Posted by
RightTeacher on Thursday, February 07, 2008 10:31:12 PM
Does it seems strange that McCain is ahead of the delegate count by amost two and a half times, and yet the total vote count is only 4 million to 4.7 million (and advantage of a meager 17%)?
I might recommend
Game, Set and Math, but here is the gist.
With our elections, as with tennis matches and the world series and many other competitions, the effect of breaking one competition into several smaller is the magnify whatever small differences the competitors may have.
In any game, any competitor can win. A small difference in abilities (say 51% to 49% probability of winning) may not make much of a difference in any one game. In one game, it may be that the loser might win almost half the time. Over the long run, the better team will win many contests, but with one game, one superbowl, one election, the odds are more even.
Having a larger number of discrete competitions (different states in elections, winning four of seven in the world series) simulates "the long run" and makes it more likely that the better competitor will win. It may be that "luck" may have the lesser competitor winning one or two competitions, but luck can't hold out against statistics, and, in time, the better competitor will win out. A small difference in abilities will be magnified.
Of course, tennis magnifies the magnification. Not only do you have to win games to win a set, but you need to win a number of sets to win a match.
In our election, Romney was first or second in almost every state (excepting a number of th states where Huckabee won). He had wide appeal and was the selection of many voters. Unfortunately, over the long run, he lost more sets than he won. Match goes to McCain.