Bush Wins Iowa to Claim Last Three States (Iowa = 7 EVs)

Yahoo ^ | 11-5-04 | By MIKE GLOVER, Associated Press Writer

[iowaboy]

Sorry this took so long, guys. You can blame our Demoncrat Sec of State Chet Culver, who wants to be the next IA Gov, and our current Demoncrat Gov Tom Vilsack.

Remember on election night when IA stopped counting? My guess is that these guys didn't want IA to be the state to put Bush over the top. How convenient.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

CBS will call Iowa for Bush next summer.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Well, so much for the southern Democrats now. The libs squandered that stronghold. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, DNC.

[Clintonfatigued]

HORRAY!!!

[gitmo]

[patriciamary]

I'm ashamed of Pennsylvania!

[supercat]

Yahoo's popular vote total still shows 51% to 48%. They are truncating, not rounding. It's actually 51.52 to 48.48. I'd round that to 52-48.

Given that the difference is 3%, 51-48 seems quite reasonable. Assuming a perfect two-way split, I'd think the following would be the best roundings:

Winner's share	Report
below 50.25	50-50
50.25-50.75	50-49
50.75-51.25	51-49
51.25-51.75	51-48
51.75-52.25	52-48

I don't know if anyplace formalizes this procedure, but it's based on much the same principle as the 'rounding' algorithm used for PostScript® rendering: symmetrical rounding would halve the effective resolution for stroke widths. Assymetric rounding results in a slight loss of positional accuracy, but enhances stroke-width accuracy which is often more 'important'. Likewise when showing winning/losing percentages, what really matters is the difference. Using straight rounding for both would result in the differences always being even numbers. Using assymetric rounding means the difference will be accurate to the nearest unit.

[Keith in Iowa]

>>Remember on election night when IA stopped counting? My guess is that these guys didn't want IA to be the state to put Bush over the top. How convenient.

Your guess is a little off...

Green county had an equipment malfunction that did not get fixed until Wednesday. Then all that was out was provisional ballots, that were not required to be tallied until Thursday. Absentee ballots have until Noon Monday (11/8) to arrive, postmarked before election day, and still be counted when the counties canvass the vote, which happens sometime Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning (11-8 or 9). There are some state and local races that could swing by the time votes are canvassed. Even if Kerry got 100% of the remaining, uncounted, outstanding ballots, there are not enough to beat the spread in the presidential race - so the call was finally made.