“Millions and millions vote and it is roughly tied? I always thought that part was very strange.”
I have wondered about that too. I studied statistics in college, so I tried to imagine what statistical anomaly (other than fraud) could account for the seemingly improbable closeness we see in some scores - voting, athletics or whatever.
You see it in basketball. So often, with 2 minutes left on the clock, the score is something like 105 to 104. What can account for that? Are the two teams really that equally matched, or is there something else going on?
I think the answer is in the way the game is designed, the way the rules are set. After each score, the other team gets control of the ball. The rules also favor the offense over the defense, so that once a team gets control of the ball, it is easier for that team to score than it is for the other team to stop them from scoring, without committing a foul.
To demonstrate the theory, you could exaggerate the effect by making a rule that said the defense has to stand still and do nothing. Obviously, the result would be that the two teams would take turns scoring two points and always wind up in a near tie - which is what usually happens. Conversely, you could change the rules so that the other team does NOT get the ball after a score, but instead has to fight for it like a rebound. Then, I think you would see more runaway point spreads.
I see it also in billiards and tennis - tennis pros usually win their serve - billiards pros usually break and run. So if the rules are alternating break, or alternating serve, it will naturally produce a tight race.
How does that relate to voting? I think it comes down to “the rules of the game” favoring the spread of misinformation through dishonest and/or incompetent journalism, and favoring widespread voter ignorance through lack of education regarding civics, economics, and the proper role of government.
For example, let’s say that 95% of voters are so uninformed or misinformed about the true pros and cons of the candidates, that they really have no rational basis for their decision - they are essentially guessing who to vote for. In other words, they may as well be flipping a coin, and we know repeating a coin toss will eventually produce a 50/50 result.
So, according to this theory, elections are only decided at the margin - the, say, 5% of voters who are making a rational, informed decision will favor the superior candidate, while the other 95% cancel each other out.
I think in a re-election scenario the result is usually a wider spread, because the incumbent has become a “known”, so instead of, say, 95% flipping a coin, most voters have at least some rational basis for their decision.
In billiards, that would be the equivalent of a winner breaks rule instead of alternating break - then you are far more likely to see runaway point spreads.
Of course, this is all conjecture on my part, for lack of a better explanation.
Both sides vastly underestimate the number of eligible voters that care like they do, at least enough to vote about it one way or the other. The eligible voters that choose not to vote have outnumbered the turnout of either political party for 100+ years. The true horror of the situation is that supposedly the dumbest 10% of eligible voters that somehow manage to vote actually decide all presidential elections, the swing voters.
If that’s true, elections aren’t contests between opposing political philosophies, but contests determined by whomever is able to sway the swayable voters who have no guiding political philosophy. The result could be good or bad, con or lib, but invariably it wasn’t determined by informed voters voting based on a considered political philosophy. It was supposedly determined by the swayable voters voting on non-rational reasons like who the media said won a debate or if the candidate looks like them or whatever.
Freegards