Estimating the Vote and Delegate Count
Our motto is "Run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes and, if no one does, who cares?"
The vote totals appearing on this website are determined in several ways. Following a primary or caucus, we post an estimated vote total and number of delegates. We may not post the results for uncontested contests. One technique for estimating delegates is to divide the statewide popular vote by the number of congressional districts. For a state with 5 districts, assign 1/5 of the vote to each district and compute the delegates. This produces a very rough estimate. A refinement is to take the county popular vote and apportion it accordingly to the districts. If a county is 70% in district 1 and 30% in district 2, apportion the popular vote accordingly and compute the delegates. This produces a rough estimate. As time permits, we gather the actual district vote from election officials and use that to compute the delegates. This produces a good estimate but often takes days to a month depending on the effort and backlog. The goal is to use the certified vote and district breakdown from the state party or election officials however, it may take 1 to 2 months for vote totals to be certified. Certified totals may be amended which effectively restarts the calculations. A comparison using the results of the 22 February 2020 Nevada Caucuses. The very rough first approximation is to divide the statewide total vote by the number of districts. It is quick and fast and provides an idea of the delegate count. In this case, Sanders 24, Biden 12. The error is Sanders 0, Biden 3, Buttigieg 1 -- 4 out of 36: 11%.
The rough or second approximation is to apportion the county vote to districts. It is an improvement on the very rough estimate. Here we get Sanders 24, Biden 10, Buttigieg 2. The error is Sanders 0, Biden 1, Buttigieg 1 -- 2 out of 36: 6%.
And finally, the actual vote. Certification and post-certification challenges may result in further changes.
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Last Modified: Tue Aug 06 2024 21:44:16 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) |