US election prediction; new part 1

 I've decided to change how I'm going to lay out and present my prediction. As such I've deleted the old post, and am replacing it with this one. I will lay out what the colours exactly mean in the coming posts.

Saskatchewan "results" and notes

As with the BC election, this election is not yet "over", as, mail in ballots have to be counted. Regardless, results so far show the following.

50 - SKP - 63.13% (+0.77%)
11 - NDP - 29.21% (-0.99%)
0 - BUF - 2.88% (+2.81%*)
0 - GRN - 2.37% (+0.54%)
0 - PCS - 2.08% (+0.80%)
0 - OTH - 0.33%

This is a clear win for the Saskatchewan Party. A note that in the last election, a "Western Independence" party ran in the province, and, while they appear unaffiliated with the Buffalo party (in fact, their leader ran for the PC party this time) I've decided to compare the two party's votes as they share a key goal in common)

I've tweeted a spreadsheet of the results so-far. I've also made a thread showing that two ridings should go NDP, and only these two should go NDP. I do strongly recommend following me on twitter; if, you do not like me shoving my opinions down your throat, one thing you can do is simply bookmark my twitter feed instead of following me, and, poke in on that bookmark whenever there are important political events going on. 

Another thing I want to look at, as we have a party that won by a clear majority of ballots cast, is how this election would look under Proportional Representation. 

According to the d'hondt calculator, the results would be as follows:

50 SKP
23 NDP
2 BUF
1 GRN
1 PCS

It is more than plausible that some ridings will flip to the NDP, meaning we 'should' move our target to 48 seats from 50; however, the NDP will also be gaining votes when the mail-in ballots are counted, and as such, would gain seats in our PR calculation anyway. Thus having them here, at 23, helps to offset that. Note that even with a threshold 5%, the 50-23 ratio stays the same, and the only thing that changes is the smaller parties win 0 seats. A threshold of 2% would not impact the results, as, all 3 of these smaller parties passed that mark. 

Regardless, this are the candidates likely to end up elected under such a system. 

Non-NDP (4 seats)
Ken Gray, PC (REGINA WALSH ACRES) [Party leader]
Naomi Hunter, Green (REGINA ELPHINSTONE-CENTRE) [Party leader]
Wade Sira, Buffalo (MARTENSVILLE-WARMAN) [Party leader]
Phil Zajac, Buffalo (ESTEVAN) {top vote earner for party}

NDP (12 seats)
leader (1)
Ryan Meili, (SASKATOON MEEWASIN) [Party leader]

top vote earners 
Regina (3 max)
Bhajan Brar, (REGINA PASQUA)
Aleana Young, (REGINA UNIVERSITY)
Noor Burki, (REGINA CORONATION PARK)

Outside Regina (4 max)
Ashlee Hicks, (SASKATOON RIVERSDALE)
Dave McGrane, (SASKATOON CHURCHILL-WILDWOOD)
Nicole Rancourt, (PRINCE ALBERT NORTHCOTE)
Melissa Patterson, (MOOSE JAW WAKAMOW)

Rural Areas (4)
Lyle Whitefish, (SASKATCHEWAN RIVERS)
Thera Nordal, (LAST MOUNTAIN-TOUCHWOOD)
Jared Clarke, (INDIAN HEAD-MILESTONE)

Lon Borgerson, (BATOCHE)

You will notice that I've put caps on certain areas, for example, only 3 from Regina. This is because a true PR system would be regional in nature. Instead of calculating all the regions - possible, but, a bit pointless before the mail-in ballots are counted - I've used this crude method to simulate regions by simply putting caps on seats won in, or, outside of select areas. 

This give the NDP representation across the province; as any regional PR system would. 

BC election "results"

 The 'results' of the election are as follows:

You may note, some seats are still listed as too close to call. This is due to the mail in ballots, which have yet to be counted. 

I'll skip right to the business of the post; these the BCL-over-NDP vote gaps in the 6 closest ridings:

Will flip:
188 - Abbotsford Mission
180 - Vernon Monashee

Very likely to flip:
385 - Fraser Nicola

Might flip:
647 - Vancouver Langara
729 - Surrey White Rock
791 - Kamloops North Thompson

Some quick math. 

There are 575,000 or so ballots to be counted, covering the 87 ridings of BC. Polls suggest the NDP has an advantage in these votes. This is, very roughly, a third of all ballots.

Lets start with ballots already counted in an example riding. If it mirrored the province, and had 1000 voters, it would have 422 votes for the NDP, 351 for BCL, 166 for the Greens, and 61 others.

I want to veer into a tangent, and say, I consider the mail in ballots to be "10% for the NDP". Why is that? Lets look at what a riding of 667 counted voters; we get 281 NDP voters, 244 BCL, and 111 Green. Now lets add 333 mail in ballots: 183 NDP, 94 BCL, and 52 Green. Totals are 163 Green votes, 338 BCL, and 464 NDP; alongside 35 others. Now we jump into where this tangent comes into play using more math. 

We are going to mostly ignore the Green and "Other" numbers, as, no Green riding has the NDP within striking distance; and thus, it is only the Liberals that the NDP can take seats from. 

As such, lets assume instead of 351 or 338 votes in the ridings in question, the Liberals have taken exactly 1,000 votes, and, scale the NDP vote up to match it. This gives us 1202 NDP votes, and, 1373 NDP votes respectively. This is a gain of 1.14 for the NDP, comparing the combined Mail-In + Counted result (1373) VS the only-as-counted results (1202), a gain of 14%. 

I've simply decided to round that to 10%. So, lets see this in action with our earlier tangential example. The counted votes stay the same, 281 NDP, 244 BCL, and 111 Green. However, we now reduce the mail-in ballots by 10% (from 333 to 300), and, assume the mail-in ballots match the counted ballots. [after all, this entire mathematical process is to help us guess what the mail in ballots will say! So we must use the counted ballots as a base.] The results are as follows; 127 NDP, 103 BCL, 50 Green, and 20 others. The combined result is 408 NDP, 347 BCL, 161 Green.

Lastly, we add 100% of the earlier excluded votes in, as NDP votes. 33 of them. Thus the NDP goes from 408 to 441. 

The final province-wide popular vote would be 44.1% for the NDP vs 34.7% for the Liberals. Given the polls, this is generous to the Liberals. 

So, how does all that mathematical gobbledygook apply to the 575,000 mail in ballots?

Simple. Take 10% of these ballots (57,500) and divide them by the 87 ridings (661) and you end up with about 500 votes (more than that, 661 actually, and that 661 is already generous to the Liberals, but I'm trying to be super generous here)

And thus, we end up with at least 3, but as many as 6, ridings flipping to the NDP when the results are counted. 

BC election tonight, ridings to watch

 Any riding with the TCTC (too close to call) highlight (yellow) should be worth some attention. 

Left wins in Bolivia

 Short post, as, today has been busy for me (spraying for bugs at my apartment) but, simply, the polls in Bolivia were wrong. None of the first round polls suggested Arce, the winning candidate, had 50%+1 of the vote on the first round, and, every second round poll either had a Mesa victory (some by a wide margin), or, Arce winning by under 2 points. While counting continues, exit polls have Arce winning 53% of the vote to Mesa's 31% on the first round. 

Current results, with about 2 million votes counted out of a possible 7 million (at 100% turnout) show Arce at 40.4% with Mesa at 38.4%. Mesa has conceded defeat, and President Anez has congratulated Arce on his victory. Evo Morales will reportedly return to Bolivia some time in the near future as a result. 

New Zealand election results

 First; to note that in the Australian Capital Territory, Labor seems set to return to government. The Greens, however, are the biggest winners, going from 2 to at least 5 seats. Regardless, the Greens plan to continue to support the Labor government, amd Labor is sitting on 10 seats to 8 for the Liberals with 2 seats yet to be counted/finalized. 

New Zealand still has some ballots to count, in particular, the roughly 16% of so of ballots cast as 'special ballots'. However, of the ballots counted so far, the results are as follows:

64 - Lab - 49.1%
35 - Nat - 26.8%
10 - ACT - 8.0%
10 - Grn - 7.6%
0 - NZF - 2.7%
1 - Mao - 1.0%

As such, New Zealand First, receives 0 seats.

Labour's win is the first Majority won under MMP-PR in New Zealand. Their 49.1% of the vote is also the largest share of the vote won by any party since 1951, before the advent of strong 3rd parties. No party since the advent of the party system in New Zealand has done this well when more than one other party has taken more than 1% of the vote. The next closest result is way back in 1908, when party lines were much more informal, where the "3rd party" took 3.1%

Their win in the electorates however, is less unprecedented. Labour itself took 45 electorate seats in 2002, whereas they look set to wni only 43 this election. National was reduced to 26 electorate seats, but, itself took only 21 back in 2002. Even if you compare pre-PR results (which you should not do) you find that Arden only won 60% of electorates, while election in 1990 (two elections before the switch) saw the winner take a nice 69% of the seats. 

The result, however, is still quite impressive. While I am 100% certain it has happened before, and will again, the only PR Majority I can personally recall off the top of my head happened in 1968 in Sweden; and, not to toot my own horn, but I have quite a few elections filed in my brain to pull data from. These kind of wins are rare, and, while I'm certain it will happen again, at some point in time, in New Zealand, chances are I may have died of old age by then. 

Unlike this historic victory, National's loss is not as historic as some may think. In 2002 they took only 20.9% of the vote, and had been reduced to 27 seats in Parliament; vs 52 for Labour and 41 for the other parties. The opposition benches, this time, will be mostly National, as they have 35 seats compared to 21 for the other parties. 

New Zealand First, however, did see a historic low. The 2.7% of the vote pushes the party to its lowest ever vote share. Leader Winston Peters, who has lead the party since its founding, may decide to retire from politics. He has, after all, been involved in politics for the past 50 years. ACT, which, though standing for nothing now, once stood for the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers, did set a record with 8% of the vote. The highest ever for this party, and second only for a Business-Libertarian party in the country to the 12.3% taken by the proto-ACT party, the New Zealand Party, in 1984.

Regardless, this will go down in history as record setting.

The only problem now is if, now that Labour and only Labour sets the agenda and delivers the results, thus taking 100% of the fault if things go wrong; if such a government can convince people to re-elect them.

New Zealand, more than an Election

My previous post included my thoughts on the New Zealand election. They were as follows:

58 - Lab
40 - Nat
11 - Grn
11 - ACT

However, there's more than just a general election in New Zealand, they are holding two different Referendums. 

First is a referendum on euthanasia. Polls say support is relatively consistent; though, dropping. The most recent poll had the Yes side at 60% and the No side at 33%, the lowest "yes" and highest "no" polled. This margin should be enough to ensure that even if more voters move in the same direction, that the "yes" side will win; but I've seen referendum polling be way off in the past in various places. 

Closer is the second referendum on Cannabis use. This race is much closer. Poll averaging, especially how the graph appears on wikipedia as I post this, indicate just how close it is. Not only is the margin within 1%, but, it keeps wobbling back and forth. To me this suggests the "no" side will win.

While the Cannabis vote's wiki page does list supporters for each side, the Euthanasia page does not, so, I went to find the information myself. From what I can gather, Labour supports it (they proposed a similar one in 2014) as do the Greens, while New Zealand First has reservations, but, seems somewhat supportive. The tiny Conservative Party opposes it, and National seems to be split on the issue, but, leaning slightly in favor. Lastly, ACT backs it, as, it is their bill after all. 

More interesting is the split on the Cannabis issue. The Conservatives, of course, oppose it. The Greens support it. Other parties seem to have more neutral stances. Helen Clark, former Labour PM backs it, while John Key, former National PM opposes it. Polling suggests a 2:1 split in favor in Labour, and a 3:1 opposition split in the National Party. New Zealand First seems to oppose it by a 2:1 margin, while ACT opposes it by a 3:2 margin. 

Even if it passes, the Cannabis referendum would require additional legislation to implement, and, Parliament could simply not put forward the legislation. Conversely, it could still make and pass a bill legalizing Cannabis. 

The Euthanasia legislation is in a more interesting position. The bill itself has already passed into law via royal assent, but, it only comes into force a year after being confirmed to have won the referendum.

Speaking of which, the date of confirmation is something I want to address.

It is the 17th of October in New Zealand already. Election day. Results will come in and ballots will start to be counted and results released starting at 7pm local; this is 2am in Toronto. 

However. Mail in ballots will still take time to arrive and be counted. As such, the 'final' results on 'election day' will continue to change over the days that pass. Additionally, it is not until the 30th that the first preliminary results of the Referendum will be counted and announced. It is only on November 6th, 3 week from now, that the final results will be announced and confirmed, with the writs being returned on the 12th.