Where Things Stand: X-Men Vote 2021

Hi, I’m Robert Secundus, and welcome to the 616, the first and only home for Marvel Fan Election Polling commentary.

Today I’m going to be talking about our X-Men Election model and its predictions. What experience do I have in polling, statistics modelling, or elections? Absolutely none, but I followed 538’s articles and podcasts for the past three years with the hyperfixation of a millennial doomer suffering from several unmedicated anxiety and attention disorders. I’m hoping I picked up something.

Before we look at the model, let’s look at the numbers from the polls we’ll be considering.

The Polls

First is Marvel’s own polling:

Currently, Marvel projects Polaris as winning the vote, with a plurality of 22.2%, a position 1.5 times higher than Banshee, who is in second place.

Internal polling is always somewhat unreliable, but this seems especially worthy of scrutiny. How many people did Marvel poll? How are they weighing data given demographic information? And who exactly is funding this polling? There are too many questions to allow this poll much influence in the official 616 Election model.

Second, we have ComicsXF’s internet poll:

31.3% of the 166 responses voted for Tempo. The ComicsXF poll also asked respondents how many X-Men comic books they were currently reading, what social media sites they used to follow comics news, and whether they use the hashtag “XSpoilers.” It then weighted votes in favor of respondents who read 7 or more X-books, avoid twitter, and do not use the hashtag “XSpoilers.” This would better represent the people most likely to vote and vote often, as high levels of X-Education correlate positively with passion for voting in X-Elections, and twitter usage (including hashtag usage) correlates positively anti-electoralism.

After weighting, the vote breakdown looks like this:

The Marvel poll would indicate that Polaris is in a strong lead, with only Banshee able to beat her, if all forces rallied and began voting him in incognito mode over and over— but this much more reliable poll instead indicates that Tempo has the commanding lead.

Finally, we have ComicsXF’s phone poll, conducted by a writer for ComicsXF who randomly called people listed in his phone.

After weighing responses for people who have seen lots of MCU movies and have strong opinions about the X-Election, this poll found that 80% of the electorate would be voting for Forge, and 20% for Polaris.

Phone polls are typically most reliable, but given the small sample size, this poll is roughly equivalent to Marvel’s in reliability.

Our Model

Our model combines the results of the above polls while also including outside factors, including campaign video ads (not fancams) and what we’re calling the Logan Leprechaun Factor (noting whether or not a character featured prominently in the most important issue of X-Men of all time, X-Men #103, in which a Leprechaun revealed Wolverine’s name for the first time).

It looks like this:

(Marvel Poll%)*.2 + (CXFWeb Poll) *.3 + (CXFPhone Poll) * .2 + (# of Ads + LLF) * .3= Chance of Winning the X-Election

Using these numbers, we find the following results:

Polaris: 15.25%

Tempo: 13.514%

Marrow: 6%

Armor: 4.878%

Forge: 14.336%

Banshee: 25.69%

Boom Boom: 3.884%

Strong Guy: 1.44%

Sunspot: 3.746%

Cannonball: 1.826%

You may note that there is a 9.436% chance no one wins, if we add up all these percentages. One of the strengths of this model is that it accounts for the possibility of apocalyptic collapse in 2021 before Marvel can announce the results.

Clearly, Banshee is most likely to win; but remember, these models only present probabilities, not uncertainties, and I’m told they have “long tails,” which means that even if Strong Guy wins this thing, I’m still right.

TL;DR

So in a normal election of 10 people, each person might have a 10% of winning.
But flatscans say this election is about genetic freaks who are not normal
So Marvel says Polaris has a 22.2% chance at BEST of beating Banshee
But you take her 22.2% and add it to our other polls, and her chances of winning drastic go down
See, Strong Guy, Sunspot and Cannonball fans KNOW they can’t beat Banshee
So they’re not even gonna try
So you take his 14.4% chance of winning, and add it to his 5.9% and 0% chances of winning, and the other outside factors, and Banshee’s got a 25.69% chance of winning at Hellfire
The numbers don’t lie
And they yell disaster for everyone but Banshee
At Hellfire