Losers Who Won't Lose: What Are The Odds Of A Successful Hillary Recount?

[SirLinksALot]

SOURCE: ZERO HEDGE

URL: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-27/losers-who-wont-lose-what-are-odds-successful-hillary-recount

Submitted by Salil Mehta via Statistical Ideas blog,


President-elect Trump won 306 electoral votes versus Hillary Clinton's 232 (24% less electoral votes).  Similar to 2000, the surrendering party then reversed course and put the nation through a recount, just for the sake of it.  What are the odds that such an exercise here would yield successful for Ms. Clinton?  Based on statistical randomness of re-assessing voter intent, the chance of Hillary emerging as the victor is far less than 10%.

Anything can happen, but these lean odds do not rise to the level of putting our peaceful democracy into the hands of a temptuous recount scheme every time a stung party loses (let alone misleadingly blame it on something else from Russia's Putin, to sexism, to "in hindsight the popular vote would be reasonable", to FBI Director Comey).  All Americans should instead focus on how the 6 states that flipped this election, were all economically ignored and all flipped to Donald Trump.

The only viable path for a Hillary Clinton victory at this stage is to astoundingly uncover a wide-spread (across three states) fraud.  And that's equally unlikely, since the basis for the voting aberrations occurred in less populated counties and anyway the three states employ three different voting mechanisms, so the fraud would have had to somehow occur through different transmission vehicles (paper voting, and electronic voting) and we would require a speedy judicial resolution for states such as Pennsylvania that sidestepped back-up recordings from their direct voting equipment.

We should note the following statistical facts about the electoral vote in the three recount states:

* 10 votes, Wisconsin (Trump leads by 0.9 percentage points)
* 20 votes, Pennsylvania (Trump leads by 1.1 percentage points)
* 16 votes, Michigan (Trump leads by 0.2 percentage points)

Given that Mr. Trump won by 74 electoral votes, Ms. Clinton would need to flip all three states noted above, in order to liquidate this deficit (i.e., >74/2 = >37 votes).  The leads described above however, among 4.4 million voters from these three states, is highly statistically significant on a state-level (and certainly when all three states are combined).  It would be remarkably unlikely (>5? event) that we would arbitrarily second-guess every one of these millions of voters' intents and, convert any (certainly let alone all) of these three states.

Hillary must be cognizant of this improbability, and so is piggy-backing off of the second most reasonable recount rationale: not that errors in intent occurred, but rather straight-fraud on such a scale that would flip most of these states.  While tempting for true Democrat supporters, this fraud scenario is of course dubious.  Because for it to work, we would need to suppose that such fraud occurred in three different ways at once:

* Michigan is a paper-ballot state (no electronic voter equipment hacking) so fraud is virtually unlikely to show at all
* Wisconsin does have paper back-ups recorded though the counties that are most heterogeneous, are lesser-populated and not so wildly-off probabilistically
* Pennsylvania has similar issues to Wisconsin, except they haven't recorded all of their votes in an auditable back-up so judicial hurdles must be overcome

The bottom line is everything must go right here, in all three state recounts (between proving fraud and getting mathematical help from wide-spread voter intent errors), in order to better align towards a Donald Trump downfall.  And even if this all occurred, accounting for all of these statistical adjustments, the probability of a Hillary Clinton triumph is still quite low.

Lower than the odds that comic Nate Silver and all of the other "pollsters" gave to Mr. Trump throughout this election season.  It is these same pollsters and juvenile campaign "scientists" who completely mis-forecasted Ms. Clinton's path, who are now gasping for a recount phenomenon.  This was nicely articulated in a recent Bloomberg article here (https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-11-23/beware-of-data-mining):

[Suppressed]

They just have to have enough vote counters in blue precincts/wards stall so the votes can't be certified in time.  Do that in one state and the election goes to the House.

[Free Vulcan]

Michigan has already recounted their vote, because it the small disparity required an automatic recount, and Trump still won.

http://www.gopbriefingroom.com/index.php?topic=235972.msg1154146#msg1154146

I don't see how Stein could demand a recount where the votes have already been recounted.

It will take all 3 states to flip the results. Michigan should put the whole thing to rest.

[libertybele]

Jill Stein didn't even come close to winning in any state, so I'm still trying to figure out what right she actually has to demand a recount?? 

[geronl]

Michigan has already recounted their vote,

The original vote gets certified tomorrow, then they will consider the recount request by Jill Stein.

[HonestJohn]

Jill Stein didn't even come close to winning in any state, so I'm still trying to figure out what right she actually has to demand a recount?? 

Because she has the money (garnered from donations) and it will boost her party's name value with liberals.  Which is a net benefit for her party come the next election.

[jmyrlefuller]

Well, recounts do always seem to favor the Democrat... but if the Dems actually do try to recount their way to victory, there will likely be a LOT of outrage and questions about the election's legitimacy.

[libertybele]

Because she has the money (garnered from donations) and it will boost her party's name value with liberals.  Which is a net benefit for her party come the next election.

Name recognition as a loser who received donations to try to overturn the election to another loser.  Got it.

[HonestJohn]

Name recognition as a loser who received donations to try to overturn the election to another loser.  Got it.

Name recognition as someone who, at the very least, tried once more to stop Trump.  To those that are terrified of the idea of Trump assuming office and the damage he'll do...

... that's more than the Democrat party has done.

---

How is this hard to understand?  Can you explain?

[libertybele]

Well, recounts do always seem to favor the Democrat... but if the Dems actually do try to recount their way to victory, there will likely be a LOT of outrage and questions about the election's legitimacy.

There has already been a lot of outrage by the liberal leftist lunatics.  If things should swing the other way, I don't see the same outrage coming from the right.  I've questioned the legitimacy of this election since somehow Hillary started out the gate with super delegates and Bernie had none.

[Cripplecreek]

Slim to none.

[Suppressed]

I've questioned the legitimacy of this election since somehow Hillary started out the gate with super delegates and Bernie had none.

You have to give Hillary credit for working for years on groundwork to have those super delegates go her way.  She was put getting local support while Bernie and others didn't do a think at the local level.

[corbe]

You have to give Hillary credit for working for years on groundwork to have those super delegates go her way.  She was put getting local support while Bernie and others didn't do a think at the local level.

    Absolutely!! 

    She's studied the Electoral process since she got her Husband re-elected in Arkansas, The mullato beating her in 2008, brought upon vows-never again.

    Her Thanksgiving Table must have been worse than mine this year, probably less Trumpsters.

[Free Vulcan]

The original vote gets certified tomorrow, then they will consider the recount request by Jill Stein.

Not the original, but the audited. Which makes the idea of a recount even more stupid.

[EtX]

  Do that in one state and the election goes to the House.

No. Any State unable to certify their Electoral votes by the date Electoral College convenes, is not counted and their total is subtracted from the overall total, meaning that 270 is no longer the majority and the majority of certified Electoral votes would then be 50% + 1.