NationStates Jolt Archive

United Nations Information Agency
Press Release

In the final hours of voting, UNIA can now accurately project that the current U.N. resolution, Repeal "The Right to Form Unions", will fail.

Projection (+/- 2.5%)
Votes For: 44%
Votes Against: 56%

Meh. It's already been demonstrated that predicting the outcome of General Assembly votes is a foolhardy business (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=12145704&postcount=237).

Kenny, you might not remember this but Pilot used to do reports like this for every resolution at vote. His "Pilot United Nations News Service" was a fixture of the UN forum back in the day.

Hmm. How often was he right? :p

Hmm. How often was he right? :p
He had a stunning track record of accuracy. (http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Pilot_United_Nations_News_Service)

I think he's right. As long as Gnidrah's vote is AGAINST...

Seabear 70 is against this poorly veiled attack on the people of the world.

While we have no love of unions, and feel that in most cases they simply abuse their members for profit, this legislation is not the way to resolve this issue.

Repealing the intended resolution would simply remove all protection of workers from their employers, and for that matter would most likely leave nations vulerable to attack from multinational corporations through economic assault.

There are better ways to promote buisness than this.

There must remain a balance between the rights of the workers, the rights of buisnesses, and the rights of the nations that both of them serve.

This is a projection thread, not a debate thread, Seabear.

This is a projection thread, not a debate thread, Seabear.


My appoligies, I was attempting to state why it should fail.

He had a stunning track record of accuracy. (http://ns.goobergunch.net/wiki/index.php/Pilot_United_Nations_News_Service)A reliable UN pollster? Well, spank my ass and call me Belinda! Do you know how much wasted effort we put into planning the victory party for Unconventional Arms Accord? Or how many untold billions were lost in sexy-speedo futures in the Kennyite stock market following that disastrous vote on Prohibition of UN Military? All thanks to that God-damned Jevian UN Office.

Sirs,

We'd like to commission your services to poll our citizens on important public issues, like which promiscuous slut the president should have on his arm at his next diplomatic function, or what designer gown our vice president should wear to her next cast reunion of the Kennyite version of "Friends." Previous attempts to gauge public opinion in our nation have been unmitigated disasters (http://z11.invisionfree.com/Antarctic_Oasis/index.php?showtopic=359), but we feel your impeccable record of accuracy will help correct past ineptitudes in national polling. Do ignore the howls of protest from the Ariddian delegation; their pollsters only went insane after trying to survey our electorate because they were tripping balls on acid the whole time.

We eagerly await your reply.

[OOC: I know, I know. It's late here.]

United Nations Information Agency
Press Release

As UNIA projected yesterday morning, the U.N. resolution Repeal "The Right to Form Unions", has been rejected by the general assembly.

Projection (+/- 2.5%)
Votes For: 44%
Votes Against: 56%

Final Results
Votes For: 4,863 (42.78%)
Votes Against: 6,504 (57.22%)

Deficit (successful motion): +1.22%

Another successful projection!

Just curious, Pilot, have you been keeping track of your record with your predictions? There are a few proposals for which I'd be very interested to see how your predictions panned out. Not questioning your predictions, but rather interested to see which votes surprised you.

< OOC: Out of the 16 resolutions that I have projected, only the Eon Convention on Genocide Resolution (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=378825) confused my projection models. I don't have a lot of explanation as to why I underestimated support for the resolution, but most of the samples I had taken earlier in the voting period showed wild swings in opposition.

I am able to accurately project whether a resolution will pass or fail within hours after balloting has begun, but getting a good grasp on the percentage of support/opposition usually takes another day or so. >

When do you make these predictions, by the way? You didn't post this predition until there was roughly 16 hours left for voting. Not trying to be an ass, but it seems like most votes are pretty sewed up at that point, making any such "prediction" something of an exercise in pointlessness. Anyone can look at a 10% difference with mere hours left and Feeder votes lodged and "predict" that nothing will change.

I seem to recall Jey doing the same thing a few Proposals ago and thinking much the same thing.

When do you make these predictions, by the way? You didn't post this predition until there was roughly 16 hours left for voting. Not trying to be an ass, but it seems like most votes are pretty sewed up at that point, making any such "prediction" something of an exercise in pointlessness. Anyone can look at a 10% difference with mere hours left and Feeder votes lodged and "predict" that nothing will change.

I seem to recall Jey doing the same thing a few Proposals ago and thinking much the same thing.
As I said in posts above this one, predictions as to the fate of a resolution can usually be made within the first few hours of voting. Projection of the results is a much more difficult task and requires a bit of work to determine who has voted, who hasn't voted and and their possible impact on the final vote tally and what the final percentages will be.

Internally, we cannot reveal what system we use to produce our constantly accurate projections. We hope you understand.

Let us first clear up some of your misunderstandings about the projection system. UNIA usually publishes its projections 18-24 hours before the results are certified by the United Nations. The percentage projection comes along with a modest margin of error of 2.5%, not the 5% which is implied in your post.

In this case, UNIA published the projection 19 hours before results were certified. If you are questioning whether that is enough time for U.N. members to have a significant impact on the final vote totals, consider the standing for/against numbers when UNIA issued its projection:
Votes For: 3,890 (48.6%)
Votes Against: 4,124 (51.4%)
Between that time and the results certification, 3,353 votes (a full quarter of the total ballots cast) were added to the total which resulted in a 6 percentage point bump in support for the resolution. Our models accurately projected a surge in support.

We thank you for your interest and are certainly more than willing to answer any further questions you may have.

Signed,
David Ross, Jr.
Director of Internal Operations
United Nations Information Agency

< OOC: Come on, man. You are being a little bit of an ass for hassling me about this. It is pretty impressive that I can be so consistently right as to the exact percentage of for/against almost a day out from the end of voting. I know you want to question everything I do because of the whole "biological weapons" thing, but let's leave that in there and maintain a sense of professionalism, hmm? >

< OOC: Come on, man. You are being a little bit of an ass for hassling me about this. It is pretty impressive that I can be so consistently right as to the exact percentage of for/against almost a day out from the end of voting. I know you want to question everything I do because of the whole "biological weapons" thing, but let's leave that in there and maintain a sense of professionalism, hmm? >Excuse me? If you think that anything I write in here is in any way connected to what my character in the at vote thread says, you are so horribly far off base that it isn't even funny.

Now how about you get off that damn high horse of yours and check the post times. I hadn't even read your posts in the official topic when I posted here. I asked a damn question and you answered it. Your attitude is neither appretiated nor appropriate here.

Excuse me? If you think that anything I write in here is in any way connected to what my character in the at vote thread says, you are so horribly far off base that it isn't even funny.

Now how about you get off that damn high horse of yours and check the post times. I hadn't even read your posts in the official topic when I posted here. I asked a damn question and you answered it. Your attitude is neither appretiated nor appropriate here.
< OOC: If you are referring to post times, those don't support your case. Regardless of time zones, the projection and results post were made more than 22 hours apart. I know that I posted later than the U.N. vote certification came through, I'm just saying... not quite the "16 hours" that you said.

Anyways, sorry if your feelings were hurt by my comment. I was just curiously noting that you didn't have any problem with my projections until after debate had flared up in the other thread. There was a full 12 hours since my results post, no comments. You weigh in on the biological weapons debate, suddenly you are questioning how pointless my projections are. Hmm... interesting. >

My first post here was roughly 40 minutes before my post on the other thread. Pray tell, how does that not support my assertation that I posted here before reading the other thread?

Furthermore, my comments on the other thread were in character. I can tell the difference. Can you?

My first post here was roughly 40 minutes before my post on the other thread. Pray tell, how does that not support my assertation that I posted here before reading the other thread?

Furthermore, my comments on the other thread were in character. I can tell the difference. Can you?
< OOC: It doesn't really support either of our assertions, it's a useless fact. What is solid is that you posted in this thread, to scare away hijackers, but didn't have any comments then. You had them now... is my point.

Anyways, all of this is irrelevant. If you think the projections are useless, you can probably just avoid the threads instead of hijacking them. I understand that you are a mod and you can easily pull rank on me, but come on... you could have PMed me with that. >