Can we move past the coin tosses?
I haven’t managed to look through all the posts here or in the Sanders thread, but there are at least two myths that need to be put to rest:
- Hillary did not win 6 out of 6 coin tosses, she won 6 out of at least 12.
- The coin flips did not award any state delegates, and Hillary’s margin of 4 state delegates over Sanders (corresponding to one pledged delegate advantage at the convention) was not affected by any of the 12 coin flips.
The six out of six story is so absurd, because the media is still portraying it like it’s true, and I saw things like WaPo’s article on the improbability of it after I had watched videos of Sanders winning a flip.
According to CNN, there were 7 flips digitally reported in precincts that used the the Microsoft app. Of those, Clinton won 1, and Sanders won 6 (one of them vs O’Malley).
CNN reports that it is unknown how many other precincts used flips that weren’t reporting them via the app. There are six videos of Clinton winning flips, so there must be a minimum of five not reported on the app, so we have at least 12 flips. I don’t know whether the video of Sanders winning one above is one of the seven that were reported.
As for point #2 above, I keep seeing people here say things like “If Sanders had won those coin tosses, he’d have won Iowa!”. Regardless of the fact that it looks like Sanders may even have won more flips than Clinton, that’s a misunderstanding of the way Iowa’s ridiculous delegate system works.
The individual precincts were electing county delegates. Each of the 1,781 counties has at least one, generally more, delegates at stake. There are around 11,000 county delegates, of which coin flips decided 12 or so. There are only 1397 state delegate equivalents. Each county delegate is therefore approximately one-tenth of a state delegate (depending on the specific county). So even if Clinton had won 6 out of 6, this is the difference of around 0.6 state delegates — not enough to change the result at all.
Ok, done. I’m still donating to Sanders, in case anyone wonders where my loyalties are, but these myths are really annoying, especially as the media keeps getting them wrong too.
