Robert David Sullivan

2012 election not necessarily foreordained by GDP growth

Yesterday's New York Times Magazine piece by Nate Silver, "Handicapping the 2012 Election," is fun in a crossword-puzzle kind of way, but I think it cheats a little in the way it characterizes Bill Clinton's re-election in 1996.

I agree with SIlver's general thesis, which is that the outcome of a presidential race depends more on macro factors (primarily the state of the national economy) than on campaign tactics or Electoral College strategy. As he writes, "The sophomoric strategist thinks he can slice the American electorate into a million little pieces and make it more than the sum of its parts. The smart one recognizes our common bonds."

But it seems to me that the strongest argument against the idea that the election will be a referendum on the economy is the growing polarization and partisanship in the US over the past couple of decades. The problem is that the last election featuring an incumbent Democratic president can be used to support both arguments -- that it's all about the economy and that it's all about the trench warfare between the Reds and Blues.

Book banning gets the Fox News treatment: One bad headline leads to another

I'm as opposed to censorship in public schools and libraries as just about anyone, but I don't think Fox-y hysteria on the issue does anyone good. Every year we hear that book banning is a growing problem whether there's statistical proof or not.

Here's an August 18 headline on USA Today's website:

Book battles heat up over censorship vs. selection in school

"Heat up" is a clever phrase here, since it implies that the battles are becoming more frequent. But the only statistic in the story says the reverse:

The number of book challenges, usually initiated by parents, fluctuates yearly, says [American Library Association] spokeswoman Jennifer Petersen. Reported challenges have declined from 513 in 2008 to 348 last year, but Petersen says there are many that her group never learns about.

Ah, yes, the "many that her group never learns about." The phenomenon of underreporting is every crisis group's best friend. If the number of reported challenges go up next year, we'll get unambiguous stories about the book banning epidemic with numbers to prove it. If the number keeps stubbornly keeps going down, the stories will be about untrustworthy data and people afraid to report what's going on in their communities.

Today the liberal website ThinkProgress linked to the USA Today story with its own headline:

Censorship On The Rise: U.S. Schools Have Banned More Than 20 Books This Year

Clever. "Heats up" has turned into "on the rise," but there are still no numbers to indicate an increase in book banning. The ThinkProgress write-up does have some added value in the form of a five-word vapor-quote:

While parents have traditionally launched the lion’s share of challenges, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, an attorney with the [American Library Association], says she has noticed “an uptick in organized efforts” to remove books from public and school libraries.

So there you have it. Your annual reminder to get indignant about book-banning as a growing evil in America despite its becoming less common.

BTW, don't look for more information at the American Library Association's own site. The USA Today story doesn't link to it, and I can't find a press release or anything on the ALA site that would have prompted the recent coverage.

Do people who answer polls trust people who answer polls?

Matt Yglesias is troubled by a new Gallup poll suggesting that more people trust bonus-grabbing CEOs than President Obama in coming up with solutions to our rotten economy (see poll results below). I'm more concerned with Gallup's refusal to include a key question: "How much confidence do you have in people who answer polls?" Since Gallup and company do as much as anyone to influence public debate (certainly more than labor leaders!), why aren't they included in this power ranking?

My answer, by the way, would be that I trust pollsters very highly in revealing how little the average voter knows about economics. And I trust former Clinton pollster Mark Penn (at right) to intepret any poll as a demand for Democrats to become more like Republicans.

Whites double back to Boston as inner suburbs get some color

Via Matthew Yglesias, here is a prescient cartoon (click it to enlarge) done by Tom Toles in 1998:

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You can see the success of this "plan" in Boston by looking at new Census data. Go to this map and click on various census tracts; you can see that the white population in the South End, Roxbury, and Mission Hill (all near the Orange Line) has increased over the past decade while the number of African-Americans has declined or been stagnant. Then go to this map and click on tracts in Everett, Malden, and Revere; the black population has soared while whites have gone elsewhere.

This isn't really a conspiracy, of course. It's just a matter of higher-income groups rediscovering the advantages of living in the heart of the city (now that crime has gone down and pizza shops have been replaced by cocktail bars). The question is what will happen to inner-ring suburbs as their relatively low housing costs attract more and more immigrants and low-income residents. They're likely to become more dependent on state aid in order to provide education and other public services. My fear is that they will face a political alliance between prosperous Boston and well-off suburbs (all of them able to generate income from high property taxes and lucrative commercial property) that will impose "fiscal discipline" on less fortunate communities.

Census Bureau: Reports of dying counties are greatly exaggerated

The press release is a couple of weeks old, but I've just discovered that the director of the US Census Bureau has stern words against the phrase "dying counties," which I used in a post a few weeks ago to tweak the notion that the Republican Party's base is in dynamic, job-creating parts of the nation. Robert Groves wrote on his blog that journalists are reading too much into "natural decrease" numbers, which mean that a county has had more deaths than births in a given period:

Jumping from observations of counties that show no natural increase in a year to labeling them as “dying” is quite a leap. Natural increase can affect the population size but in-migration and out-migration can also affect the size of a county. Together, the ups and downs of county populations are part of the dynamic nature of our country. A year of loss does not mean an inevitable course to death.

Groves also includes this chart, which surprised me. It shows that not much more than a third of all US counties have had uninterrupted growth over the past half century. It seems that many, perhaps most, of all "dying counties" are able to cheat death eventually:

Everywhere an outlier: What each state does best in presidential politics

A popular meme from earlier this year involved lists of what each American state excelled at, whether good ("The United States of Awesome") or bad ("The United States of Shame"). In order to enlighten, amuse, and provide material to journalists forced to pound out state "nutgrafs" in a matter of minutes, I have come up with a list of what each state excels at during presidential election years. Feel free to quibble or add your own facts in the comments!

Note: The best source for presidential election results is Dave Leip's Atlas of Presidential Elections. I haven't attributed statistics that can be found there (and it's easy to navigate the site), but there are hyperlinks for other data, such as polling and finance reports.

ALABAMA: Best at preserving the Reagan vote

John McCain's 60.3% in Alabama was the biggest increase in the US over Ronald Reagan's showing in 1980 (48.8%). Back when Jimmy Carter was running for re-election, northern Alabama (the whitest part of the state) was still pretty strongly Democratic, thanks to long memories of the Tennessee Valley Authority and other federal spending that helped the area. But places like Huntsville swung sharply to the GOP after they benefited from Reagan's increased defense spending, and social issues have helped cement the state as a Republican stronghold.

ALASKA: Best at supporting the fringe

Third parties do relatively well here, maybe because it's almost always a foregone conclusion that the Republican nominee will get the state's electoral votes. This was Green nominee Ralph Nader's best state in 2000 (10.1%). It was also the best state for the Libertarian Party in its best presidential election ever: 1980, when nominee Ed Clark got 1.1% nationally and 11.7% in Alaska. (The vice-presidential nominee was a now-familiar name: David H. Koch.)

ARIZONA: Best at sending confusing messages to social conservatives

Arizona has been a touchstone of American conservatism ever since it gave the nation Barry Goldwater in the 1950s. But there's always been some question of how committed the state is to social conservatism, as opposed to Goldwater's strong and explicit economic conservatism. Goldwater himself became quite hostile to the religious right, but the electorate here has been harder to puzzle out. This was Steve Forbes's best showing in the 1996 Republican primaries, back when he was zealously against taxes but before he fully embraced social conservatism. (According to the Federal Election Commission, he got 33.4% here; the only other primary he won was in Delaware.) Then there is the zig-zag career of John McCain, who has been all over the map on social issues. As a favorite son, McCain won presidential primaries here in 2000 and 2008, but who knows what that means for 2012?

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal's Tamara Audi has a good piece on the political split in Arizona between more liberal Pima County and the rest of the state, leading to talk of secession. And the Boston Review's Tom Barry profiles the state and in the light of its economic bust. ("Arizona’s politics are dominated by a potent mix of three ideological currents: support for a muscular national-security program, libertarian capitalism, and social traditionalism.")

ARKANSAS: Best at putting the final nail in the coffin of the Solid South

Arkansas was the last state in the US to vote Republican in a presidential election; it never did so until Richard Nixon won a second term in 1972. Since then, the state has reverted to old-fashioned type a few times; it was Carter's best state outside of Georgia in 1976, and it was native Bill Clinton's best state in 1992. But there's there's no such thing as a Dixiecrat state anymore. The biggest swing toward the Republicans in 2008 was here, as George W. Bush's 9.8-point margin swelled to a 19.9-point margin for McCain.

Why would Providence balk at checking immigration status?

The city of Providence isn't that keen on checking people's papers, according to an AP story in the Boston Herald:

Providence has asked to opt out of a federal program that allows police to check fingerprints of all people arrested to verify their immigration status.

Public Safety Commissioner Steven Pare said in a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that the Secure Communities program will create fear in the immigrant community and mistrust of police.

It's not really surprising that the city wants to avoid a bad image among immigrants. While it's not technically "dying," Providence County (which includes the city of the same name) has a stagnant population — which means that a labor shortage may limit economic growth. Census data show that Providence County suffered a net loss of 4,939 people due to domestic migration in 2008-09. (In other words, that more American citizens wanted out than in.)

The county would have lost people overall if not for its net gain of 2,741 from international migration. Providence, like a lot of aging cities in the Snow Belt, is a more popular destination among immigrants than among US natives, and local government probably doesn't see any benefit in enforcing a KEEP OUT message.

 

"Dying counties" leaned toward McCain in 2008

An AP story in yesterday's Boston Herald examines "dying counties," defined as places with more deaths than births in a given year. A "near-record" number of counties — about one-fourth of the US total — experienced this phenomenon from 2008 to 2009, according to Census Bureau data. (UPDATE: The director of the Census Bureau does not like the term "dying counties," explaining that a county losing population in one ten year period doesn’t have a lot of implication that it will continue to lose.")

Some of the dying counties are retirement havens, but most are simply being abandoned because of a lack of jobs (or a lack of interest in the low-paying jobs that remain). From the story in the Herald:

Local businesses in Welch [in West Virginia] began to shutter after U.S. Steel departed McDowell County, which sits near Interstate 77, once referred to as the "Hillbilly Highway" because it promised a way to jobs in the South. Young adults who manage to attend college — the high-school dropout rate is 28 percent, compared with about 8 percent nationwide — can’t wait to leave. For some reason, the fish in nearby Elkhorn Creek left too.

"There’s no reason for you to come to Welch," says [87-year-old] Shepard, wearing a Union 76 cap at a makeshift auto shop he still runs after six decades. "This is nothing but a damn ghost town in a welfare county."

Overall, such places leaned Republican in the last presidential election. (This is a bit ironic, given that an influx of immigrants may offer some hope for their recovery.) I crunched the numbers and discovered that Republican John McCain won the 755 counties that make up "dying" America in 2008, with 52.9% to Democrat Barack Obama's 45.4% — or 5.8 million votes to 4.9 million votes. Among the rest of the nation, Obama won with 53.6% to 45.0% — or 64.5 million votes to 54.2 million votes.

Today in stupid stats: Obama approval rating among independents

President Obama seems to be enjoying a small bump in popularity, going from slightly negative to slightly positive in net approval ratings. It's not surprising that any shift in attitude would come mostly from voters in the middle, as opposed to Democrats or Republicans with hardened views about the president. So Politico isn't exactly breaking new ground with today's analysis, "Fickle independents return to Barack Obama":

That unpredictable, cranky group of voters who helped carry the president into office two years ago before turning against him in dramatic fashion, may be turning back in Obama’s direction even more quickly.

A series of national polls released over the last week shows Obama’s approval rating on the upswing among voters who don’t affiliate with either political party.

It's not hard to figure out. When a president moves in or out of "abysmal" approval-rating territory, it's because of shifts within his own party. From a Gallup report in May 2008: "George W. Bush's overall job approval rating had been running about 33% for quite a while, but has now fallen below 30% as some Republicans have stopped backing him." Conversely, when a president moves in or our of the "sky-high" approval realm, it's because of changed attitudes in the opposition party; Bush couldn't have reached a 90% approval rating after 9/11 if his boost in popularity hadn't been sharpest among Democrats.

So Obama's fluctuations near the midpoint of the approval continuum are all about movement among independents. Republicans may eventually warm to him (or Democrats sour on him), but it's extremely unlikely that they would get ahead of independents in changing their thinking. (Unless Obama does something apocalyptically post-partisan like name Michelle Bachmann to the Supreme Court.)

Another wet blanket on the fun, exciting narrative of the "fickle independent" comes from Brendan Nyhan, who reposts this chart from Alan Abromowitz showing that Obama's approval ratings pretty much exactly match up with how various demographic groups voted in 2008:

Nyhan concludes:

The implication is that politicians and the media spend too much time worrying about appeals targeting specific groups and too little on what moves support up and down across groups (principally, the economy).

I agree, and lazy emphasis on the supposed "swing vote" of the moment (most, like Soccer Moms, just a fancy name for moderates and independents) has always been one of my pet peeves about political analysis. (Along with a lack of attention paid to geographic patterns in voting.)

Illiterate, intolerant, homophobic? 5 statistically flawed raps against Boston and the Northeast

I'm not really a hometown booster, and I've bitched about Boston enough to be told "Then why don't you leave?" many times. But my parochial pride has been stirred several times in the past few days by one thing that drives me battier than the Hub's famous rudeness: Sloppy statistics.

Here are five examples of knocks (or faint praise) against Boston, Massachusetts, and the Northeast that don't stand up to scrutiny.

As reported in USA Today, Boston is only the 12th "most literate city" in America, behind St. Louis and Cincinnati.

The complete survey by Central Connecticut University is here. Note that Boston ranks 3rd, behind only New York and Washington, in the number of periodicals published here. We're 4th in newspaper circulation. (My hunch is that New York, Los Angeles, and many Western cities rank poorly in this category because of the large number of people who don't speak English as their primary language.) And we're 5th in "Internet resources."

So why aren't we in the Top 10 overall? Mostly because Boston ranks a terrible 61st in bookstores per 10,000 people; New York City is tied for 65th. I suspect that this has more to do with the high cost of real estate than with locals' reading habits. There aren't many places in Boston or Manhattan where you can pay for a storefront in a busy retail district by selling used books (as opposed to clothes, wine, jewelry, or other easily marked-up items). Second-place St. Louis has a mystery bookstore; we'd probably still have one on Newbury Street rather than just online if tourists stopped coming to that trendy address.

Also, bookstores in Boston and New York are probably bigger, if less numerous, befitting a geographically compact metropolis. And the survey is apparently limited to the city proper, which means it doesn't count bookstores in Cambridge -- where many Bostonians shop.