on those numbers.
I had to go digging for that article, but found it. You are correct that they list 6 coin flips. Note that the one cited at the beginning of the article lists the pricinct number (2-4 in Ames) and provide the outcome. The second is the tweet by Fernando Pienado, a univision reporter. He doesn’t list the precinct, but does include a video. The third is also a tweet with a video and lists the location as “Des Moines East High School”. The fourth is a tweet from some random person that just says someone else reports an unidentified precinct in Newton went to Hillary. The fifth is just a reply tweet to that one saying “same situation, same result in West Branch”. The sixth is a tweet with a video from West Davenport.
So two of the identified coin flips are just some random person saying the result on twitter, no video, no identification of the precinct, no official source. Still, 3 videos and a reporter from the newspaper citing the precinct number give 4 solids, which is better than not naming or identifying the party official.
You are correct that NPR’s article is very thin on information, including how they verified the results.
Fortunately, CNN has a better article (already posted above) that states that some of the precincts were using the Microsoft app to tally results, others relied on phone reporting. The ones in the database from the Microsoft app show 6 coin flips between Hillary and Bernie, but Bernie won 5 of the 6. A seventh coin flip between Bernie and O’Malley went to Bernie. So that has Bernie winning 7 out of 6 documented coin flips.
So one report had Hillary winning 6 of 6, but does not try to identify the total number of coin flips, it just reports some subset they encountered. Most of those appear not to be using the Microsoft app, and relied on phone reporting (and twitter). A different report has Bernie winning 5 out of 6 against Hillary and a seventh against O’Malley, and that has data recorded in the DNC database.
So did Hillary win 6 of six or only 1 of six? Actually, she won 6 out of 11 or 12, depending upon whether one of the ones reported in the Microsoft app is also one of the ones the Des Moines Register cited.
So we are agreed, there is little chance there was cheating.
So we are agreed on that.
Where we apparently disagree is on the value of the statement “6 of 6 coin flips”. You are saying that is a valid statement, I am saying that it is an incomplete record, and thus not significant and not valid. The whole premise of this thread was to assume there were only 6 coin flips and Hillary won them all. That is the meme that the NPR and CNN articles are debunking.
It’s like saying Trump won 1 out of 1 vote. Only if you look at New Hampshire and ignore Iowa. But Iowa has voted (through a caucus), and so there are 2 states to consider, so the valid way to assess it is that Trump won 1 out of 2 votes. Only mentioning the latest and ignoring the earlier vote is misleading.
Same thing for the coin tosses - only looking at a subset of 6 coin tosses is misleading, suggesting Hillary is incredibly lucky, when the truth is she got as close to 50 percent as the small number of incidents would allow.
And that is the point that **DSeid ** was making that you took issue with.
Yes, the Sanders camp did challenge the results. Events happened that raised questions and those questions NEEDED to be discussed and issues clarified.
*Sanders refuses to concede defeat in Iowa
By Eliza Collins 02/02/16 05:10 PM EST Updated 02/02/16 06:22 PM EST
Bernie Sanders isn’t ready to concede in Iowa just yet, citing reports that some precincts were decided by a flip of a coin.
In a news conference after a campaign event in New Hampshire, the Vermont senator was asked whether he was ready to concede to Hillary Clinton, who was reported to be the winner by The Associated Press on Tuesday afternoon. Clinton won by a razor-thin margin, with 49.9 percent of the delegate count, compared with Sanders’ 49.6 percent.
“We want to look at some of the numbers. Last that I saw it, we were four delegates down,” Sanders said. “It may be the case that some delegates were selected based on the flip of a coin and not the best way to do democracy,” he said, cautioning that he hadn’t had much time to analyze the results and didn’t want to misspeak.
It’s not clear how many delegates were awarded by coin tosses, a longstanding practice that can be used when an even number of caucus-goers are split between two candidates in precincts that have an odd number of delegates. The extra delegate goes to the winner of the coin toss.
The Iowa Democratic Party knows of seven state-wide coin flips, according to the Des Moines Register, but others could have happened since there was no requirement to report if a win was determined by a toss unless the official used an specific app.
Reports that Clinton had won five of six tosses began circulating on Twitter Monday evening while videos of some tosses went viral.
The delegates determined are county and not state, so they have less of an influence, but the Sanders campaign still wants to get to the bottom of it.
“It’s not about contesting the results, Chuck. Look it was a very, very close election as everybody knows,” Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd on Tuesday. “There are a few questions hanging out there that we’d like to get answered. It’s not about contesting the answer, but I think we owe it to the people who supported Senator Sanders in Iowa to make sure we understand all the facts, that’s all.”*
Your quote from the article has Sanders quite specifically saying “It’s not about challenging the results” so what the hell are you talking about?
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The NPR article didn’t debunk anything. It only added to the confusion. On the Tuesday after the election the Sanders camp was questioning the coin-flip stories and didn’t concede the election until after they had talked to the Iowa Democrats in order to clarify the situation.
It’s simple, Sanders wouldn’t concede the results of the election at the same time he claimed he wasn’t challenging the results. Do those conflicting statements make sense to you?
If Sanders wasn’t challenging the results, then he didn’t need to question what was reported to have happened at various caucuses. Sanders would have accepted the results. But he didn’t.
If Sanders wasn’t challenging the results, he could have conceded the election on the day the polls closed. But he didn’t.
In spite of what Sanders said about not challenging the results, Sanders wouldn’t accept the results until he had gotten some answers from the Democrats running the caucuses.
I didn’t ask if they challenged the results, I asked if they challenged the statement that there were more than 6 coin flips and the Sanders camp won some of them. I don’t see anything in your quote that challenges the statement by the Dem Party official.
Saying that a coin flip isn’t the best way to allocate delegates is a legitimate concern, but irrelevant to this particular discussion.
He has no choice but to accept the results and his concession is not required. He’s making a complaint about the process. Which is a fair enough thing to do. But this election rolls along regardless.
The Des Moines Register provided evidence to support the claim that “Clinton won at least six coin flips”. That fact is presumably true. It is also, however, completely irrelevant without knowing how many total coin flips there were, a subject on which the Register provides no evidence or even claim at all. The statement “Clinton won six out of six coin flips” is almost certainly false, and at the very least is not supported by any of the Register’s evidence.
It’s not irrelevant. Sanders camp wanted to discuss the caucus numbers and the coin flips. Totally relevant to this discussion. After talking to the Democrat party leaders Sanders was satisfied with the results of the elections and conceded.
“We want to look at some of the numbers. Last that I saw it, we were four delegates down,” Sanders said. “It may be the case that some delegates were selected based on the flip of a coin and not the best way to do democracy,” he said, cautioning that he hadn’t had much time to analyze the results and didn’t want to misspeak.
Sanders had questions and, I assume based on his concession, those questions were answered to his satisfaction.
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the claim that “Clinton won at least six coin flips”. That fact is presumably true.
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The statement “Clinton won six out of six coin flips” is almost certainly false
“Almost certainly”???
The Des Moines Register article provided a traceable list of coin flips. The NPR article cherry-picked the Des Moines Register article and quoted an un-named Democrat who claimed some unverified numbers. The NPR article didn’t debunk the six out of six claim. That particular NPR article doesn’t even qualify as journalism but that’s just my opinion.
Again, the question of “6 out of 6” doesn’t appear to be part of the discussion. The point of this thread was questioning whether that statement that Clinton won 6 out of 6 coin flips was true. The evidence we have (granted, not the strongest of evidence) seems to support the idea that it was not true. You seem to be dismissing the quote in the article as being unsourced, which is fine. But subsequent actions by the Sanders campaign appear to support it. So, what are you going on about? It’s not clear what point you are trying to make.
I’m not seeing where the Des Moines Register ever asserted that these were the only six coin flips; can you point me to a source for that?
FYI, Iowa coin tosses were only used to settle ties in districts that awarded an odd number of delegates. A tie in the districts with an even number of delegates would have simply split the delegates.
My reason for posting in this thread was a post referencing an NPR article titled Coin-Toss Fact Check: No, Coin Flips Did Not Win Iowa For Hillary Clinton written by Domenico Montanaro. In my opinion Montanaro’s explaination of the math is a piece O’ crap. NPR would have better served it’s readers by simply refering them to the the Des Moines Register article that the NPR article was supposed to be based on.
But the NPR article did say, “It’s been reported that there were as many as six sites where ties were decided by the flip of a coin — and Clinton won every single one”.
The NPR article also referenced a Salon article -
*Tuesday, Feb 2, 2016 04:15 PM CST
Sanders’ supporters cry foul over “Coingate”: Controversy over coin tosses that made Clinton “winner” in Iowa
The suspicious circumstances in which Clinton edged Sanders has critics demanding answers over bizarre coin flips*
And a Marketwatch article -
Coin toss broke 6 Clinton-Sanders deadlocks in Iowa — and Hillary won each time
By Karen Friar Published: Feb 2, 2016 11:27 a.m. ET
Then Montanaro says, "Except that doesn’t tell the whole story. In fact, there were at least a dozen tiebreakers — and “Sen. Sanders won at least a handful,” an Iowa Democratic Party official told NPR. A claim he doesn’t provide any info for. Was it just wishful thinking or political spin?
On Tuesday, Sanders said he was told by the lead caucus Democrat that there were seven coin tosses. I assume that the Iowa Democrats would have known by Tuesday how many coin flips had occured.
What the Des Moines Register article said was -
*Unable to account for that numerical discrepancy and the orphan delegate it produced, the Sanders campaign challenged the results and precinct leaders called a Democratic Party hot line set up to advise on such situations.
Party officials recommended they settle the dispute with a coin toss.
A Clinton supporter correctly called “heads” on a quarter flipped in the air, and Clinton received a fifth delegate.
Similar situations were reported elsewhere, including at a precinct in Des Moines, at another precinct in Des Moines, in Newton, in West Branch and in Davenport. In all five situations, Clinton won the toss.*
1 + 5 = 6
Other sources have also said that Hillary won 6 out of 6 coin flips.
The head caucus Democrat told Bernie that there were 7 coin flips.
I don’t know why you are talking about Sander’s questioning the results. The issue in question is if there were only 6 coin flips and Hillary won them all.
As far as the NPR article, it did address the issue and gave evidence that there was more than 6 coin flips, and Bernie won “a handful” of them. The traceability of the evidence provided was thin, and perhaps that makes it unsupportable to your opinion, but the NPR article did address that point and provide an explanation that is at odds with “6 of 6”, which is the claim in question.
So if you look at that line in the article, there is a link to another Des Moines Register article.
That article provides the confirmation to the NPR article. It states
So, this time a named Iowa Democratic Party official - Sam Lau. Actual numbers provided for the information that was reported to the party headquarters via the app - 7 flips, 6 went to Bernie, not Hillary. The coin flips reported in the original Des Moines Register article were identified by Twitter posts, but did not identify how they were reported - via the app or just by phone.
Almost certainly false there were only 6 coin flips. Unless you are asserting that the NPR author just made up their response and didn’t talk to an Iowa Demoncratic Party official at all?
I thought the NPR article did a fine job explaining the math of how the coin flips contributed to the county precinct delegate counts, and how that would then feed into a smaller number of state delegates.
As explained, not all precincts reported whether the delegates were determined by coin flips or not. Only precincts that used the phone app to report recorded that information. I would think they could use the social media reports to identify a couple of those precincts, but several of the tweets did not identify the precinct, and a couple of them were secondhand reports - not something they should rely on as definitive evidence.
Again, nothing in that article states there were only 6 coin flips. It reports that it is aware of 6 coin flips and all of them went to Hillary, but it does not claim there were only 6 coin flips.
And there almost certainly were more than 7 coin flips if 6 went to Bernie and 6 went to
Hillary. The data the party has confirm 7 flips, 6 of which went to Bernie. (Actually, if I recall, that’s 5 between Bernie and Hillary, and 1 between Bernie and Martin O’Malley.)
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AFAIK, the original claims of Hillary winning 6 outta 6 originated with social media. I don’t facebook or twitter but I did read the media outlet reports. Hillary’s 6 outta 6 became popular enough on social media to attract the attention of the media outlets. It would also have been a question that needed to be answered by Team Bernie.
As more information became available, the number of coin flips has gone up. Sanders was told by caucus Democrats that there were 7 coin flips. Democrat Sam Lau says there were 7 and Bernie won 6 of those, but Lau didn’t mention which specific caucuses he was referring to (which would have certainly cleared up some of the confusion).
That article provides the confirmation to the NPR article. It states
Quote:
Why is the number unknown?
(The confirmation is that the number of flips are unknown.)
So the key question is why is the specific number unknown? Who amongst the Democrats really knows what they’re talking about and who’s blowing political smoke? How do we, the interested reader, know for sure who won what if “they” can’t even tell us which specific caucuses involved coin flips?
As you again mentioned:
As explained, not all precincts reported whether the delegates were determined by coin flips or not.
You believe that there were more coin flips than those that have been specifically identified. If 6 went to Hillary and 6 went to Bernie, that’s at least 12 caucuses. What I would like to know is which specific caucuses were actually decided by coin flips.