CSM 8 Results: Curiouser and Curiouser

So at last, after strange time-dilation effects delayed the publication of the CSM results for more than a week, we have the actual breakdown of how the voting went. While we knew who was elected, many of us in the CSM-watching space were curious as to the order of finish. Here’s the kicker – there are several different ways to count it. And those different ways of counting show very different outcomes.

So let’s go through three of those methods. First is Trebor’s re-run of the official numbers. It goes through in painstaking detail and shows who got eliminated and who got elected when in the mechanics, and I think should constitute the “real ranking” for statistical purposes. More on that below. Second is Two Step’s method of re-running the election for each round of vote reviews, which does not accurately show who did get in and in what order, but in my opinion does a more accurate job of showing who truly had the most support. Finally, Ali Aras did a “what if we used the old method” of First Past the Post (FPTP) that was used in all previous CSM elections [Side note: Ali herself disclaims that the FPTP analysis is scientific, and she’s correct – people would likely have voted differently in an actual FPTP – still, it is an interesting look at who voted for who in the #1 slots – more below.]

Here are the outcomes side by side. Below we’ll talk about the names in various colors.

#	Trebor Script	Two Step “Re-run” Process	Ali FPTP
1	Mynnna	Mynnna	Mynnna
2	Ripard Teg	Ripard Teg	Ripard Teg
3	Sort Dragon	Mangala Solaris	Sort Dragon
4	Mangala Solaris	Sort Dragon	Mangala Solaris
5	Progodlegend	Chitsa Jason	Progodlegend
6	Ali Aras	Trebor Daehdoow	Ali Aras
7	Kesper North	Ali Aras	Korvin
8	Trebor Daehdoow	Kesper North	Trebor Daehdoow
9	Sala Cameron	Progodlegend	Mike Azariah
10	Malcanis	James Arget	Greene Lee
11	Korvin	Korvin	Chitsa Jason
12	Mike Azariah	Sala Cameron	James Arget
13	James Arget	Malcanis	Nathan Jameson
14	Chitsa Jason	Mike Azariah	Sala Cameron

So … what can we take away from all this, other than the remarkable consistency of who is on the list if we ignore order? Trebor’s script shows some very interesting information when you break it down. Here’s how things actually shook out.

The Clear Winners

Ripard & Mynnna were first and second right off the bat. Let’s be clear, they won right away in round 1 of 17, walking away from the rest of the pack. There’s no question at all that these two should be the permanent Iceland seats. [EDIT: Two Step rightly points out below that to get the Iceland seats, which are run as a separate STV-2 election, they needed a much broader base than just their personal #1 votes. Both had this very strongly in that election as well. My point (which could perhaps have been made better) is that no matter how you look at the votes, Mynnna & Ripard come out 1 and 2 on every single permutation I’ve seen. Calling it a mandate.]

Sort Dragon was very clearly 3rd, elected in Round 4. However Mangala Solaris would have come in higher when you looked at it through the “per round” lens that Two Step processed the list with. Officially, Mangala would be elected in the #4 slot, but far later, not until Round 13 of 17! UPDATE: June Ting did an interesting “Name Recognition” analysis – essentially the truest “popularity contest” measure in my mind – that showed Mangala’s broad-based strength. As measured by how many ballots his name appears on, Mangala was the hands-down champ. He was listed on 23,410 ballots, well ahead of Malcanis at #2 with 19,513. However both of them were not listed as high on those lists. In the Name Recognition list, Mynnna (14,476), Ripard (13,862) and Sort (14,999) were much further down.

So what the heck happened in between? Elimination after elimination after elimination – nine candidates booted between 3rd & 4th place.

The Wormhole Brawl … and Korvin and Mike

So in my prediction post I stated that “a wormholer will almost certainly take either the 5th or 6th place.” Using Two Step’s analysis, this appears to be true. In reality, the wormholers scrabbled over votes until the very end.

Cipreh and Ayeson were eliminated very early (eliminated 2nd and 6th respectively), but James Arget, Chitsa Jason and Nathan Jameson battled all the way to the end of the list, neck and neck for who would get on.

Final result:

James Arget has 2651.6 votes
Chitsa Jason has 2612.74 votes
Nathan Jameson has 2430.01 votes

In the end, less than 183 votes separated #14 Chitsa from #15 Nathan, and James and Chitsa ended in a virtual tie, less than 39 votes apart. UPDATE: James may have been significantly helped simply by sheer volume of votes based on June’s list. On that list James is the #3 person in terms of number of ballots he appears on, 17,148 ballots. James was on the CFC list, the wormhole list, and likely made the list of Ripard, Trebor, and E-UNI voters.

But here’s the kicker: Fully half the CSM – everyone after Ali – was not elected until the very last round, #17 of 17. The quota needed to get elected was 3106 votes. This means that had there been more candidates, the vote would have gone onward. Instead, eliminations are what got James Arget and Chitsa Jason in. It’s also what got Mike Azariah and Korvin in – there were simply no challengers left.

Trickle-Down Politics

One other thing is interesting to me in the data – who were the biggest beneficiaries of STV? In the end, these folks aren’t terribly surprising, but there are some surprising elements in the numbers.

1. Kesper North – 3514 Trickle-Down votes. He got enough from Mynnna and others to elect an entire candidate all in and of themselves. This makes sense because he was #2 on the CFC list. Kesper’s progression through the STV is the most interesting of any candidate. It looks at first like he will come in 4th, in Round 6 … but in the end his massive trickle vote pile gets pushed around and back all the way to the very end, when he is elected in 7th place way down in Round 17.
2. Malcanis – 1966 Trickle-Down votes. Malcanis was a unique candidate. He had a strong corp and Alliance base. He had strong endorsements from across the community. He had a strong forum reputation. But he was halfway down the list of both of the blocs, putting him at risk of not getting on without community support. A third of his trickles came early on, from Ripard Teg voters (584 votes). Another third appeared suddenly in the very last round after Sala was elected – from HBC voters (679 votes). A third more were from candidates across the board – trickling in from across the spectrum of New Eden to push him over the top. Interestingly, Malcanis didn’t need all of the Ripard Teg votes … which cascaded primarily to Nathan Jameson … but not enough.
3. Sala Cameron – 1750 Trickle-Down votes. Much like Kesper benefitted from being the CFC #2, Sala was the HBC #2, and thus picked up everything not needed by Sort Dragon.

UPDATE: In addition, June’s Name Recognition list highlights these folks in a further. On that list Malcanis is #2, Sala is #5 – they simply appeared on a very large number of ballots. Kesper is #11 on that list, reflecting that the bulk of his roll-down was direct from Mynnna.

Too Late Past the Post

So if they were the beneficiaries, who lost out? Well, as Ali Aras points out in her FPTP post, it is likely that people would have voted quite differently in a FPTP election. It is likely that Kesper still would have gotten in due to his bloc voting differently, but Malcanis might have missed out. Still, clearly this isn’t scientific. Still, I believe that most people (other than Banlish voters) would have put their #1 choice first. Thus while not scientific I think Ali’s list is still a good predictor of who else would have had a chance. So who didn’t get on that might have been able to?

• Greene Lee. As a current CSM member, Greene still had a shot. He came in 17th. Together, Greene and Korvin had just over 3700 native votes. Greene got almost no trickle vote whatsoever (only 241 votes … compare to Kesper’s 3514). Combined one of them could have placed higher, but there were not enough votes to get both Russians elected.
• Nathan Jameson. Nathan finished 15th of 14. It is remarkable how close we got to having 3 wormhole candidates on the CSM, and I congratulate him on a very close run.
• Banlish. Seriously, TEST voters should just be ashamed. The new CSM has barely taken office, the HBC has broken up, and TEST is unrepresented. He can’t even say he was 15th … he finished 16th, behind the #3 wormhole candidate. Epic fail voting. Epic. [EDIT: As Two Step notes below, if it had been a 15-person CSM Banlish would actually have gotten in ahead of Nathan due to further trickle-down. But this doesn’t diminish my point … Banlish should have been in the top 10 had TEST served itself well.]

Lessons Learned

It was a new system, and now that we have one election under our collective belts, it will get tougher for independents next time. Presuming the method remains the same…

• I expect first off that the object lesson of Banlish will ensure more Alliance voting and less Coalition voting. The null blocs likely will readjust their strategies to have several groups of voters, voting with specific patterns of #1-#5 votes. They’ll vote 14-candidate slates to be safe, but count on their top 2-5. [EDIT: Mynnna tried this below and it actually made the CFC results worse at some level, better at others (be sure to read all of his comments!). It would be more efficient to do it in multiple blocs, but they would need more voters to pull it off. However it happens, I have every confidence that given a year to work on it, Mynnna & company will find a good set of tricks to keep their representation high. It’s worth noting that Mynnna himself is a bit of a “transcendent” candidate – while he was heavily Goon-driven, he had appeal and respect outside of the CFC. Another good example would be Malcanis. This may be the way of the future candidate – a solid reliable core base but a broad appeal. That can only be good for the game.]
• The wormholers got lucky this time. The amount of candidate equivalency could have backfired as easily as succeeded. In my opinion, we need to narrow the field earlier next year, and field no more than three candidates; ideally two. [EDIT: Foo wrote a great response to this point in the comments below. I encourage you to read it. In essence it says wormholers were basically guaranteed one seat, and two was a likelihood even with the photo finish. He suggests that the wormholers would potentially be better off with an agreed rank order, but beyond that no worries. I buy that.] We voted with remarkable discipline considering that we have no official ties to one another, and across the five candidates we picked up an additional 1488 non-wormholer votes. Makes me proud to be a wormholer myself.
• There are some new blocs and old half-dismissed blocs to be reckoned with.
  • The Frustrated Disenfranchised. Ripard Teg #2, beating out the leader of the HBC. Trebor #8. Mike Azariah #12. Need I say more?
  • The Warriors of Highsec. Red vs. Blue and associated groups, plus likely some wardeccers and EVE University students put Mangala Solaris in the #4 slot, handily above most of the rest of the field.
  • N3. They ran a terrible slate this year in my opinion, but they proved they could get someone in, and at a high level. Progodlegend took #5.
  • Provi-Bloc. Never heard of them before a month ago. That’s a bloc? Ali Aras, #6, including 118 votes from Ripard Teg voters. ’nuff said.

OK, I’m done with CSM for a while. This post was assembled hastily, and I’m by no means a STV scholar, so please feel free to call out any issues in the comments and I’ll tweak as needed.

Congratulations again to the winners. Do us proud.