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Gordon L. Weil formerly wrote for the Washington Post and other newspapers, served on the U.S. Senate and EU staffs, headed Maine state agencies and was a Harpswell selectman.
Americans have an almost religious faith in numbers. When people believe in statistics, that helps politicians.
People keep their faith despite the truth of that old saying, “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.”
Nowhere is that more accurate than in political campaigns. It’s evident now both in Maine and on the national and world scene.
In the campaign waged by for-profit Central Maine Power and Versant against the proposed nonprofit Pine Tree Power, the two current companies say that it could take $13.5 billion to compensate them for selling their property. That sounds daunting enough to overwhelm any other issues.
The simple answer is that the exact cost cannot now be known. As in virtually all cases of this kind, the two sides don’t agree on a price and a court decides. The PTP proposal even recognizes that a Maine court will decide.
Beyond that, the inflated amount results from one of the basic reasons why a lot of numbers and polls are much less reliable than they may seem. They are based on the assumptions used. For example, the two utilities paid for the study that yields the high number, so it’s expectable that its assumptions would help them.
In addition, there is a recent utility acquisition in Maine that could influence a court. In 2020, Versant bought its utility, which serves the Bangor area, from Emera. It paid the audited value of the property plus a premium of about 21 percent. If that same approach were used in the PTP takeover, the cost would be less than $7.5 billion.
Finally, the customers of those two utilities now pay for their poles and wires and they would continue to be responsible. They are now paying off about $5.4 billion, so that would not be a new cost. Somewhere in the heated and costly campaign, these facts, undermining the $13.5 billion claim, get lost.
The numbers in the presidential match-up between Joe Biden and Donald Trump are just as dubious. The average of major national polls has them just about even. The media pushes the story of a dead heat between the two seeking another four years in the White House.
There are a lot of problems with this conclusion, even if it seems to be based on the poll numbers. The most obvious is the failure to take account of the 11 percent who did not pick either candidate. Where will they go or will they stay home? What about the people who refused to answer? They are certainly enough to swing a national election.
These numbers might have some small interest if there were a national presidential election decided by the popular vote. But there isn’t. There are 51 separate elections (the states and Washington, D.C.). To have a better view of who’s leading would require knowing about the presidential race in each state. But polls simply do not yet exist for many states.
Timing also matters a lot. The polls, limited as they are, were conducted 14 months before the elections. The candidates have not yet been selected and campaign developments can affect the final result. Court cases and potential third-party participants will affect the results just as will the size of the turnout.
In short, the numbers that supposedly inform people of the likely outcome of a presidential election offer little useful guidance. They may even be biased by the way questions are asked or the voters choose to answer. Voter beware.
Finagling the numbers doesn’t stop at the border. China wants to show the world that the Communist Party’s version of economics is superior to the U.S. free enterprise system. That’s a key part of its effort to attract the developing countries, turning the southern hemisphere into China’s sphere of influence.
According to its numbers, its economic growth looked unbelievably good. But don’t believe China’s economic data, because they have been lying. When it became clear that its economy did not match its claims, the director of the National Statistics Bureau there admitted that, “fraud and deception happen from time to time, in violation of statistics laws and regulations.”
Number crunchers have been recalculating when China might pass the U.S. as the world’s largest economy. Because of its huge population and proclaimed growth, it looked like it could happen this decade. In fact, it may never happen.
The reasons are both its slower economic growth and a declining population caused by limiting family sizes plus an aging population. Lies about the size of the Chinese population are now being revealed.
The message? Be skeptical of other people’s numbers. The real effect on you of electric rates or presidential elections or the rivalry with China matter more than the often phony numbers designed to impress or confuse you. Number One is still the most important number.
