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Google also includes the correct election counts in a big box directly above any of the search results...

by imgabe 10y ago

ctdonath 10y ago
Question is: what constitutes "correct"? The Federal Elections Commission hasn't released the official results. Google does (in light gray) mention that there's still 20 electoral votes to account for. It does not, however, give any disclaimer to the very precise looking "popular vote" count[1], which will change significantly when those 20 EVs are finally accounted for, and change again if[1] more counting occurs. A whole lot of arguing is going on over that popular vote, which indications are actually puts Trump ahead even though Clinton is authoritatively presented by Google as having more. No major site is showing Trump having the 306 EVs which he will undoubtedly have; the stalling at this point is getting suspicious. [1] - To clarify: the USA presidential election does not establish a winner from the straight count of all voters. Since we are the United States, voters in each state vote in their jurisdiction, the state decides how to handle the results, and then each state submits a set of votes (weighted by population in a way to ensure low-population states aren't invariably washed out by a dozen major cities elsewhere). We don't necessarily complete the vote count because, mathematically, there comes a point (usually) where the remaining votes simply don't matter (say, candidate T is ahead by 200,000 votes and there are 100,000 votes remaining to count) because the allocation of the state's electoral votes are provably complete (and because counting every vote usually gets pretty messy at the end; look up "hanging chad").
- ctdonath 10y ago
  BTW: the official results will be published here - http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/electionresults.shtml http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/electionresults.shtml
ocdtrekkie 10y ago
They're offering up AP's count, but if the results below Knowledge Graph are fake, the best Google can offer is "trust that Google is right on the top section". Given that the first search result is so wrong, it's hard to trust Google in this regard. Also, consider Google often tries to answer questions based on text from high-ranking results. So while final election results may get you the Knowledge Graph section, asking a specific question about the election results may inadvertently cause Google to source it's answer from a bad link like 70news.

Google also includes the correct election counts in a big box directly above any of the search results...

by imgabe 10y ago

Google also includes the correct election counts in a big box directly above any of the search results...

Question is: what constitutes "correct"? The Federal Elections Commission hasn't released the official results. Google does (in light gray) mention that there's still 20 electoral votes to account for. It does not, however, give any disclaimer to the very precise looking "popular vote" count[1], which will change significantly when those 20 EVs are finally accounted for, and change again if[1] more counting occurs. A whole lot of arguing is going on over that popular vote, which indications are actually puts Trump ahead even though Clinton is authoritatively presented by Google as having more. No major site is showing Trump having the 306 EVs which he will undoubtedly have; the stalling at this point is getting suspicious. [1] - To clarify: the USA presidential election does not establish a winner from the straight count of all voters. Since we are the United States, voters in each state vote in their jurisdiction, the state decides how to handle the results, and then each state submits a set of votes (weighted by population in a way to ensure low-population states aren't invariably washed out by a dozen major cities elsewhere). We don't necessarily complete the vote count because, mathematically, there comes a point (usually) where the remaining votes simply don't matter (say, candidate T is ahead by 200,000 votes and there are 100,000 votes remaining to count) because the allocation of the state's electoral votes are provably complete (and because counting every vote usually gets pretty messy at the end; look up "hanging chad").

ctdonath 10y ago
BTW: the official results will be published here - http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/electionresults.shtml http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/electionresults.shtml

ocdtrekkie 10y ago

They're offering up AP's count, but if the results below Knowledge Graph are fake, the best Google can offer is "trust that Google is right on the top section". Given that the first search result is so wrong, it's hard to trust Google in this regard. Also, consider Google often tries to answer questions based on text from high-ranking results. So while final election results may get you the Knowledge Graph section, asking a specific question about the election results may inadvertently cause Google to source it's answer from a bad link like 70news.