Extreme Pareto: the 98/2 Rule

Oh, I so really don't plan to make a regular habit of this. But it is the Tuesday of the New Hampshire primary, making the second major milepost of the nomination process. And despite my earlier whining, I really am excited about the election. There is a very good chance that in November we'll elect a much better president than the one we have now, and that can only be a good thing.

I am however a bit surprised by the apocalyptic coverage. The net effect is that the primaries will be all but won or lost today. Statistically you could easily write off these the delegates and still win the nomination. The kicker, as usual, is the media. Candidates who don't do well in the first two contests are seen as not worth covering, and that's a huge handicap to overcome. If the media and punditry anoints a winner -- and probably a challenger -- it's then much more difficult for anyone else to raise money or get coverage. So it's not that I don't understand the mechanics, but still it seems so crazily premature.

How crazy? As of tonight, delegates are essentially allocated for two states, Iowa and New Hampshire. For the Democrats (as an example) that's 67 pledged delegates out of a total of 3,253... or about 2%. (The percentage is even lower if you look at unpledged delegates but I don't pretend to understand how they land on a candidate.) To put it in perspective, Tennessee -- the 18th-largest delegation -- decides 68 pledged delegates. So if Iowa and New Hampshire weed out all but two candidates from either party, that's based on a tiny fraction of possible delegates. Or to put it another way, 98+% of the delegates have minimal influence on the eventual nominee.

Everybody knows it's crazy, I just wanted to put some numbers on exactly how crazy.