If Roth's people get the vote out, it could go Bush. I put DE in the Gore column and gave ME to Bush, only cause I already have 13 undecided, the max I am willing to deal with<g>
Now, go get a drink and relax. What follows are my current predictions, including a "Bad Day at Black Rock" doomsday scenario in the event of a tie.
I currently have: Bush 213 and Gore 139 as "locked" votes.
I then developed two models, one based on assigning leaning states to one candidate(if their win probability exceeded .60...that is probability not % of tracking poll data). It is very simplistic and does not conform to margin of error criteria, which requires at least a 95%likelihood of winning to be given to a candidate.
In the 13 undecideds, I have Gore leading in CA,FL,PA,WA,MN,IA for 130 electoral votes or 269 total.
I have Bush leading in WI,MO, and WV for 27 electoral votes or 240 total.
I have true 50/50 tossups in TN,OR,AR,NM for 29 electoral votes.
Using this simplistic approach of giving slight leans to each candidate,
Gore would be at 269
Bush would be at 240
29 tossup votes in TN,OR,AR,NM
Still with me here? Those 4 states produce 16 distinct outcomes. In 15 of those 16, Gore wins; in 1 of those 16 Bush and Gore create a TIE!! That translates .9375 prob for Gore...admittedly, very unrealistic
Any changes in tracking poll data will significantly alter the above, since many of the leads above are razor thin.
Now, recognizing that the above is extremely simplistic, I dug deeper.
2nd Model--Detailed
Of the 186 tossup votes, in 13 states, I analyzed 8,192 possible outcomes, mapping tracking poll data into probabilistic outcomes for each state. I came up with 175 distinct electoral vote distributions ranging from 186 to 0 down to 0 to 186.
Of those 175 combinations, probabilistically, Gore "expects" 118 and Bush expects 68(remember my undecided group has:
CA,FL,PA,WI,TN,WA,MO,MN,IA,OR,AR,NM,WV.
Giving Bush a 281 to 257 win, with .58 probability.
95% Confidence Interval: Bush--234 to 346 and Gore--192 to 304
Because the 13 states have different probabilities and not 50/50, the confidence intervals are not symmetric about the mean estimates of 281 for Bush and 257 for Gore.
Notes on Tie Probabilities
Of the 175 possible distinct electoral vote combinations in those 13 states, the 6th most likely to occur is one where Gore gets 130 votes and Bush gets 56 votes for a 269 to 269 tie. The tie has a probability of .0192
Now, stay with me Cisco, cause you are probably the only one to read all of this post to this point....
The "Bad Day at Black Rock Doomsday Scenario"
If the election ends in a 269 to 269 tie, a 2% probability by my current estimates, the election goes to the House... the new house.
Each state's House delegation votes as 1 vote for President. If a state has equal Republicans and Democrats, they most likely will not reach a decision.
So, to pick a President, 26 votes are required for a majority.
In the current House, 20 states are controlled by Dems, 25 by Repubs, 5 are EVEN.
If the Repubs DO NOT gain one more state under their control, guess what? No decision. Remember, I am not talking changes in the total makeup of the House, I am referring to changes in the number of states controlled by one party or the other. Since only a small number of House seats are up for contention, it is quite possible that the makeup of the House may only change by 2 or 3 net either party. Moreover, it is even MORE likely that the current majority of states controlled by one party will not change at all.
Anecdotally, I will assign a probability of .50 to the "no change" in state majority probability. That translates to "no decision" in the House...at least on the initial rounds of voting after Jan 4, 2001.
Meanwhile, the Senate elects the Vice President, individual senators vote rather than state by state(thank God!). The current makeup of the Senate is 54 to 46 in favor of the Republicans. If that makeup is maintained, Cheney will easily become the new VP. If, however, the Democrats achieve a net gain of 4 seats, it's 50-50 time again.
What are those odds? At present, including senators not up for re-election, Dem and Rep locks, Dem and Rep leans, the standings appear to be 50 Republican, 43 Democrats with 7 tossup races remaining.
Using this model, the Democrats would have to win all seven states to create a tie in the Senate...a 1 in 128 chance of occurring or .0078. Note: Since the Senate voting for VP would occur BEFORE Jan 20,2001, Lieberman could still take his seat as Senator(remember, the VP elect has not been determined)
So, recapping up to this point. A .0192 probability of an electoral vote tie and a .50 probability of the House unable to pick a President and a .0078 probability of the Senate unable to pick a VP(who would serve as acting President), results in a .00007488 probability of complete Constitutional crisis.(1 in 13,354) And remember, since no decision would have been reached, Liebermann would NOT have to resign his senate seat...creating a Catch 22 of continued stalemate.
Now, if this unlikely set of events were to occur, the Constitution does provide for the Congress to pick someone to serve as Acting President and Acting VP. If, however, the House, together with the Senate, are split, who knows. Since the House contains an Odd number(435), a tie shouldn't occur, but what if no one candidate gets a majority...is a majority even needed? The House might agree on picking the Speaker of the House to serve as Acting President(the way it is now if Pres and VP both die at the same time). But remember, there are a couple of independents in the House and Traficant(Democrat) is a loose cannon who won't go with his party, and who knows what the process would entail from there.
No one could even begin to predict the wild possibilities from that point on.
But just think of how many thousand points the Dow and NASDAQ would fall during that time? And I wonder what old Saddam Hussein would be doing?
TG |
