Saturday, January 19, 2008
McCain wins South Carolina Primary
It is now 2008 January 19 19:16 EDT. McCain has won the South Carolina primary. How do I know? CNN and the other networks aren't saying anything yet. The last set of results I have seen for these candidates is a complete set of zeroes. The polls closed only 16 minutes ago. Yet I know that McCain won.
How? Because of the exit polls that are displayed on the CNN site. If you go to their site and look at the listing of the candidates and their vote totals, you will find a link "Exit Polls". Click on that, and it gives you a breakdown of the vote for each candidate by candidate and item. For example, for church attendance, it would be frequently, sometimes, and not at all. The exit poll will tell for each of these categories the percent that each candidate got.
This enables me to find out how much they got altogether. I just sum up the products of the percentage for each of the candidates with the percentage that are in each category (e.g., frequently, 35%). That gives for you the percentage that each candidate got, based on exit polls.
I did that to the South Carolina Republican primary and got that McCain will get 31%, Huckabee about 29%, Romney 16%, Thompson 14%, and Paul 7%. A few crumbs to the other candidates. So McCain won. Later, my blog Hilbert's Hotel the mathematical details behind this procedure, which can be quickly whipped up on a spreadsheet.
How? Because of the exit polls that are displayed on the CNN site. If you go to their site and look at the listing of the candidates and their vote totals, you will find a link "Exit Polls". Click on that, and it gives you a breakdown of the vote for each candidate by candidate and item. For example, for church attendance, it would be frequently, sometimes, and not at all. The exit poll will tell for each of these categories the percent that each candidate got.
This enables me to find out how much they got altogether. I just sum up the products of the percentage for each of the candidates with the percentage that are in each category (e.g., frequently, 35%). That gives for you the percentage that each candidate got, based on exit polls.
I did that to the South Carolina Republican primary and got that McCain will get 31%, Huckabee about 29%, Romney 16%, Thompson 14%, and Paul 7%. A few crumbs to the other candidates. So McCain won. Later, my blog Hilbert's Hotel the mathematical details behind this procedure, which can be quickly whipped up on a spreadsheet.
