Chance of a 269-269 tie?

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Here are some possible electoral tie scenarios for 2004:









Alternate for this one: swap OR and IA.
or, turn OR and ME red, and WA blue.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

Oddly enough, I couldn't come up with any realistic scenario in which Kerry wins Florida, and there's an electoral tie.

To sum up the "headlines" of my four scenarios:

1. Kerry wins back Democrat "home turf" and does well in his native New England.

2. Jobs *barely* cost Bush the election in Ohio, but religious conservatives win him West Virginia and Wisconsin.

3. Libertarian and Moderate voters in West turned off by Bush social agenda (he only *barely* wins Nevada).

4. Bush scores poorly on the economy, but has a strong showing among Libertarians.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

A chance of one in fifty.  If we assume about 200 votes are Bush's for the taking, and about 200 votes are Kerry's for the taking, we are left with 138.  So that's 69 combinations (probably not all are possible, but I'm lazy, so I'll say fifty of them are possible.)  One of those is the 269-269 tie.  So, ceteris paribus there's a one in fifty chance of a tie.  (except that all things are never really equal, are they?)

I don't think your probablistic analysis is all that correct.

Assuming 200 sure EVs for Bush, and 200 for Kerry, the 138 tossup EVs will be much more likely to split close to 50-50 than to go, say, 90-10.  I would weight each of those 50 combinations along a bell curve, peaking at 69/69 split.  By this reasoning, an electoral tie is a lot more likely than a 1/50 shot.  Probably more like 4/50 or 5/50 (someone with a stats background could probably help here).

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

4. Bush scores poorly on the economy, but has a strong showing among Libertarians.

you put quite a bit of work into those maps, and explain the situations well, by the way.  

Thanks!  It wasn't that hard with the calculator.

Number 4 seems particularly unlikely though, since economics are the basis of the (lower case L) libertarian swing voter.

Bush keeps taxes low, and most of the job losses are in the manufacturing and tech sectors.  This doesn't affect Frontier New England and the (non-coastal) West the way it does, say, the Industrial Midwest.  If Sagebrush libertarians aren't too bad off economically, it comes down to taxes.  In which case, Bush dominates.

In such a scenario, Bush wins Maine and New Hampshire, as well as Oregon, but loses Ohio and West Virginia.