Varieties of Uncertainty
I’m not sure I have the right kind of vocabulary to describe what I’m trying to say here, but when thinking about elections it’s worth distinguishing between two kinds of uncertainty about the outcome. According to Pollster.com’s average, Al Franken has a two point lead over Norm Coleman with 18 percent of the vote going to a third party candidate. Leading is better than trailing, so you’d say Franken is favored. But this polling is perfectly consistent with Coleman winning the election. Sampling error or problems with the turnout model could cause the final result to deviate from the current projection, underlying views could plausibly shift the requisite, and preference for third party candidates tends to get unstable at the end of campaigns. We don’t know what’s going to happen.
The Obama-McCain race isn’t like that. Obama’s up by too much. Plus, the Electoral College seems to favor him. On top of that, any errors in likely voter models are overwhelmingly likely to favor Obama. And many people have already voted, which makes it all the more difficult for McCain to close the gap. We know what’s going to happen.
Except even when we do know, we don’t really know. But not because, as in the case of Franken-Coleman, the survey data is inconclusive. But because the course of events in the world is intrinsically uncertain. A meteor could crash into the planet earth. Or Russia could send tanks into Lithuania. Al-Qaeda could stage an attack designed at helping John McCain. And the public reaction to dramatic events like that would be hard to predict. Even though people talk a lot about “October surprises” it’s in the nature of such things that there’s very little historical data about them that can be evaluated rigorously.
38 Responses to “Varieties of Uncertainty”
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October 22nd, 2008 at 9:43 am
“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” – Don Rumsfeld
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:47 am
What a waste it is to lose one’s mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:50 am
Well, as a philosophy major, you also know what Hume said about the sun rising…
What you are trying to grapple here with is risk assessment. Unless you believe in the deterministic universe (and not even then if the human mind is sufficiently finite), everything that we do is inherently uncertain. Some things we ignore and consider them certain (e.g. the sun rising) because the empirically perceived risk is just so low.
However, there is a lot of evidence that human beings are particularly bad at risk assessment (at least when compared to mathematical models) for cases that are not either almost probability 0 or almost probability 1.
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:51 am
I always wondered about unknown knowns, which Rumsfeld left out of his soliloquy- that is, things that someone in your org knows but can’t communicate effectively (an FBI agent in Minnesota is concerned about AQ operatives taking flight training but no one listens.)
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:52 am
The Rumsfeld quote was the first thing that came to my mind. The Franken-Coleman outcome is a known unknown. An October surprise is an unknown unknown.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:04 am
My main uncertainty about Obama’s chances is this — whether the risky national 30 minute infomercial he’s running on the major networks on election eve is a smart move, given his huge lead in the polling. Why take the chance it’ll backfire? It does feed into the celebrity and buying the election memes.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:08 am
What kind of al Qaeda attack could possibly make voters MORE
comfortable with the prospect of a Palin presidency?
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:09 am
On the one hand, you’ve got the uncertainty of mapping the set of people polled onto the set of people who will cast a vote on election day, holding their candidate preferences constant. On the other hand, you’ve got the uncertainty of mapping candidate preferences today onto candidate preferences on election day, holding external events constant.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:10 am
GOP idiots having to surrender again:
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:12 am
“Why take the chance it’ll backfire? It does feed into the celebrity and buying the election memes.”
Here’s the thing. Memes only work in non-serious times. Gore as an exaggerator, Kerry as a flip-flopper, whatever. There weren’t really a whole lot of important issues then for most people. Same in the Democratic primary: they actually agreed on virtually every issue, so stuff like media narratives were mildly important.
Now, however, it’s officially a Serious Election. They can run all the celebrity ads they want, but 50 million people actually get to *watch* Obama, unfiltered, for thirty minutes straight, and listen to what he actually has to say about the issues. That vastly outweighs any meme that CNN can talk about all day long but not actually influence any votes.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:26 am
Why would an AQ attack be good for McCain?
Wouldn’t if be happening on George Bush’s watch after 7 years of the GOP getting all the power they need to protect us?
How is McCain going to sidestep that one?
Worse yet, we *know* how the two Campaigns will react to something like this:
Obama will come across Presidential
McCain (along with his Campaign and all their Surrogates) will see this as the ultimate Hail Mary and charge down the field to try to catch the ball.
They’ll come across as ugly opportunists with yet another round of flopping around Talking Points like we saw in the Financial Crisis.
The Obama Campaign almost certainly has all their contingency talking points planned out. Not just the initial ones, but also the ones when the Wingnuts try to blame this on the Dems, Bill Clinton, the soft Liberals and Obama himself. The more nutty the wing gets (and they will go way over the top), the more presidential that Obama will look.
Which circles back to:
This would have happened on GWB’s watch after 7 years of being given *every* power he wanted, with McCain marching lockstep with him.
I think at this point, we overestimate how an AQ attack would help McCain. It *perhaps* would have helped him back in June or July. By now, it won’t help him as much as we worry.
John
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:37 am
Even though people talk a lot about “October surprises” it’s in the nature of such things that there’s very little historical data about them that can be evaluated rigorously.
Well, I’d say that the vector needed to change McCain’s current course from defeat to victory is steadily getting longer (stronger/more powerful).
A very potent vector headed in the right direction could change his situation, but we’re getting into the range of (say) Bush declaring martial law and overturning the election results.
max
['Wildcards exist though.']
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:38 am
jdw – stop thinking with your brain and start thinking with your stomach. That is where fear is centered. Bush should have caught or killed Bin Laden. He didn’t. Bin Laden realesed a tape endorsing Kerry. Late surge for Bush. That didn’t make sense to me, but it does to people who think with their stomach.
One more thing to worry about: rigged voting machines. We will never know for certain if they had any effect on the last two elections. This time, we will know but could we do anything about it?
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:46 am
Here’s the sort of vocabulary that a chemist or physicist might use to describe the error you’re talking about:
1. random error: the purely statistical error that comes from the fact that you polled a small fraction of the voting population (this is the reported margin of error). This will cause the results of two identical polls taken at the same time to differ from each other
2. systematic error: deriving from a flawed turnout model, or the fact that you don’t call people who only use cell phones. This will cause identical polls to deviate from the actual results by the same amount.
3. experimental irrelevance (technically not error in the scientific sense): You want to know what votes will actually be cast, but people might change their minds between now and when they cast their votes. This is where the meteor scenario comes in.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:52 am
Don’t forget the power of prayer!
The safe thing is to stay grounded, in case of sudden discharge.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:59 am
I hate to be the one to point this out, but uncertainty can be quantified. That’s what stats and probability do, and they do it, in many respects, very well.
It’s true that there is a small probability of an alien UFO trailing Hale Bopp. Just as there was a small probability that Bush/Iraq would result in a democratic Middle East five years later. But those probs are so low they fall within the colloquial definition of totally impossible.
Recognizing that is part of what being a grownup is all about. There is much more uncertainty about Obama’s election than there ever was about Bush/Iraq. I’m hopeful but, considering that by any objective standard it should have been a rout, I think it’s too close to call but appears to be leaning Obama.
Coleman/Franken is, colloquially, a dead heat.
I have no idea what kind of point Matt was trying to make. These are degrees of certainty, not varieties. And the degree can be measured. In fact, they are measured all the time. The statistical tools that measure uncertainty are actually quite sophisticated.
I strongly suggest Matt take a course or two in introductory social science stats. It’s actually quite an interesting subject, even if one’s math skills are rudimentary.
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:07 am
“Observe the lilies of the field. See how they grow. They neither toil nor spin.” (Jesus Christ)
Worrying will do no good. It looks good for him (Obama). Work to that end.
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:09 am
As an economist, I would think about this in terms of Risk vs true Uncertainty. We can attempt to calculate the numbers re: sample error, etc. leading to a different result in the Franken race, which makes this a question of chance, in a sense. This is a math problem. When dealing with the possible unforeseen world events, we have a case of true uncertainty. We don’t even know what questions to ask in order to start looking for probabilities to calculate.
Of course, placing these two races firmly into these categories is misleading. We can put numbers to the odds that sample bias are giving us a false impression of an Obama lead, they are just very very small. And, of course, a sudden unforeseen even could have just as much impact on a Senate race in Minnesota (such as, for example, Jesus returns to the Earth and is spotted holding a copy of Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot).
A sudden unforeseen event event c
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:12 am
My main uncertainty about Obama’s chances is this — whether the risky national 30 minute infomercial he’s running on the major networks on election eve is a smart move, given his huge lead in the polling.
That’s my thought too. Shades of the Kinnock Sheffield rally in 1992, if done badly. For me, I’d spend the 30 minutes commercial-free on something that wasn’t election ads. At very least, it has to be about voters, not Obama himself: people talking about their job security, their healthcare, their ambitions.
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:13 am
ACtually Franken is farther ahead than it seems because he will win almost all the undecideds.
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:23 am
Coleman, due to proximity, will also get sprayed by Bachmann’s spittle. Whether that helps Barkley or Franken doesn’t matter, some MN republicans are going to find something better to do than vote republican on Nov 4.
To us Minnesotans this is a good thing.
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:43 am
In the last 2 years or so, I’ve been really encouraged by the direction of politics and the media. I’ve said for years that we on the left need to stop all the infighting and work together to defeat the reich wing. So I’m glad to see that the media are working with our fellow freedom fighters to help Obama get elected – with the Wahpo and AP even being so helpful so as to regurgitate Al Qaeda misdirection with no critical analysis of what they are being fed. Come on, we all know that Al Qaeda would get crushed under a McCain administration – and that would be terrible for the global south and leftists everywhere.
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:54 am
“Bush declaring martial law and overturning the election results.”
The old chesnut! But how does one declare martial law overnight across a country of 3000 miles and 300million people a high number of whom own and know how to use private hanguns and automatic weapons… and pull it off with a stretched military/NG?
That and the rest of the world not being very pleased [understatement] I’d imagine having a large swathe of THEIR citizens based here under house arrest for no reason whatsoever.. ahem..!
uhm I speak as one of them. :O
October 22nd, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Although I like a philosophical discussion about quantifying uncertainty as much as the next guy, it really isn’t warranted in this case.
Most fundamentally what you need is a distinction between the present and the future. The thing to remember about polls is that they are just surveys, not crystal balls, and therefore they tell you about the present, not the future. Now as noted polls are imperfect, so there is some uncertainty about the present even after you conduct the poll. But that is fundamentally different from looking ahead and asking what the future will be like, and what you are mixing together is uncertainty about the present (e.g., sampling error) and uncertainty about possible future events that may change voter preference (e.g., tanks into Lithuania).
So really all you are doing is noting that Obama appears to be in a much better position than Franken in the present, even given our limited uncertainty about the present, and thus that McCain needs much more of boost out of the future period between now and the election than Coleman in order to win, which he might not get. And I don’t think philosophical discussions about quantifying uncertainty are going to add much to that fairly basic point.
October 22nd, 2008 at 12:09 pm
So how far ahead does Obama need to be in election eve polls for a loss to be seen as a stolen election by the majority of the county? If he’s up 10 in PA, 8 in CO, 15 in IA, and he loses them, will people still accept it?
October 22nd, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Hell no.
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