• ladicius
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    5 days ago

    How do you calculate the median in a vote?

      • ladicius
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        4 days ago

        And how does one find the median voter? That word “median” has a certain meaning, and I’m not sure how to apply that here correctly.

        • 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          3 days ago

          you sort the set of voters by your chosen criteria and the one in the middle is the median.

          these are the “undecided voters” that every political campaign fights for. they don’t have any opinions whatsoever and make a decision by flipping a coin or by checking who has the nicest tie. they shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the polling place, yet they are the ones deciding our future.

          there are some problems, we can discuss whether the set of voters follows normal distribution (very likely not) and whether we should be looking for a median (in the middle of the set, mean (arithmetic average) or a person at the midpoint of the selected ax[is/es] (answer to that will depend on how the distribution looks which i suspect will change in different countries), so the above is gross oversimplification.

      • 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        4 days ago

        no, it is not. median voter is the one that is in the middle of the line of voters (sorted by whatever criteria you decide to, probably REP to DEM, or left to right).