Just for some perspective...

[turil.livejournal.com]

Joe Curtatone, while winning the election for mayor, was voted in by less than 8% of Somerville's human population.

Comments

[badseed1980.livejournal.com]

Huh, so about 20% of those who cast a ballot DIDN'T vote for Curtatone. Now that is a more interesting statistic.

Stats says...

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

Out of the votes, 20% voted against Curtatone and 80% voted for. Even though voter turnout was a small portion of the population, as it always is, especially in elections like this one, it was still a statistically significant poll.

Even though registered voters are not a perfect representation of the entire population, and even though actual voters are not a perfect representation of the registered population, it still sounds like a statistically significant portion of our fair city actually likes Mayor Joe.

How to lie with statistics!

[turil.livejournal.com]

Sure, you could say that, if you wanted to promote the idea that Joe has a lot of support. Or you could look at all the statistics, including the one I offered up there, and see the whole story. :-)

Re: How to lie with statistics!

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

Which is that around 90 % of the city's population people felt OK enough with Mayor Joe that they didn't bother to show up and vote against him?

Re: How to lie with statistics!

[turil.livejournal.com]

Now that's just plain untrue. Many of the population, even if we're only talking about the homosapiens, weren't even allowed to vote.

Heck even of those who did vote, only 80% voted for him.

Re: How to lie with statistics!

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

80% is a pretty substantial majority, especially given that victory only requires a plurality of the vote.

Do you have stats on how many adults in Somerville are not allowed to vote in municipal elections? And have you polled those people who are not allowed to vote to see what their opinions are about the mayor?

Until then, you're drawing some pretty big inferences from the fact that some people cannot vote and many people do not vote.

We do know that of those who did vote, they overwhelmingly supported Curtatone. The grand assumption behind democracy is that the voting population is a fair representation of the total population; if it's not, then we should strive to correct that error. But I don't think that the gap is significant at this time. Feel free to disagree, but I'm not going to change my mind without plenty of proof.

Re: Stats says...

[somertricky.livejournal.com]

That's assuming a blank vote is a vote against Curtatone, and not, say, a time-saving method.

[closetalker11.livejournal.com]

And way more relevant!