In a real tug-of-war, the teams are balanced. In the HN tug-of-war, flaggers have an advantage because flagged posts are invisible to people who might otherwise upvote them.
We aren't opposed to tweaking and testing it, but the tweaks would need to be small.
I'd hazard that someone is waiting-not-waiting, like Smaug, for a systems quant (bonus: lisper) to enter the cave to do equilibrium teleportation experiments on votes and flags
(I am secretly hoping that this is a silent-smoke-out-of-ears --and not self-extinguishing-- comment)
A couple hours at least, would be my guess.