Breaking Benford
In the days after the US Presidential election was called for Joe Biden, many supporters of Donald Trump are crying foul. Voter fraud. And a key piece of evidence? A century-old quirk of math called Benford’s Law. We at Radiolab know Benford’s Law well, and have covered it before. In this political dispatch, Latif and Soren Sherlock their way through the precinct numbers to see if these claims hold up. Spoiler: they don’t. But the reason why is more interesting than you’d expect.
This episode was reported by Latif Nasser.
Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.
Links:
Walter Mebane, “Inappropriate Applications of Benford’s Law Regularities to Some Data from the 2020 Presidential Election in the United States”
- Duration
- 31m
- Broadcast on
- 13 Nov 2020
- Audio Format
- other
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In the days after the US Presidential election was called for Joe Biden, many supporters of Donald Trump are crying foul. Voter fraud. And a key piece of evidence? A century-old quirk of math called Benford’s Law. We at Radiolab know Benford’s Law well, and have covered it before. In this political dispatch, Latif and Soren Sherlock their way through the precinct numbers to see if these claims hold up. Spoiler: they don’t. But the reason why is more interesting than you’d expect.
This episode was reported by Latif Nasser.
Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.
Links:
Walter Mebane, “Inappropriate Applications of Benford’s Law Regularities to Some Data from the 2020 Presidential Election in the United States”
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-Wait, you're listening to Radio Lab from WNYC. -Well, first, am I imagining that Jad already knows about, because we just talked about it when I was promoting my show, right? -About Ben Priscilla? -Just tell him that. Remind him. -Okay. -He knows, but he forgets. -Yeah, just... -Okay. Well, I think... I think my... Hey, I'm Luttef Nasser. This is Radio Lab. And today, in the week after the election was called for Joe Biden, but in this sort of weird middle space when Donald Trump has refused to concede, our editor, Sorn Wheeler, and I, sat jad down. -You don't know more than I have talked about. -Right. -I think we... -Because we wanted to tell him about something from our past that has come back to haunt us. -So, a few months ago, you may remember, I was telling you about the Netflix show I made. -Connected, right? -Right. -And I was telling you about one of the episodes, which is about something that before my time, Radio Lab had also separately done an episode about, which was this thing called Benford's Law. -Yes. -Yes. -This kind of funny, nerdy, a little bit mystical, mathematical law, that's kind of stupendously broadly applicable, stupendously broadly applicable. -Yeah. -It's one of those. -But so, you know, in my head, I feel like I parked it in the like, fun, silly, nerdy category of stuff that's more sort of interesting than it is important. But then all of a sudden, over the last week, it became very important. Oh boy. -Oh boy. -Benford's Law. What is Benford's Law? And how is it relevant to the 2020 election? It was all over Twitter, Facebook. -I think some of the first things I saw about it were YouTube videos. -In terms, it's the mathematically and statistically provable point that- -Then it shows up on all these fringe news sites, Newsmax, Boston Herald, Gateway Pundit. -And then conservative podcast people like Dan Bonjino start to talk about it. -What if I told you when you look at some of the voter data at Wisconsin, that Benford's Law is saying it's not possible?
Transcription truncated.
In the days after the US Presidential election was called for Joe Biden, many supporters of Donald Trump are crying foul. Voter fraud. And a key piece of evidence? A century-old quirk of math called Benford’s Law. We at Radiolab know Benford’s Law well, and have covered it before. In this political dispatch, Latif and Soren Sherlock their way through the precinct numbers to see if these claims hold up. Spoiler: they don’t. But the reason why is more interesting than you’d expect.
This episode was reported by Latif Nasser.
Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.
Links:
Walter Mebane, “Inappropriate Applications of Benford’s Law Regularities to Some Data from the 2020 Presidential Election in the United States”