Update: The initial 6-for-6 report from several news agencies may have missed a few Sanders coin-toss wins that occurred. The ratio of Clinton to Sanders wins may have been closer to 50-50 as a result.
Democratic caucus votes in at least six precincts in Iowa ended in a tie. Six times, a coin was tossed to decide who would win a county delegate. Six times, Hillary Clinton won the toss- giving her a tenuous lead over Bernie Sanders.
The probability of winning a fair coin toss is 0.5, or 50%. The probability of winning six coin tosses out of six is considerably lower: 0.015625, or 1.56%. A truly unlikely upset.
It seems Clinton has a way with both big and small money. Even MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki noted that Sanders would have been in the extremely-marginal-lead had he won the coin tosses.
“You’re saying there were 3 delegates awarded on the basis of a coin toss?” #Decision2016 https://t.co/Nf9GeKGxBm
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) February 2, 2016
To add to the controversy, Microsoft had provided a free app to help tally the caucus results. Interestingly, it crashed repeatedly.
Microsoft’s vice president for technology and civic engagement Dan’l Lewin, said the software company was “honored to support the 2016 Iowa caucus via a new, mobile-enabled, cloud-based platform that will facilitate accuracy and efficiency of the reporting process.”
Thankfully, Sanders’ and Clinton’s teams both had built their own working vote-tallying apps.
Sources: The Telegraph, US Uncut, USA Today, Independent, PC World, Forbes
This Article (How Clinton Won Her Tenuous Lead In Iowa With Small Money) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author(CoNN) and AnonHQ.com.
CNN reported that Hillary won 6 coin tosses, and 90 precincts missing in the vote tallies.
So was it a fake coin they used as some have suggested?