[schalab]

I am reminded of a story in Three men in a boat.

A couple go out on a picnic with a young man. The moment they set out, the young man begins predicting rain. The couple begin to hate him for his gloomy disposition. They meet an old man on the road. He scrounges up his face, looks up at the sky, and says there wont be any rain. He has seen many days like this in his long life and it usually clears up. The couple cheer up at once and praise him for his wisdom.

No sooner had they set up their picnic, then it begins raining heavily. On the drive back completely drenched, they look at the young man with anger. Like somehow he was responsible for the rain. They think of the old man fondly, "well atleast he tried".

Thats human psychology.

[the8472]

Unlike rain there can be a causal relation between predictions to election results. I.e. voters (and campaigners) can react to predictions.

[chrisdsaldivar]

This actually happened in the 1988 Mexican election. The PRI was losing the vote and their opposition was predicted to win using live vote tabulation. They hid the results by saying the system crashed and then declared themselves as winning. This kept many people from bothering to even vote.

However, they went much further and burned legitimate ballots and even made fake ones.

The difference here is the PRI actively used (fake) predictions to discourage voters.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Mexican_general_electio...

[sukilot]

According to your story, the prediction didn't affect the outcome.

[benrbray]

The most recent season of Narcos: Mexico has an entertaining dramatization of this event!

[corpMaverick]

Recently someone asked if the fraud of 88 had been as depicted in the series. This was my response. Which I think it is important since there are not many testimonies of what really happened.

"It definitely didn't happened the way it was portrayed in the series. I saw it first hand.

The election was managed from Gobernacion (Ministry of Interior) which was subservient to the PRI. We didn't have the same controls as we have today. The PRI had representatives in every little town in the whole country. My father was one of these and I accompanied him that day. The evening on the election day, they gather all the booths in the region at the mayors office. They had a team of people changing the paper votes. Removing some and adding some and changing the minutes accordingly. The PRI already had this election fixing infrastructure. In 1988, they had already been in power for 59 years. They knew how to fix the election. They had it down to a science. But in 1988 my father told me that this was the first time they had to do it because they may lose. All years before that, they did it just to get better participation numbers.

The PRI was a state Party. For many, many years it had complete control of every town, every state, every district. All the Governors, representatives, senators, mayors, judges in the country belonged to the PRI. May be some Narcos helped in some regions. But the PRI didn't really needed them. They had comprehensive control of the national territory. And they were able to manipulates the votes, specially in the rural areas.

The way it is portrayed in the series is really stupid. Gobernacion was in complete control of the computer systems, they didn't need a Narco to tell them how to break it.

TLDR; The fraud happened but it wasn't organized by the Narcos. At most they had a minor involvement."

[isoskeles]

Before 2004, I was a "victim" of voter fraud after signing a petition at my university in a swing state. (I put victim in quotes because I did not feel particularly wronged, just annoyed.)

They registered me as Republican, and I received an unexpected voter id with my name misspelled on it in the mail.

I view this as similar to polls or predictions. They'd use the same data, e.g. "In Florida, 29% of voters are registered as Republicans," in an attempt to make other people feel 'safe' joining them.

With voting, some people want to feel a moral victory, that they voted for the winning team, and knowing that there are 29%, instead of 26 or 24 or however much they'd have without cheating (I'm making these numbers up for the example), would have some marginal psychological effect on people to believe that Florida is a partly Republican state, and you're not a complete nutball if you vote for a Republican in Florida.

As an aside, I was actually able to vote with that id, and I'm not sure if that should have given me more or less confidence in the system. More in the sense that, despite someone else messing with the system, I was still able to cast my vote. Less in the sense that, I voted with an incorrect name, and I wonder how easy it might be to conjure up nonexistent people or use dead people to vote.

Just wanted to give another example of how this is true, and the scummy lengths people will go to, to affect an election outcome.

[svrb]

If this story were true, it would be evidence of voter fraud.

But no evidence of voter fraud exists.

Therefore, this story is not true.

[divbzero]

Some countries ban polls on or just before election day for similar reasons. [1] [2]

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-35350419

[2]: https://www.hkupop.hku.hk/english/report/freedom/FTP_2012.pd...

[yodsanklai]

I often notice this trend in my country. No obvious contender one year before the presidential election. Then some random politician is favorite in some poll. Then a feedback loop happens, media focus on this politician, who becomes more popular and so on...

I suppose there are PR firms acting in the shadow to sell their candidates to the media, but nonetheless it seems there's a lot of randomness at play.