Nate Silver: The Semantics and Statistics of Santorum’s Win in Iowa

[racaulk]

Amid the swirl of developments on Thursday came word from the Iowa Republican Party that it had certified the results from the state’s Jan. 3 caucuses — and that Rick Santorum, not Mitt Romney, had gotten more votes. Mr. Santorum received 29,839 votes in the state’s certified tally, 34 more than Mr. Romney, who had 29,805.

Iowa Republicans were hesitant to deem Mr. Santorum the winner, however. Early Thursday morning, the state party chairman, Matt Strawn, instead described the result as having been “too close to call.” Later, Mr. Strawn was somewhat clearer. “One thing that is irrefutable is that in these 1,776 certified precincts, the Republican Party was able to certify and report Rick Santorum was the winner of the certified precinct vote total by 34 votes,” he told reporters. He cautioned, however, that there was ambiguity in the outcome because the results from eight other precincts were unaccounted for and had never been certified.

How safe is it to assume that Mr. Santorum in fact won? And does any of this matter, other than to historians and data geeks?

There is a series of roughly six questions that are pertinent to the vote count. Some of them cannot be answered definitively, but we will give it our best shot.

<---snip--->

Link: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/the-semantics-and-statistics-of-santorums-win-in-iowa/

[Number23]

1. I've been looking for a good analysis of exactly what this means

This bit helps alot:

Is the news liable to change anything now? It is unlikely that the news of the reversal in the Iowa result will provide much help to Mr. Santorum now. He is no longer within striking distance in South Carolina, which has turned into a two-way race between Mr. Romney and Newt Gingrich.

That the news is unlikely to help Mr. Santorum would not preclude the possibility that it could harm Mr. Romney at the margin. My view is that there are too many competing news stories for the Iowa news to actually affect the South Carolina results much. If Mr. Romney were to lose South Carolina, however, perhaps you’ll hear the talking point that he has won just one of the first three states, when he had previously appeared to go two for two.

But this talking point might not get much traction. As Jonathan Bernstein, a political scientist, notes, the “spin” that emerges after a candidate wins or loses a state depends on large part on the whims of party elites, who will interpret news in a more favorable light for candidates whom they hope to see win the nomination. Because Mr. Romney has the strong backing of the Republican Party establishment — and because he has highly capable and alert spokesmen — the news is unlikely to affect him as much as it might a candidate who relied more exclusively on media-driven momentum.