From the New York Times coverage of the Iowa caucuses:
It was the closest race in the history of the Iowa caucuses. In 1980, George Bush beat Ronald Reagan by two percentage points; only a tenth of a percentage point separated Mr. Romney from Mr. Santorum on Tuesday.
They were separated by 8 votes out of more than 120,000 voters.
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January 5, 2012 at 7:19 am
chazisop
You are mistaken! The NYT work in an asymptotic way. They just forgot the little-oh . o(a tenth of a percentage point).
January 5, 2012 at 9:51 am
James
Certainly this is an annoying mistake, but I find it far more insidious that the NY Times called Romney the “winner” just so they could have a narrative. Those 8 votes were well within the margin of error for the haphazard caucus counting process.
January 5, 2012 at 11:10 am
kcostell
I think the writer looked at the results (Most places reported them to the nearest tenth, and by coincidence Santorum rounded down to 24.5%, Romney up to 24.6%) instead of actually working through the math.
January 6, 2012 at 10:55 am
James
Case in point:
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-what-if-mitt-romney-didnt-actually-win-iowa-caucuses-20120106,0,3839471.story
January 19, 2012 at 7:34 am
Tom
I guess this is why it’s called the Times, not the Divides.