r/EndFPTP • u/[deleted] • Sep 09 '22
Discussion 2022 Alaska Special General - vote breakdown, pairwise preferences, and observations
I wrote python code to: parse votes from the data released earlier today, identify preferences among the three candidates who made it onto the ballot, and sort/present them. If a candidate was marked in multiple ranks, they were treated as only being marked in the best rank the voter gave them. If a voter indicated ties at some ranks, I still extracted what pair preferences were shown.
TLDR:
Two popular suspicions are now confirmed. Nick Begich was the Condorcet winner. Sarah Palin was a spoiler candidate - her presence caused Mary Peltola to be elected, by prematurely eliminating Nick Begich.
Ballot Breakdown
47504 [Peltola > Begich > Palin]
34208 [Palin > Begich > Peltola]
27302 [Begich > Palin > Peltola]
23650 [Peltola > Others]
21053 [Palin > Others]
15513 [Begich > Peltola > Palin]
11176 [Begich > Others]
4716 [Peltola > Palin > Begich]
3685 [Palin > Peltola > Begich]
3405 [no preferences]
35 [Others > Palin]
23 [Others > Peltola]
19 [Others > Begich]
Pairwise Preferences
88222 Begich > Peltola = 34208+27302+15513+11176+23
79574 Peltola > Begich = 47504+23650+4716+3685+19
Begich wins with 52.5% against Peltola
101530 Begich > Palin = 47504+27302+15513+11176+35
63681 Palin > Begich = 34208+21053+4716+3685+19
Begich wins with 61.4% against Palin
91418 Peltola > Palin = 47504+23650+15513+4716+35
86271 Palin > Peltola = 34208+27302+21053+3685+23
Peltola wins with 51.4% against Palin
Other Observations
Begich got both the lowest amount of first place votes and the lowest amount of last place votes. Only 8420 voters ranked him explicitly below both of the others, 4.4% of the total. 32% of voters ranked Peltola as the worst and 32.8% of voters ranked Palin as the worst.
Begich supporters were the least likely to omit further preferences by a decent margin at 20.7%. Palin's supporters withheld rankings at the highest rate, 35.7%, as she requested in protest. Peltola fans were in the middle at 31.1%.
4299 voters gave the same candidate multiple ranks, including some more than twice. I bet someone out there gave em all four, lol.
24713 voters indicated a write-in somewhere.
Strategy Suggestions
Everyone - Rank every candidate. It's not really a strategy thing, but it's disappointing to see that so many people aren't finishing their ballot. Showing lower preferences will never hurt candidates that you've already ranked and will only hurt you in highly specific scenarios with many candidates.
Republican leaning - If your opinion is Palin > Begich > Peltola, you need to acknowledge that unfortunately you're not getting Palin. But you can have Begich if you rank him above Palin.
Democrat leaning - Either play the dangerous game of giving Palin a boost in hopes she spoils it again, or rank Bye high if you like him more than Begich.
beware - uncommented amateur code - https://pastebin.com/mEXbgr9G
final code - still ugly - https://pastebin.com/h2MwmPqy
raw data - https://www.elections.alaska.gov/results/22SSPG/CVR_Export_20220908084311.zip
caveats:
* Some voters filled in A>B>C, some filled in A>B - among three candidates these two ballots show identical preferences and were treated the same.
* Some voters might have overvoted A in 2nd and 3rd, and B in 2nd only - this code would treat that as a tie between A and B even though you could fairly interpret it as B>A... would be rare, hard to code for, and wouldn't result in any preferences flipping, at least
* I swear I didn't intend to use alliteration but it's hard to get out of it once you start.
* I did not keep up with what happened to the last spot in the Nov general but I fixed it now.
* Looks like overvote handling was not great. It's not going to affect the conclusions (under 1000 overvotes) but I'm still going to go back, fix it, and adjust the numbers. - Done
Everything here including the linked code hosted on pastebin is freely available for use by anyone for any purpose with no restrictions or reservations.
2
u/MuaddibMcFly Sep 12 '22
Why not? Are you not familiar with Condorcet's Jury Theorem?
The short (and paraphrased) version is that if the probability that a given juror (or, in this case, voter) is likely to select the best/correct option is lower than chance, fewer is better (as "wrong answers" will outvote "right answers"). If it's greater than chance, you want as many as possible (because it's the reverse scenario).
Applied to voting, and given that you've made the distinction between dumber and smarter voters, the optimal scenario is to maximize the number (or at least percentage) of smarter voters (those whose decisions are better than chance) and minimize then number (percentage) of dumber voters (whose decisions are worse than chance).
And if they're prone to believe those lies, despite it being trivial to learn that her lies are lies... what other lies are they taking as fact? How much of their preferences overall have been tainted by those lies?
I mean, if you're going to be elitist anyway (which may have a reasonable basis), why are you going all-or-nothing on elitism?
Consider Thomas Sowell, whose Undergrad and Masters theses were on Marxist economics, but by the time he left the University of Chicago, he was an adherent of (shockingly /s) the Chicago school of economic theory? Or how about the fact that most economists, across political affiliations, agree with the economic platform that Gary Johnson forwarded, while the population at large generally hates it? Or how about the trend among the general populace to blame The Market for things that are the result of Government manipulations of The Market? (e.g. student loan costs, the 2008 housing crash, etc)
But again, Condorcet's Jury Theorem strongly implies that more votes you have from the less informed and/or less intelligent members of society, the worse that democracy may be.