So I was sitting in my abode, enjoying the (largely unnecessary) Canadian federal election – assuming that I was in for a couple of hours of info-tainment.
Polls closed at 9pm and numbers from poling stations started scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Lots of other pretty graphics elsewhere by the way.
Anyways, preliminary numbers with figures like the following started rolling by for each riding:
Candidate A (liberal): 195
Candidate B (conservative): 88
Candidate C (does it really matter): 15
Pat Buchanan : 2
Polls reporting 5 of 155
Now to put this in perspective you have to understand that the riding in question probably has a population of 50,000 people – the vast majority of which are of voting age.
Within 55 minutes of the polls closing and shortly after seeing numbers like this, the pundits who I can only assume have IBM’s Deep Blue at their disposal are ready to call the electection siting ” A Conservative Minority!”
How in the name of all that is holy (and even that which is clearly not) can they know how the rest of the people in this one riding let alone the rest of the country are going to vote???!!! Good lord – are we that predictable??? They went on to claim that they didn’t even need to know the Ontario numbers to call it. (realize that numbers come in with the distinct time zones from east coast to west). Yukon polls were still open!!!!
Turns out they were right.
Shortly after ‘the call’ the reported number of votes start climbing at a near mind numbing rate and their prediction proved entirely accurate. FWIW – The rate at which we are able to count all these votes is indeed very impressive considering that we vote with nothing more than a piece of paper and a short (but sturdy) pencil and a solitary ever so lonely but powerful X. Who needs the ‘modern tech’ !!!!
My question is this – if they are able to predict how the entire country will vote based upon a relative few actual counted votes – why the hell do we bother to have a full election. Why don’t we just corner a 5 in NewFoundland and Labrador and ask them how they are going to vote – give it to Deep Blue (or whatever ouiji board they have down in the basement) and let it call the election! Saves us millions of dollars plus time and apparently is pretty darned accurate???!!!
If someone knows of some statistical discussion papers as to how predictions can be made on such small population samples I’d appreciate a link.
My real fear is that the ‘merican election is going to last about 15 whopping seconds!!!
This fits nicely into our A.D.D. society but after 4 years of foreplay it would be pretty disappointing if it only lasts about as long as it takes me to strip down to my socks in preparation for ‘business time’.
