Thursday 9 May 2013

Breakdown of a wormhole vote part 2

Today's post is in response to Gevlon's post about the CSM; specifically exploring the exclusion rounds of the wormhole candidates : Cipreh and Ayeson.  This is also a follow up on yesterday's post.


Tldr;

  • Random leakage normally doesn't matter, unless someone is already close to a quota
  • Preferences clearly flowing in a direction do matter.
  • Leakage happens when voting 'below the line'.  
  • The wormhole 5 got the seats their vote allowed.

The analysis below pays no attention to where the votes originated from, merely looking at the result of these exclusions.  I also have not spent any time pulling apart the numbers on the null bloc candidates.


First of all I grabbed the votes from Trebor's analysis, grabbing the end of rounds (before and after) any two candidates are excluded.

I then look at the change in votes for all candidates as the candidate is excluded, both in raw terms and then in % of votes terms.

Numbers are available as either (crudely formatted) HTML below, or a google doc.

Exclusion of Cipreh

After this exclusion, 74% of Cipreh's votes remained within the wormhole group.

If you were to treat the WH group as a political party, they would prefer to retain more votes; but groups are leaking votes all over the place for many candidates.

The good news for the wormhole candidate is that the votes leak without strong preference flows to any set of candidates, with the 'preferred' non-wormhole candidate (Roc Weiler) only getting 0.9% benefit. 

I note that Ayeson,  got the least benefit (2.9%) of  the wormhole candidates from Cipreh's exclusion, and James Arget received the most benefit (10.2%)

Exclusion of Ayeson

After this exclusion, 58% of Ayeson's votes remained within the wormhole group.

This shows that Ayeson's supporters have a majority preference for other wormhole candidates, but only just a majority.

However, again the leakage is largely random with the preferred non wormhole candidate (Ali Aras) picking up 1.4%.   This compares to Nathan's 2.9% boost, and James 13.6% boost.

Common items from both exclusions

There is a high correlation between the strength of each candidate and the benefit they get from random leakage.  If you had a high vote before the exclusion, then you were likely to get more votes of the leakage.

When would this have mattered?

For this election, the random leakage would have only mattered if there was already a 'rival' candidate close to a quota. For example, if the quota was 2260 at the exclusion of Ayeson, then Ali would have been elected at that round.  However if a rival candidate was this close, they would have most likely been elected anyway.

In real life, I have however once seen this kind of leakage deliver a seat to a 'hostile' party.  It can happen, but not normally.

Below the line voting

This election was what we would call in Australia, 'below the line'. Read http://www.aec.gov.au/voting/How_to_vote/Voting_Senate.htm for a description of 'above the line' or 'below the line'.

In CSM 8, voters may have been given instructions on how to vote, but they had to select their their own candidates.  There will be leakage under these circumstances, but in the two excluded candidates I have looked at, there was no advantage to any candidate outside the wormhole group.

Now, if CSM bring in a 'simpler' form of voting, where, while notionally, votes are still STV, but you delegate the allocation of preferences to a group ticket ('above the line'), the leakage outside the ticket will be almost negligible.  In Australia, where the choice is given, the more candidates that someone has to vote for, the more likely they are to vote above the line, or not simply not cast a valid vote.

Leakage applies in both directions, both in and out.  Reduce one, and the other is generally reduced as well.

Real life comparison.

Even in real life, voters are notorious for not following ticket instructions.  Parties in Australia often will advise on who to send preferences to.  For 'below the line' elections, these are nearly as often disregarded as observed.  Party instructions matter, but voters will do their own thing.

Gevlon's claim that the WH group could get 3 candidates.

The wormhole group had less than 2 quota's of first preference votes. For them to have received a third seat would have taken an incredible flow from non-wh candidates, requiring over a quota of leaked votes from elsewhere.  While observations on previous elections are not laws to be followed, it would have been truly remarkable for that to occur.  Getting as close as they did was remarkable enough.

Initially, the wormhole group had 1.9 quotas; when Nathan Jameson was eliminated (the last eliminated candidate)  they had 2.4 quotas (or 1482 votes past the quota to elect the 2 seats they got)  The next candidate (Mike Azaria) had 0.9 quotas (or 2885 votes).  For the wormhole candidates to get the third spot, they have to get their third vote in front of Mike.  That is, pick up another 1404 votes.

There was a leakage from Cipreh of 154 votes, and a leakage for Ayeson of 311 votes; totalling 465 votes.  If the wormhole block had kept every single vote on their ticket, they still would have missed out on their third seat by 939 votes.

In my opinion, the wormhole candidates simply did not have the first preference votes to support a third seat, this time around, and had more than enough first preference votes to get the second seat.

[edit: see Gevlon's clarification below.  I may have misrepresented his position]

Table of results. (also available as a google doc)

candidateWith CiprehExclude CiprehChange%changeWith AyesonExclude Ayesonchange%change
Ali Aras21712178.647.640.35%2211.832242.1230.291.37%
Artctura709.85712.93.050.43%000
Awol Aurix670.11670.190.080.01%000
Ayeson716.41737.4621.052.94%
744.1040-744.1
Banlish1228.241229.321.080.09%1626.971638.7211.750.72%
Chitsa Jason1690.171847.8157.639.33%
1862.991956.993.915.04%
Cipreh595.270-595.27

000
Corebloodbrothers1498.031500.132.10.14%1509.011510.421.410.09%
Greene Lee1688.691691.963.270.19%1706.041718.7112.670.74%
James Arget1667.351837.76170.4110.22%
1856.722108.31251.5913.55%
Kaleb Rysode608.22610.031.810.3%000
Kesper North2955.752960.494.740.16%33053300-5
Korvin2079.912084.014.10.2%2096.632107.2610.630.51%
Malcanis1788.241800.7912.550.7%1833.781852.7218.941.03%
Mangala Solaris2787.692802.8815.190.54%2876.052905.3829.331.02%
Mike Azariah1811.841814.772.930.16%1840.661854.1713.510.73%
mynnna33133309-433053300-5
Nathan Jameson1652.241744.1891.945.56%
1770.371857.787.334.93%
progodlegend2357.462365.778.310.35%2393.282401.298.010.33%
PsychoBitch713.9718.965.060.71%751.917758.5336.620.88%
Psychotic Monk1560.431566.76.270.4%1599.921617.5217.61.1%
Ripard Teg33133309-433053300-5
riverini900.26904.754.490.5%932.135943.28511.151.2%
Roc Wieler833.54840.967.420.89%863.783874.07410.291.19%
Sala Cameron1563.761564.841.080.07%1892.331913.6521.321.13%
Sort Dragon3299.073301.212.140.06%33053300-5
Steve Ronuken1307.121308.311.190.09%1326.061337.0510.990.83%
Travis Musgrat966.43966.680.260.03%979.716980.8861.170.12%
Trebor Daehdoow2187.452204.5717.120.78%2242.122258.3916.270.73%
Unforgiven Storm970.69973.112.420.25%1298.451311.1512.70.98%
wormhole total6321.456167.2-154.246234.185922.91-311.27
retained74.09%retained58.17%


PS.  Shameless ads for Eve posts are welcome, especially when on topic.  See tomorrow's post.

PPS.  I will not be writing about the CSM election for at least 2 days.  I have time to write posts such as these or time to play eve, but apparently not both.  Tomorrow's (non CSM) post is written and scheduled.  I also appear to fail terribly at writing short posts.

1 comment:

  1. It's not what I meant. I also saw that the leakage from Ayerson and Cipreh were not enough.

    I meant that the low cross-votes and high leakage meant that those who instructed the voters (the candidates, corp leaders) failed to deliver their message "vote for WH candidates even if you don't like them because they will all fight against problems hurting all of us". The candidates agreed this, forming the "party" WH5, endorsing each other. The voters had only sixty-something chance to vote for "the other" candidate.

    This means that those WH dwellers who had no reason to like any particular candidate (for example a C3 PvE player) had about the same chance to vote for ANY of them, so lot of WH voters voted for no WH candidates.

    I meant that next time the block leaders should do much better internal propaganda to motivate "their own" people to vote for their own candidates.

    ReplyDelete

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