Benford's law isn't about a gradual decline. It's about an exponential decline. And neither the Libs, Bloc or Cons meet this criteria. Green party also fails to an extent.
Yes I think you’re right. People’s party had a decent vote number so we get to see the exponential curve best with them. Cons, libs, bloc and green seem questionable. Surprisingly NDP seems to be legit.
I understand Benford's law, I'm asking what the x axis is actually denoting.
Those bars are counting how many times "the number" has a 1, 2, 3, etc as its first digit.
But what is "the number"? Vote counts per polling station? Vote counts per riding? Vote counts over time?
You have to know this because certain kinds of number sets can have artificial constraints that can give an unnatural distribution of first digits.
If we don't even know what X is supposed to be, we can hardly draw any conclusions from these graphs.
If it's the leading number of votes in a electoral riding, then Benford's law won't work, because every electoral riding has between 60,000 to 80,000 voters. Thus the magnitude of the data doesn't vary enough. But maybe he plotted the vote counts in municipalities and townships, which should vary enough in magnitutde.
Even with polling stations the magnitude variation might be too small. You would need something like in the US, speak data on a county level. They have counties with only a few thousands votes and counties with a few million votes.
Well one thing you can't tell from this is who is cheating since there's multiple parties. In US 2020 election, there's basically 2 main opponents, and Biden's Benford law graph is way off, we know it's the democrats cheating. With Canada, its probable the machines are favouring Liberal party but it affects multiple parties here in terms of Benford law.
Conservative votes also don't follow it.
Benford's law isn't about a gradual decline. It's about an exponential decline. And neither the Libs, Bloc or Cons meet this criteria. Green party also fails to an extent.
Yes I think you’re right. People’s party had a decent vote number so we get to see the exponential curve best with them. Cons, libs, bloc and green seem questionable. Surprisingly NDP seems to be legit.
That's what it appears like to me as well.
...I still don't know what Bedford's law is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXjlR2OK1kM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIsDjbhbADY
Trudeau stole the election guys!
What exactly is the X axis?
The leading number.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXjlR2OK1kM
The leading number of what?
I understand Benford's law, I'm asking what the x axis is actually denoting. Those bars are counting how many times "the number" has a 1, 2, 3, etc as its first digit.
But what is "the number"? Vote counts per polling station? Vote counts per riding? Vote counts over time?
You have to know this because certain kinds of number sets can have artificial constraints that can give an unnatural distribution of first digits.
If we don't even know what X is supposed to be, we can hardly draw any conclusions from these graphs.
You will have to ask OP.
If it's the leading number of votes in a electoral riding, then Benford's law won't work, because every electoral riding has between 60,000 to 80,000 voters. Thus the magnitude of the data doesn't vary enough. But maybe he plotted the vote counts in municipalities and townships, which should vary enough in magnitutde.
It's the poll results data from here:
https://elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=rep/off/43gedata&document=byed&lang=e
I separated all results across the country per party and per poll, then applied Benford's law to their sets.
You might be right about not getting enough variety in magnitude though... I'll try summing by polling station first
by district: https://i.maga.host/AsnD9H7.png
by polling station: https://i.maga.host/HOLwiqE.png
How about Benfords second digit?
Even with polling stations the magnitude variation might be too small. You would need something like in the US, speak data on a county level. They have counties with only a few thousands votes and counties with a few million votes.
Well one thing you can't tell from this is who is cheating since there's multiple parties. In US 2020 election, there's basically 2 main opponents, and Biden's Benford law graph is way off, we know it's the democrats cheating. With Canada, its probable the machines are favouring Liberal party but it affects multiple parties here in terms of Benford law.