On election night, predictions are made on the winner of each district, after only a fraction of the vote has been counted up. How is this done?
Say there is a seat up for election, and 10,000 votes have been cast. After counting up 10% of the vote one party has more votes than the other, say 500 over 400. How confident can we be that that party would win? I have a feeling it has something to do with bayes, buy not sure exactly how.
So what exactly is the relationship between the number of votes cast/counted, and their distribution, and the probability that the leading party will win?