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I don't understand the problem. This is exactly what statistics addresses. Is that 9% a good enough random sample of the entire population, or not? If not, t

I don't understand the problem. This is exactly what statistics addresses. Is that 9% a good enough random sample of the entire population, or not? If not, then what is the error 5%, 10%? Actually 9% is a really good sample.

valarauca1 10y ago
I don't understand the problem. Low particaptation in the democratic election process can cause people to not benefit from their government. This is exactly what statistics addresses. Is that 9% a good enough random sample of the entire population, or not? You are implying it is indeed random. Voting isn't random sampling as people are not randomly selected to take part in the democratic process, people choice too, while everyone has the right too. For a proper bayesian result like you are suggesting participation would have to be randomly decided, and representative proportioinally of demographics (economic background, ethnic, educational, age, etc.), which it isn't. Voters are more often then not. Old, affluent (I.E.: Can afford to take time off of work to vote, or has a job that permits them to take time off to vote, or have time to research+register for absentee voting), black, educated. Under-educated, immigrant, and younger backgrounds are heavily under represented in the voting process currently, and for most modern records keeping. Furthermore some local governments have laws that discourage particaptation for some ethnic-minorities.
linuskendall 10y ago
Except I'd venture it would not be a good sample as it's not necessarily very statistically representative of the whole population (ie. random)? Of whether the people choosing the candidates have to be or even should be statistically representative of the whole population can be argued. The choice of candidates or order on ballots in many countries is decided by various less-than-representative groups.
- laichzeit0 10y ago
  > Except I'd venture it would not be a good sample as it's not necessarily very statistically representative of the whole population That's pure conjecture as the article doesn't address the sample at all. It just basically says "The sample is 9%". It doesn't say why this is bad.
colanderman 10y ago
These 9% were not a random sample.
thomasfoster96 10y ago
It's 9% of the most politically active and engaged section of the population. It's not a random cross section of the entirety of the US population.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  It's 9% consisting of the members of two private clubs who have thrown up massive barriers to the participation of people who don't agree with either of their programs and who don't have to be active or engaged to be counted, just to vote correctly. Ideally, I'd think that the parties would want to an even smaller percentage to make the choice for the rest of us. 9% of the population have proved very difficult to wrangle this time around, with a near total failure on one of the sides. Either that, or the best candidate for president out of 300 million is the wife of the president three terms ago. Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Clinton? This has nothing to with issues.
- VLM 10y ago
  Certainly there exists a value X where 100-X percent of the population is not engaged at all and is little more than a source of random numbers or demographic counts. If X is 10% then its an excellent measure of the will of the actively thinking electorate and its not the fault of the statistician that Americans don't care about politics. If X is 50% or so then there's 4 semi-motivated voters per primary voter which is getting fuzzy. Note that about 20% of the population vote in non-presidential elections and 50% vote in presidential elections. I'd propose that the delta is due to tradition and heavy social signalling to get out the vote, but that 30% don't really care and absent intense PR activity in support of voting, would not vote. Unfortunately 20% is too high to clearly support the first criteria and 20% is too low to support the second criteria. I think its really annoying that there is no mathematically trustworthy answer to is 9% enough. Annoyingly its probably good enough to not be ridiculously far off and bad enough to not be correct a significant amount of time.
prof_hobart 10y ago
If you were using the primaries as a way of predicting the overall winner, the critical word would be "random". The statistical idea that a small sample can accurately represent the whole is based on the assumption that the small number are largely indistinguishable from that whole. It's like taking a sample of In this case, the people voting in primaries are a self-selecting group - people who are both relatively actively engaged with politics and members of one of the two main parties. It's not unreasonable to think that the wider population (even the wider population of people who normally vote at an election) could behave vastly differently. For instance, if you had a candidate who was so divisive that they were either loved or hated, then it wouldn't be overly surprising if the vast majority of their supporters had signed up to vote in the primaries, with little support outside of that core. Compare this to a more middle of the road candidate - they might struggle to get as many people out to vote in a primary, but might do far better in the wider population. That theory is very relevant in the UK at the moment, with the leader of the Labour Party (Jeremy Corbyn) being very popular amongst grassroots party members, but with his enemies saying he could never win a general election as this level of support would never be reflected outside of party supporters.
evilduck 10y ago
I really doubt that 9% in the primaries looks anything like the general election, which itself probably diverges from a pure population demographic sample (voter ID laws, disenfranchisement, etc)

valarauca1 10y ago

I don't understand the problem. Low particaptation in the democratic election process can cause people to not benefit from their government. This is exactly what statistics addresses. Is that 9% a good enough random sample of the entire population, or not? You are implying it is indeed random. Voting isn't random sampling as people are not randomly selected to take part in the democratic process, people choice too, while everyone has the right too. For a proper bayesian result like you are suggesting participation would have to be randomly decided, and representative proportioinally of demographics (economic background, ethnic, educational, age, etc.), which it isn't. Voters are more often then not. Old, affluent (I.E.: Can afford to take time off of work to vote, or has a job that permits them to take time off to vote, or have time to research+register for absentee voting), black, educated. Under-educated, immigrant, and younger backgrounds are heavily under represented in the voting process currently, and for most modern records keeping. Furthermore some local governments have laws that discourage particaptation for some ethnic-minorities.

linuskendall 10y ago

Except I'd venture it would not be a good sample as it's not necessarily very statistically representative of the whole population (ie. random)? Of whether the people choosing the candidates have to be or even should be statistically representative of the whole population can be argued. The choice of candidates or order on ballots in many countries is decided by various less-than-representative groups.

laichzeit0 10y ago
> Except I'd venture it would not be a good sample as it's not necessarily very statistically representative of the whole population That's pure conjecture as the article doesn't address the sample at all. It just basically says "The sample is 9%". It doesn't say why this is bad.

colanderman 10y ago

These 9% were not a random sample.

thomasfoster96 10y ago

It's 9% of the most politically active and engaged section of the population. It's not a random cross section of the entirety of the US population.

pessimizer 10y ago
It's 9% consisting of the members of two private clubs who have thrown up massive barriers to the participation of people who don't agree with either of their programs and who don't have to be active or engaged to be counted, just to vote correctly. Ideally, I'd think that the parties would want to an even smaller percentage to make the choice for the rest of us. 9% of the population have proved very difficult to wrangle this time around, with a near total failure on one of the sides. Either that, or the best candidate for president out of 300 million is the wife of the president three terms ago. Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Clinton? This has nothing to with issues.
VLM 10y ago
Certainly there exists a value X where 100-X percent of the population is not engaged at all and is little more than a source of random numbers or demographic counts. If X is 10% then its an excellent measure of the will of the actively thinking electorate and its not the fault of the statistician that Americans don't care about politics. If X is 50% or so then there's 4 semi-motivated voters per primary voter which is getting fuzzy. Note that about 20% of the population vote in non-presidential elections and 50% vote in presidential elections. I'd propose that the delta is due to tradition and heavy social signalling to get out the vote, but that 30% don't really care and absent intense PR activity in support of voting, would not vote. Unfortunately 20% is too high to clearly support the first criteria and 20% is too low to support the second criteria. I think its really annoying that there is no mathematically trustworthy answer to is 9% enough. Annoyingly its probably good enough to not be ridiculously far off and bad enough to not be correct a significant amount of time.

prof_hobart 10y ago

If you were using the primaries as a way of predicting the overall winner, the critical word would be "random". The statistical idea that a small sample can accurately represent the whole is based on the assumption that the small number are largely indistinguishable from that whole. It's like taking a sample of In this case, the people voting in primaries are a self-selecting group - people who are both relatively actively engaged with politics and members of one of the two main parties. It's not unreasonable to think that the wider population (even the wider population of people who normally vote at an election) could behave vastly differently. For instance, if you had a candidate who was so divisive that they were either loved or hated, then it wouldn't be overly surprising if the vast majority of their supporters had signed up to vote in the primaries, with little support outside of that core. Compare this to a more middle of the road candidate - they might struggle to get as many people out to vote in a primary, but might do far better in the wider population. That theory is very relevant in the UK at the moment, with the leader of the Labour Party (Jeremy Corbyn) being very popular amongst grassroots party members, but with his enemies saying he could never win a general election as this level of support would never be reflected outside of party supporters.

evilduck 10y ago

I really doubt that 9% in the primaries looks anything like the general election, which itself probably diverges from a pure population demographic sample (voter ID laws, disenfranchisement, etc)