Admittedly, this has been a very odd year with a very odd presidential election. A lot of things I thought could never happen, have happened. Think back on the election campaign and make your own list of improbable events and outcomes. I would do so here, but I'm not interested in writing a political commentary. And besides I seem to have been wrong about almost everything so why should you listen to me? You can't trust the pundits or the polls either.
But I always thought I could trust Google -- at least for something like basic mathematical calculations. But maybe not. Here is the current result on Google when I query "2016 popular vote":
So, according to Google, Hillary Clinton won 48% of the popular vote and Donald Trump won 47%. But with some easy mental arithmetic one can see that there were at least 125 million total votes cast. One percent of 125 million equals 1.25 million. So Clinton should have at least a million more votes than Trump if she won the popular vote by 48% to his 47%. But some more easy mental arithmetic tells us that her vote total exceeds his by only 300,000 votes (or about 1/4 of one percent).
There is, of course, an explanation -- but not a good one. In fact, the explanation is so lousy that Google should be ashamed of the results posted on its site (and I note with sadness that most news sites post the same results.) Hillary Clinton earned 48.1% of the total votes cast, Donald Trump won 47.86%, and Google is apparently incapable of rounding these numbers correctly.
If one of the biggest companies in the world -- and one whose business is to work with data and numbers -- is capable of such a ludicrous misrepresentation, I guess I can forgive myself for my own flawed guesses about the course of events during this crazy election year.
