Analysis of 2020 US Election Results
Posted on 07 Dec 2020; 07:30 PM IST. Last Updated 07 Dec 2020; 10:00 PM IST.Summary: Joe Biden's 2020 US election campaign claimed to bring unity, peace, and stability. But the results of the election appear to have created greater divisions, and greater turmoil. This article explores the light data analysis could shed on the 2020 US election.
Joe Biden 2020 US election campaign claimed to bring unity, peace, and stability. But the results of the election appear to have created greater divisions, and greater turmoil.
It is therefore very natural to ask the obvious questions like,
a) why people are exasperated about the 2020 US election?
b) can data analysis shed any light?
Data analysis can surely shed light on the fact whether the results of the election, are in sync or against community norms and beliefs. Of course, it is important to note that data analysis presented here cannot produce any hard evidence, which can be used in a court.
The rest of this article explains the process.
Step-1:
First, we begin by noting the votes polled for Biden and Trump.
Votes polled for Biden = 81.09 Million
Votes polled for Trump = 74.15 Million
Total votes polled = 155.24 Million
Step-2:
In the second step, we note the Black, Asian, and Hispanic votes polled for Biden and Trump.
| Trump | Biden | Totals | |
| Hispanic |
4.21 |
8.56 (66.7%) |
12.77% |
| Black |
1.0 |
11.5 (92%) |
12.5% |
| Asian |
1.46 |
2.95 (66.7%) |
4.41% |
| Other |
0.96 |
1.94 (66.7%) |
2.9% |
| Total as % of Votes |
7.63% | 24.95% | 32.58% |
Step-3:
In this step, we will compute the number of white voters for Biden and Trump, as shown below.
Biden
Number of Hispanic + Blacks + Asian + Other votes for Biden
= 24.95% of total votes polled
= 24.95% of 155.24 Million
= 38.73 Million.
Number of White votes for Biden =
Number of votes for Biden -
Number of (Hispanic + Blacks +
Asian + Other) votes for Biden
= 81.09 Million - 38.737 Million
= 42.35 Million.
Trump
Number of Hispanic + Blacks + Asian + Other votes for Trump
= 7.63% of total votes polled
= 7.63% of 155.24 Million
= 11.84 Million.
Number of White votes for Trump =
Number of votes for Trump -
Number of (Hispanic + Blacks +
Asian + Other) votes for Trump
= 74.15 Million – 11.84 Million
= 62.31 Million.
Finally, we note that, total White votes =
Number of White votes for Biden +
Number of White votes for Trump
= 42.35 + 62.31
= 104.66 Million.
Before analysing the results further, let us turn our attention to the theory of Social Communities.
Theory of Social Communities
Human beings form social communities for expanding their scope, abilities etc., which are essential for survival. Over a period of time, communities could grow large, and could fragment into categories like Progressives (P), Moderates (M) and Conservatives (C).
People who live in a community may understand its norms, which could be explicit and/or implicit. Interestingly, even pets may understand the norms of a community they live in.
First Social Norm:
A social community is like a spring, and unlike springs in physics, these real world springs do not stretch uniformly. The categories or fragments of a society may be seen as sections of a spring.
Second Social Norm:
The second social norm specifies that a category of a Social Community binds to a political leader, with some affinity.
Analysis
Based on the internet articles we can deduce that Conservatives voted for Trump, and Progressives voted for Biden. The variability is therefore due to the Moderates.
From internet sources we can obtain the division of the American society as: 37% Conservative, 37% Moderates, and 26% Progressives (also called liberals).
Since the white votes are 104.66 Million, we need to adjust these percentages to 105 (104.66 rounded), which gives us the votes casted in Millions as -
Conservatives: 38.85;
Moderates: 38.85;
Progressives: 27.3;
The problem now is to determine affinities defined by the second social norm to explain the white votes for Biden and Trump.
We note that the Conservative and Progressive sections of the society are pretty rigid. In other words, Conservatives vote 100% for Trump, and Progressives vote 100% for Biden.
Moderates are a special kind of Conservatives, who can split their votes, but never go below 50-50%.
How a category splits the votes can be defined as a tuple (%vote for Biden, %vote for Trump).
Conservative splits are (0, 1); and progressive splits are (1, 0).
The range from (0, 1) -> (0.5, 0.5) is for moderates. The bounds of this split are from fully conservative (0, 1), where nobody votes for Biden, to (0.5, 0.5), which implies a 50-50% split to Biden and Trump.
The range from (0.5, 0.5) -> (1, 0) is for inverted moderates, i.e. moderates who inverted to progressives.
Let us divide the Moderates evenly into two groups, called Moderates-1, and Moderates-2. Moderates-1 account for 19.425 million votes casted by white voters. Similarly, Moderates-2 account for the other 19.425 million votes casted by white voters.
Moderates-1 behave more or less like Conservatives, and 90% vote for Trump, and 10% vote for Biden.
We expect Moderates-2 should latch in the range (0, 1) -> (0.5, 0.5).
For a better clarity, we could write affinities for the four categories as tuples (Biden, Trump), shown below.
Conservative: (0, 1)
Moderate-1: (0.1, 0.9)
Moderate-2: (?, ?)
Progressive: (1, 0)
The data could be explained when Moderates-2 were assigned the affinities, (0.675, 0.325), as shown below.
|
Community/ |
Biden |
Trump |
|
Conservative |
0 |
38.85 |
|
Moderate-1 |
1.94 |
17.48 |
|
Moderate-2 |
13.11 |
6.31 |
|
Progressive |
27.3 |
0 |
|
Total |
42.35 |
62.64 |
The problem is Moderates-2 switched (or inverted) to progressives, opposing Conservatives and Moderates-1. In other words they are no longer moderates, as per the social beliefs.
Conclusion
Everything looks normal, when we have only a single group of Moderates. It makes the world “believe” that moderates voted in the ratios (0.4, 0.6) for Biden and Trump.
The moment we seek progression, we begin to see inversions. In other words, the moment we split Moderates into equal groups, they begin to invert, i.e. behave more like progressives than conservatives.
Why can’t Moderates be Conservative or Neutral, which is possible in the real world, and what is implied by the definition of Moderates in the real world?
The data does hold very precariously, when unequal groups are created. If one-fourth of the Moderates are hinged at (0.1, 0.9), then the remaining three-fourths hold at (0.5, 0.5), and almost ready to invert into progressives.
This creates an odd scenario, since “no more than one fourth of the Moderates, can be Conservative”, is not consistent with social norms, or known social behaviour.
Remarks
The content of the article may contain errors, and is not peer-reviewed for accuracy. The author does not draw a conclusion of fraud or insinuate such ideas.
This article was written mainly for computer scientists, who could research further, to understand the impact of social behaviour/norms, on election results.