Reply #181: Assumptions

[jmknapp]

Since I selected "ballots" at random from the 500,000-odd universe, the switched ballots would automatically reflect the Kerry percent.
And the precincts that had larger number of votes would thereby suffer more cross-voting.

It gets a bit trickier picking a precinct "at random" to switch to, within the polling place. Should that be weighted by votes cast in each precinct? Or give all precincts in the polling place an equal chance of being selected?

In the simulation the selection of the cross-voting precinct was weighted by the precinct size. For example, say a ballot from precinct A in a polling place was selected, comprised of precincts A (500 votes), B (500 votes) and C (250 votes). The simulation would then pick B or C at random as the cross-voting precinct, weighted by the votes cast, so B in this case would have twice as much chance of being selected.

Turns out I had a little bug of sorts in the original simulation, fixing which changes the results slightly:

K -0.56
B -0.15
b +0.24
p +0.22
d +0.26

The original method underweighted the two-precinct polling places.

If the cross-voting precinct is chosen not weighted by precinct size, then the result is the same, so I guess it averages out.