SeanFromQueens t1_ix89t7x wrote on November 21, 2022 at 2:49 PM

Reply to comment by and_dont_blink in Democrat Chris Poulos Won His Connecticut House Race by a Single Vote by poliscijunki

In 2016 Democratic Iowa Caucus, there were handful of ties that were decided by coin flip

>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.

So in a small enough election the possibility of a one vote margin of victory or a tie goes up exponentially. The statistics of even distribution (such as coin flips) need a large number of attempts made and there aren't enough ties and 1 vote victory margins for that to be expressed, it's just more likely in smaller elections.

and_dont_blink t1_ix8ebeb wrote on November 21, 2022 at 3:22 PM

....this is about something very, very different even if it's implied there were six ties and they flipped a coin:

>Here’s what happened in Ames, according to David Schweingruber, an associate professor of sociology at Iowa State University (and Sanders supporter) who participated in the caucus:
A total of 484 eligible caucus attendees were initially recorded at the site. But when each candidate’s preference group was counted, Clinton had 240 supporters, Sanders had 179 and Martin O’Malley had five (causing him to be declared non-viable).
Those figures add up to just 424 participants, leaving 60 apparently missing. When those numbers were plugged into the formula that determines delegate allocations, Clinton received four delegates and Sanders received three — leaving one delegate unassigned.
Unable to account for that numerical discrepancy and the orphan delegate it produced, the Sanders campaign challenged the results and precinct leaders called a Democratic Party hot line set up to advise on such situations.
Party officials recommended they settle the dispute with a coin toss.

SeanFromQueens t1_ix8hysd wrote on November 21, 2022 at 3:47 PM

But much like the presidential votes determined by the US House (which appeared in your list of really close elections), when it's such a small number of voters it's more likely to be single digit margin of victory. Statistics would also make it likely with enough small elections, that resulted in a narrow or tied election there would a close to 50-50 break out, but only if there were thousands of instances. Most smaller elections are lopsided making the number of instances to occur take hundreds of years to see the result of near even outcomes. It's likely there will be drastic changes in partisan make up or demographic shifts or even electoral reform that would avoid the enough occurrences to have that result.