Hillary Clinton “won” the Iowa caucuses, in part because of 6 coin tosses all of which she won! Six precincts, at least, ended up with a dead tie between the two candidates. The tie was broken and a winner declared based on a coin toss in each case.
What are the odds of one of two candidates winning all six coin tosses if the outcomes are random, that is, if the tosses are fair, unbiased and with honest coins?
The calculation is so simple that a schoolboy or schoolgirl can do it. The formula is simply 1/2 raised to the power of 6 – that is, 1/2 taken six times and multiplied.
The probability of winning all six tosses by chance alone is 1/64. That is 0.016 or 1.6 in 100 or 1.6%. Not even 2%! In many areas of science including many areas of biology, one must demonstrate that the result of one’s experiments is unlikely to happen by chance alone. If the probability of getting the results by chance alone is less than less than 5%, the result reported is considered to be “significant,’ that is, not likely to be a chance finding. Such a result is publishable in highly respected journals.
Since the probability of the outcome in Iowa was 1.6%, it is quite unlikely, highly improbable that the coin tosses resulted from chance and were honest. And if the results did not occur by chance alone, then the coin tosses were manipulated, fixed! Why has no one in the mainstream media looked into this?
It is not unusual for results of an election to be questioned based on what the facts of the matter really are. For example some may claim that voting machines are rigged but others will say no. However, everyone agrees on the fact of the six coin tosses, and the simple calculation above is based on the fundamental laws of probability, i.e., counting. That gives the conclusion that the results were rigged very strong standing. At the very least, the probabilities demand a thorough investigation.
A good scientist would, however, not rest with simply one set of results that satisfied the probability criteria outlined above. He or she would look for other observations that would shore up the conclusion and make it more convincing. Similarly we may ask whether there were other indications of cheating in the Iowa Dem primary. And indeed there were. As Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com pointed out in his essay, “The Establishment’s Last Stand,” Democratic results went missing from nearly 100 precincts, which accounted for 5% of the vote according to the Sanders campaign. That 5% was more than enough to hand the race to Sanders. This led the Sanders to lament that the real results may never be known. And we should note that ballots have gone missing before in Iowa, notably in the 2012 Republican caucuses where Mitt Romney was falsely declared the winner.
Is it not strange that Hillary was so very lucky? It was very clear going into the polling that Sanders and Clinton were in a dead heat. Might we conclude that she and her supporters anticipating a tie in some precincts were prepared for a coin toss or to disappear some ballots, the latter having happened before in Iowa. Is Hillary’s reputation for honesty so sterling that we cannot possibly suspect that? You can answer that for yourself, dear reader.
But I will give you odds that Bernie won.
