Senate Race Update: Coin Flip

You can gauge the race for the Senate daily here using The New York Times statistical-election forecasting machine called LEO. The current odds give Republicans a 55 percent chance of retaking the Senate. What does that mean? Not much.

Republicans’ chances of gaining control of the Senate have improved slightly in the time Leo has been up and running. When we launched Leo two weeks ago, Republicans had a 49 percent chance of gaining control, according to the model. Now, we give them a 55 percent chance. So why the change? Part of the reason is some positive polling they’ve had in Colorado and Alaska, but 49 percent and 55 percent really aren’t very different.

Let’s say you have two biased coins, one that comes up heads 49 percent of the time and another that comes up heads 55 percent of the time. You want to figure out which one is the 55 percent coin. If you flip both coins repeatedly and choose whichever coin comes up heads more often, how many coin flips would it take to be confident that you’d made the right choice?

The answer: 375. It would take 375 flips to be correct 95 percent of the time. If it took you five seconds to flip both coins (and record your answers, all the while keeping track of which coin is which), it would take a you half an hour of doing nothing but flipping coins to be able to confidently differentiate one coin from the other.

The race for Senate control really is still a tossup.

E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

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E.J. Smith is the Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH, where he completed course-work in Practical and Defensive Handgun, Conceal Carry Pistol, Shotguns, Precision Scope Rifle and Kidnapping Prevention. E.J. plays a Yamaha Recording Custom drum set with Zilldjian cymbals. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zilldjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@youngresearch.com. Sign up here to receive all the best content from Richardcyoung.com each week.