IOWA!

You might want to read the post above yours. Sanders won 6 of 7 coin tosses according to CNN. If anyone came prepared with fake coins wouldn't it be the one that wins over 80% of the tosses?

Or perhaps you are so blinded by your hatred of Hillary that facts don't matter to you and you want to make accusations without any basis in fact.

You are making accusations that show you have no concept of how the caucuses are actually run.

did you read the snopes article you linked?






those fake coins you claim were there? must not have been on the Clinton side eh

I don't know why you bother, she and other Bernie supporters (and republicans who hope Bernie wins or just Hillary haters of both sides)will claim, Hillary paid off whoever she needed to publish that correction.

I do it because other people who don't know what's happening might be reading along.

I've learned that the info at the links often differs from what the poster's personal headline/summary suggests so I occasionally go in, take a look, and pull out a quote from what's actually there.

So now that you know that Sanders actually won 6 of 7 tosses, are you convinced that Sanders cheated?

Very close races, fraud charges, wrong pre-electoral polls, people critical of the voting system, people voting not for who they like but against the candidate they dislike the most.
Welcome to Mexican style democracy, folks!

It's probably true all across democracies around the world.

Quote fbaezer:


It's part of the USA's outreach to our increasingly important Western Hemisphere neighbors.

Actually, the coin-flip situation is a bit more complicated. I read the CNN article, the Snopes article, and one from the Des Moines Register (the latter having called for an audit of the election results).

The sole source for the "Sanders won six of seven" claim is Sam Lau, spokesman for the Iowa Democratic Party. Lau says that these results were recorded by a cellphone app, and that appears to be the source of CNN's story. But the Snopes article says that they can't verify that:

"As of 2 February 2016, we were unable to locate any information supporting that app-gleaned data supported either claim: that Sanders won nearly all the coin tosses, or that Clinton was almost entirely favored by the random flips."

Snopes also, in the summary of its results, uses "undetermined" to describe the issues of "Whether Hillary Clinton won six out of six (or seven) coin tosses in Iowa in 2016; how many coin tosses occurred; the specific breakdown of coin toss results".

Note also that there may be more than one set of coin flips involved: a set supposedly recorded by the app, and a set documented by videos and eyewitnesses. Here's what the Des Moines Register says:

"Lau said seven coin flips were reported statewide through the app, and Bernie Sanders won six of them.

"The Des Moines Register has identified six coin flips through social media and one in an interview with a caucus participant. Of those seven, Clinton was the apparent winner of six. It's unknown if there is any overlap between the coin flips identified by the Register and the coin flips the state party confirmed."

At the end of the same article the newspaper says:

"The Register has been collecting reports of coin toss wins, reported on Twitter and YouTube. These are unverified by the Iowa Democratic Party and one of the reasons the newspaper has requested the voting records.

"Clinton won in a precinct in Des Moines, at another precinct in Des Moines, in Newton, in West Branch and in Davenport.

"Sanders won a flip in Hardin Township in Johnson County."

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2016/02/02/iowa-caucus-coin-flip-count-unknown/79708740/

Let's say that engineer and I conduct a set of six coin flips. I win all of them. The odds of this are (1/2)^6 = 64 to 1 against.

A week later, we do the same thing, only this time, engineer wins all six tosses; again at odds of 64 to 1 against.

As a result, not one but two improbable sets of coin flips occurred, which is still more improbable.

Or is it?

Depends upon how you group them. If we regard all twelve flips as part of a single set, the results are 50-50 which is the ideal for random coin flips.

But the choice of grouping of events (two sets of six each, or one set of twelve) is entirely at the discretion of the observer/analyst.

The total needs to be larger than 50 for it to be 50/50 (25 for each).

He didn't win. It's a lie. Read Snopes.

Did YOU read that what you emphasized from the Snopes cannot be proven?

cicerone imposter wrote: "The total needs to be larger than 50 for it to be 50/50 (25 for each)."

Apparently, English is not your native tongue. "50-50" is idiomatic American English for "equal odds".

From what I can see from the Snopes article, neither claim can be proven. So on to the NH primary where more than likely Sanders will win. The real test is going to be in states which do not have a non white majority which will be coming up after NH.

Puzzled person. There is fairly basic math, there is no discretion of the observer analyst. There is one answer that is mathematically correct. Any other answer is wrong.

The odds of the situation you describe happening is 1 in 2^12.

On the coin toss thing, I agree. So much seems related to posts on social media, I think I'll disregard the entire thing.

The term "Hillary hater" is being thrown around an awful lot.

What does it mean?

Re my earlier post about how Trump lost Iowa:

Here's a link to a University of New Hampshire poll, three days old, showing voter certainty levels both before and after the Iowa Caucus.

For Republicans who say they plan to vote in the New Hampshire primary (6.8% margin of error) polled after Iowa:

Definitely decided: 41%

Leaning toward someone: 25%

Still trying to decide: 34%


If vote were held today, would vote for:

Trump: 29%

Rubio: 18%


Wouldn't vote for under any circumstances:

Trump: 37%

Rubio: 5%


With 34% undecided and 25% only leaning toward a candidate, that leaves an awful lot of uncertainty among likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire. So the fact that Trump leads by 11% over Rubio if the vote were held today, doesn't prove a lot, since that type of poll requires respondents to choose among candidates and does not allow "undecided" as a poll response. (It does allow "other" but that means other candidates, perhaps write-ins, or at least more obscure ones).

http://cola.unh.edu/sites/cola.unh.edu/files/research_publications/GOPPrimary_20416.pdf

How does that 34% undecided and 25% leaning toward some candidate compare with the usual breakdown for polls a week before a Republican primary?