Commentators, election, 3 pt contest, bad math

[chakdaddy]

Interesting common thread between the commentary during the election and what always happens in the 3 point shootout.

A guy in the 3 point shootout is down by, say, 13 points, with only 10 shots left (total of 12 points possible including the money balls.) They're mathematically eliminated, but the commentators always say "he's really got to make these now" even when he has no chance.

Same thing, when Ohio went for Obama, the election was over - (unless somehow McCain got some of California/Washington/Oregon/Hawaii). But the commentators kept saying "but there are still key battleground states left...)...no, there are former battleground states that are now irrelevant to the outcome.

Same thing kind of during the lottery when Milwaukee's pick came up as #6 - that made it official that we were #5, but the commentators and such still act shocked when we came up 5th. That was a little different since it required some fairly quick thinking, but still...

The upshot is no one seems to want to really do the math, and calculate "magic numbers" like in baseball races.

[greenbeans]

That's what I was thinking. The West coast was a foregone conclusion that it was goin for Obama, why don't they add the electoral votes in ahead of time? I assume ratings is the answer, but still, it irked me.

[Rocky5000]

If they went by that it would have started with Obama with over 200 electoral votes to start. California, NY, Florida, Pennsylvania(Supposed battle-ground), Mass, Connecticut, Washington, Colorado, Oregon, Hawai'i, Illinois were already in the bag according to the polls.