What is the probability your vote will make a difference?
The answer is very low. You are far more likely to be hit twice by lightning.
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The odds for the average person are 60 million to 1 against it, a study shows.In some states, the odds of being the vote that tips the election to your candidate are much better. In others they are astronomically worse.
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Residents of swing states have the best odds of swinging the election. That’s based not on the size of the state but the likelihood that the race will be close and that their state will make the difference in the Electoral College.In New Mexico, the odds are 1 in 6.1 million of a voter casting the ultimate deciding vote.
“If you’re in New Mexico, you have a better chance of having your vote matter than winning the New York Lottery,” said study co-author Aaron Edlin, a professor of economics and law at the University of California, Berkeley.
In Virginia, the odds are 1 in 7.9 million. New Hampshire residents have 1 in 8 million chance of being the key vote. In Colorado, the odds are 1 in 9.9 million. In those states, voters are more likely to decide the election than die by dog bite this year.
For everyone else after those four states, fat chance. The next lowest odds — for Nevada — are 1 in 28.2 million, worse than death-by-dog bite odds of 1 in 10.9 million in one year.
Thirty-four states have odds greater than 1 in 100 million; 20 states have odds worse than 1 in 1 billion. Alabama’s odds are 1 in 12.2 billion. Oklahoma’s odds are 1 in 20.5 billion. But the nation’s capital has it the worst. The odds of a District of Columbia resident casting the vote that decides the election are 1 in 490 billion.
That’s essentially zero, but Gelman said: “We never like to say zero in statistics.”