It was like 2012 all over again. But the apparent mess was on the D side instead of the R side. So, as you might have guessed, we’ve got a very big show today on The BradCast.
We are joined today by Iowa Caucus expert (yes, there is such a thing!) Professor David P. Redlawsk of Rutger’s Eagleton Institute of Politics to help us unpack what the hell happened last night (and this morning) now that the first votes have been cast in the 2016 race in the Hawkeye State.
We cover the reported winners and losers, along with explanations for some of the bizarre math, “missing” precinct results, coin tosses, concerns about fraud and much more, as the Democratic candidates battled to a virtual tie with Clinton finally declared the “winner” and Sanders’ supporters asking lots of (good) questions in the bargain.
Redlawsk, an Iowa native and experienced Caucus Chair himself, as well as author of Why Iowa? How Caucuses and Sequential Elections Improve the Presidential Nominating Process, explains the history and sometimes impossibly arcane procedures used by the parties at their caucuses in Iowa, which resulted in a big win for Ted Cruz and, at least as AP and the state Democratic Party are now reporting, a razor-thin margin of victory for Clinton.
He also speaks to many of the concerns about those results which emerged last night and still today.
“The fact is that because the Democrats do this is in the form of ‘stand up and be counted publicly’, it’s always more chaotic than if they were casting a secret ballot, for example,” says Redlawsk, in response to queries about some of the videos revealing questionable behavior by some party officials and Clinton precinct captains. Though he also cites the Republican caucus where he observed the hand-counting as “a little chaotic” itself.
So, are Sanders supporters right to be concerned about the legitimacy of the process and the counting? We try to make sense of it all today, even as new information (and concerns) are expected to come to light in the days ahead as we barrel towards the New Hampshire primary next week. Redlawsk is exceedingly helpful and clarifying on all of the above. I’d call it a “must-listen” episode if I weren’t so extraordinarily modest.
Then, as if today’s show is not already big enough, we’re joined by Desi Doyen with the latest Green News Report as the cherry on top of today’s BradCast…
Download MP3 or listen to complete show online below…
[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman_DavidRedlawsk_IowaCaucus_020216.mp3]
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Is there anything to this? Because it’s going around facebook like wild fire:
http://www.conservativeoutfitters.com/blogs/news/85864001-clinton-caucus-caught-on-camera-committing-voter-fraud-in-iowa
David Redlawsk is wrong about the probability of getting 6 Hilary flips in sequence. It is extremely rare and not what David Redlawsk – obviously not a mathematician who knows Probability Theory – purports the mechanism to be. The key is “sequential” – just as you, Brad, intuit. I plan to send you a more detailed answer. But for now, consider the Pascal Triangle that tells us the probability of getting sequences of coin tosses. It is true that the probability of each flip is the same, but the sequence is another matter. H.M.
Great show! I had no idea about the history between New Hampshire and Iowa resulting in these weird caucus rules.
I do wish you covered the “Cspan” video more in depth (which Big Dan @1 linked to). Just to clarify the Cspan video was legitimate, but it was actually posted by an anonymous user on the Cspan site, it was not picked by or promoted by Cspan itself.
Even if it didn’t change the ultimate outcome (which it very well could have given the exceedingly small margin between Sanders and Clinton), it is a pretty blatant act of election fraud even if this is not an actual state run election.
Basically the Hillary people, I’ll call them big blue and bald dude (both leaders the bald dude being the precinct leader or some such), potentially inflated the vote count by adding new Hillary voters in the second count to the Hillary voters they counted the first time around. Apparently, the first count had Sanders in the lead and then the second count had Clinton ahead.
There were three less people overall in the second count, leading to the assumption that only three people left the building between counts. However it is possible that more than three people left. As an example (not a fact), maybe 5 left for Sanders and 5 Left for Clinton, but then 7 new voters who weren’t there for the first count are there and they are all Clinton supporters.
The obvious problem is that the Clinton people, in not doing a total recount of the people present like the Sanders people did, ignore the 5 people who left between counts and add seven to the original total. Whereas the Sanders people would have lost five votes in the second count, not added five to the previous total (which if these numbers were accurate would have maintained his lead given the totals of the first count).
So that is definitely a problem if you have two different methods of tallying the votes for the two candidates.
This could all have been human error of course and that would not be such a big deal. However, what really angers me about this video is that big blue and bald dude ON CAMERA! are explicitly stating (with obvious approval) that they did not do a new count, just added new supporters to Hillary’s old total.
Then when Sanders’ people question the count, they lie right to their faces and say they did a completely new count! When Sanders’ people demand a recount they do a voice vote instead of asking yeas and neas to raise their hands and count each one (maybe because it would have been split along candidate lines and would have shown less people on the Clinton side than they claimed at the time).
This is outrageous and disrespectful of both Sanders’ people and fundamental democratic principles.
So that is why I was surprised you did not talk about this a bit more, even if it was not very important to the overall delegate count or would not have changed the actual results of the caucus. At the very least it raises questions about whether similar shadiness could have taken place in other precincts.
Otherwise awesome show and looking forward to hearing additional election coverage from Brad and Desi.
Edit: I messed up the math (go fig) regarding the Sanders thing. I should have said he would have lost five votes in between counts not maintained his original total.
Welcome to zombie America, people, possibly far more disturbing than even Ernie Canning’s recent allusion to Orwellian doublespeak….sorry to break it to you like this, but the daily world that you and i inhabit is just one big gigantic motherfucking lie…
Listen carefully to news on the car radio and you can actually hear the corporate sponsors breathing into each and every reporter’s ear, guiding the message….newspapers and magazines are confetti of utter nonsense (with coupons!!! perfume samples!!!) celebrating our distraction from the honest and very real issues impacting the deteriorating daily lives of so many people….TV is now a weeklong Saturday morning cartoon, with overpaid Barbie and Ken “newscasters” and “pundits” and ad execs and televangelists smiling and laughing and lying straight to our faces for a filthy paycheck….the only things keeping me passably sane are bloggers like Brad, and net neutrality…
Bottom line: NEARLY EVERYTHING being handed to you top-down is a LIE….everything Establishment is a fucking fraud right now, period…
START from that premise and then stand and wait to be corrected!….go ahead, flip the toggle on your TRUTH radar and stare longingly at the blankest of blank screens….
The overarching power and greed of corporate wealth has poisoned our entire American way of life, kids, and it’s waaaaaaaaaaaay past time we woke up and grew up….your ONLY lightsword in a world of lies is THE TRUTH….they killed Socrates for it, so you’re in good company….
This is EXACTLY what baffles the Hillary entourage about Bernie’s ecstatic and delirious outpouring of exuberance and enthusiasm among his supporters!….he’s telling the TRUTH and all of us GET IT!!!!!!!!….she wouldn’t recognize the truth if it hit her in that moony face….she’s campaigning from the Dark Side, just like every other Beltway bumfuck, and is incapable of registering the honesty and sincerity of the Sanders Revolution….Bernie sees the good in everything, like looking in a mirror….Hillary sees the angle and the payoff in everything, like looking in the mirror….she’s the sinner mocking the good Samaritan for his foolishness…
Chuckle away, your Highness, in that grating and forced laugh you seem to conjure every time you’re put on the spot….triangulate Bernie all you want!!….you’ll NEVER comprehend someone who’s so diametrically opposite to you!….but Bernie understands you perfectly….AND THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED!….gsh
Prof. David P. Redlawsk stated that 6 coin tosses in favour of Clinton was as probable as 3 for her and Bernie. This is an incorrect interpretation of probability. While the probability of a heads or tails on each toss is 1/2, the probability of 6 heads (or six tails) out of six tosses is 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2. That is a probability of only 1/64 or 1.5625% In other words, highly improbable to have occurred by chance – but not impossible.
How in the world did David Redlawsk, purported to be a caucus math guru, get the probability of coin tosses so very wrong? Of course, the probability of a single coin toss being heads is 1/2. But the probability of getting 6 out of 6? That’s 1/64, which equals 0.015625. See here and here. Of course, the issue of who won how many coin flips in Iowa on Monday is publicly unknown, due to the dolts who run the caucuses. See this.
Peter Durrans is correct. See http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/56589.html
The odds of each getting 3 wins and 3 looses is 5/16 — much more than 1/64.
You know what frosts me, too? Just like I believe Ron Paul beat Romney in a landslide and it was stolen, look at the pictures of people attending Sanders rallies vs Hillary rallies. There looks to be an ENORMOUSLY greater amount of people at Sanders rallies. Just like Ron Paul rallies vs Romney. My eyes tell me Ron Paul had it stolen, and Hillary is stealing this one. Then on the local level, people I actually physically see and talk to…I don’t know ONE person (I didn’t stutter, I said “ONE”) who is voting for Hillary. Come on! I’m not stupid, and I’m not blind!
Big Dan:
I totally agree. The size of the crowds that Hillary gets to show up just pale in comparison to the size and the excitement of the Sanders crowds, but to tell you the truth, I have only seen a couple of pictures of the Clinton crowds; one of them was the announcement in New York which was about 5000.
If she were getting anywhere near the crowds that Sanders is, you wouldn’t be able to miss it. It would be all over television.
Expect another neck-and-neck race as far as the polls and voting go. If you were trying to steal a race, that’s what would happen and has been happening since the machines started “helping” Americans vote. 🙁
I’m currently listening to the 2/3/16 show but I wanted to say that Professor Redlawsk made an error on the 2/2/16 show when he said that all 6 coin tosses going for Clinton was the same as a 50 / 50 split (3 for Clinton, and 3 for Sanders). Unless I’ve made a mistake in my math, there is a 1 in 64 chance that either candidate would get all 6 coin flips in their favor or 1.56%. There is a 20 in 64 chance of getting a 50 / 50 split (31.25%). Brad should correct this on his show.