The number one golden rule of statistical analysis: Correlation does not always equal causation. Having said that, there’s pretty strong correlation in this NY Times analysis of areas with high incidences of racially charged Google searches and areas where President Obama underperformed in 2008 by Seth Stevens-Davidowitz:
Consider two media markets, Denver and Wheeling (which is a market evenly split between Ohio and West Virginia). Mr. Kerry received roughly 50 percent of the votes in both markets. Based on the large gains for Democrats in 2008, Mr. Obama should have received about 57 percent of votes in both Denver and Wheeling. Denver and Wheeling, though, exhibit different racial attitudes. Denver had the fourth lowest racially charged search rate in the country. Mr. Obama won 57 percent of the vote there, just as predicted. Wheeling had the seventh highest racially charged search rate in the country. Mr. Obama won less than 48 percent of the Wheeling vote.
Add up the totals throughout the country, and racial animus cost Mr. Obama three to five percentage points of the popular vote. In other words, racial prejudice gave John McCain the equivalent of a home-state advantage nationally.
Yes, Mr. Obama also gained some votes because of his race. But in the general election this effect was comparatively minor. The vast majority of voters for whom Mr. Obama’s race was a positive were liberal, habitual voters who would have voted for any Democratic presidential candidate. Increased support and turnout from African-Americans added only about one percentage point to Mr. Obama’s totals.
If my findings are correct, race could very well prove decisive against Mr. Obama in 2012. Most modern presidential elections are close. Losing even two percentage points lowers the probability of a candidate’s winning the popular vote by a third. And prejudice could cost Mr. Obama crucial states like Ohio, Florida and even Pennsylvania.
The argument here in my eyes is whether or not this has already been factored into the votes. My theory is that in these areas where President Obama underperformed, race was a factor, but people were honest about not wanting to vote for President Obama, they just lied about the reason why. If that’s correct, the polls actually are already taking this into effect, and why crosstabs don’t always appear to make sense.
You can say you’re planning to vote for Romney because of the economy. You can really just not like Barack Obama because he’s black. The point is people aren’t going to lie and say they’re going to vote for Obama when they lie about race as a factor, so the numbers are still where they would be if the reasons were honestly reported.
Second, in the areas where this is the most prevalent, President Obama lost by more than that margin in those markets. West Virginia without the seven point thumb on the scale would have been at best a tie as Obama lost there by 15 points, and that’s again assuming the votes were not factored in. If the average was 3-5 points, Kentucky’s 16 point McCain win would have been always out of reach. The electoral college blunted the effect here and will do so again in 2012.
I’m not surprised by this and in fact it’s pretty damn impressive (and depressive) to see just how many American voters are lying to pollsters and kudos to the approach used here, but after 5 years of this in primaries and the 2008 and 2010 elections, by now the folks who aren’t going to vote for Obama based solely on race are either living in areas where the state will stay red anyway, or they’ve found other reasons to oppose him to tell pollsters instead. I have my doubts that these preferences aren’t already being factored in to current polls…in fact I can almost guarantee you they are.
Which is good news, in one sense. Yes, we should be very concerned with several million Americans out there with their bigotry in full bloom. But they’re already counted in the polls is my guess. No need to double-count them and borrow even more trouble. If anything, at least Team Obama (and the rest of the Dems) know what markets now they need to be paying special attention to…and which are lost causes. That’s valuable knowledge in and of itself.
Depressingly awful and maddeningly terrible knowledge, but useful nonetheless.
Keith
This should be the official motto of this site. I’d put BJ’s contribution to my blood pressure at a *minimum* of 3-5 points.
dmsilev
Yeah, this. Remember that Nate Silver, using polls and not adjusting them for a hidden racial bias among respondents or anything, was disturbingly accurate in going from the final set of polls to the actual result. Other polling aggregators came pretty close to the final result as well. If all the poll predictions had been four or five percentage points away from the end result, that would have been pretty dramatic and endlessly discussed.
Raven
Pat Lang had a post asking why vets support Romney with his draft dodging background. I posted this article and, so far, no responses.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Keith: Systolic or diastolic? One’s bad, the other’s worse.
Davis X. Machina
@Raven: I suppose, if the local VFW is anything to go by, it’s that Romney’s more likely to ensure another FW or two for there to be V’s from, and that’s important to them.
Damned if I know why it’s important to them…
Tokyokie
Whenever I hear an Obama opponent call him a “socialist” or an “incompetent,” I assume it’s because he feels he can’t use the n-word.
MattF
I think this is a great use of Google data and should be pushed hard. Two specific things come to mind.
First, the resolution is just not good enough. Lots of states (e.g., Pennsylvania) have strong internal variations, so you would want to do this down to the county level. I understand that would be a big job, but I have a suspicion that the results would be eye-popping.
Second, there are probably lots of things that correlate with this ‘racism index’. It’s time for some serious data diving.
Linda Featheringill
I agree. Some votes are lost, no matter what you do.
Also some groups are apparently so reluctant to actually get out and vote, it’s tempting to write them off. Young adults and Hispanic/Latino folks come to mind.
What to do?
schrodinger's cat
This seems like this election season’s Bradley affect.
Linda Featheringill
@MattF: #7
Yes. Racism itself might actually be a symptom and not the real disease. But even so, it could be very useful to have a fuller picture of associated symptoms.
Amir Khalid
@Davis X. Machina:
I would have thought that the last thing a sane war veteran wanted was more new war veterans.
Culture of Truth
I wonder how this effect would play out for a black Republican; also would a similar effect impact a female candidate (I’m think so, but differently).
Villago Delenda Est
I think that, among white voters in particular, there is a strong tendency to avoid the color of Obama’s skin as the given reason for not voting for him. Look at the comparisons, by county, of votes for the deserting coward in 2004 and for McCain in 2008, and the correlation with areas of strong Scotch-Irish ethnic background is apparent.
Obama is near. That’s the reason a lot of people won’t vote for him, without the slightest regard for any policy positions or his performance over the last four years.
As for vets and voting for Rmoney, hell, vets voted for the deserting coward and his proud draft-dodging veep over two guys who actually were in-country during their generation’s war, one of whom was decorated multiple times while serving in the shit. Why? Because they were from the usurper party. Never mind that Rethuglicans make it a point to go after veteran’s benefits (the Bachmann woman actually went specifically after VA medical benefits) and there are vets who vote for them anyway.
The stupid of anyone who’s not a member of the 1% voting for Rethuglicans. It burns.
jeffreyw
@Amir Khalid: The vast majority of war veterans have never heard the angry snap of a bullet missing them, have never smelled the fear or the blood or seen the guts of their friend on the mud. Fuck the Dempsy Dumpster Battion vets.
Villago Delenda Est
@jeffreyw:
This.
The American Legion’s makeup, I’ve read, is heavy on support troops, light on combat vets. You’re a veteran regardless of where you served or when you’ve served (I’m a veteran, but not a combat veteran, unlike John Cole, for example) so details like if you’ve been in the shit (see the examples in my previous post) are lost, particularly on an MSM that is, like most Americans, unfamiliar with the detail of military service and thus very suspect to falling for stereotypes.
Raven
@jeffreyw: Somebody had to be in the rear! :)
Stooleo
Yeah, I’d like to see this study done with google searches on Mormanism. Salt Lake City vs Birmingham Alabama.
Soonergrunt
@jeffreyw: speaking as somebody who’s had a watch shot off his wrist and knows for certain that ESAPI perform as designed, don’t forget that attitude of “I fought for this country and I’ll be damned if somebody is going to fuck it up!”
There’s also the fact that, as you noted, most Vets are not combat Vets in the sense of having actually traded fire with the enemy. In fact, most of them are not even combat-arms vets, but combat support and combat service support, and it’s been my experience that most CS and CSS troops tend to be more conservative than actual combat troops. Hawkishness and warlike tendencies seem to be inversely correlated with actual combat experience.
Raven
@Villago Delenda Est: The world is light on “combat vets” because there are so few of them. Of course to some combat vets means nothing but infantry, deservedly so, but when it suits the wingnuts anyone in theater is not only a combat vet but a fucking hero.
Redshift
@Villago Delenda Est: Yep. My wife’s grandfather was in WWI, stateside, and was a bigwig in the local VFW. Her dad was in WWII in the Pacific, doesn’t like to talk about it, and never joined.
VFW tends be full of “glorious war” types who want to reminisce; in other words, the people who didn’t suffer much, whether they went overseas or not.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Villago Delenda Est:
My last boss when I worked at the J2 in the Pentagon was the oldest O5 (LT COL) in the army. He’d served literally two careers, the first as a highly decorated NCO in Vietnam. Then he got out, then came back in in the late 70s. He’s *still* in the Army, now an 06 (Full Colonel). Best leader/boss I’ve ever had. Brilliant guy.
His term for the people described above:
REMF
Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers.
Not sure if this will go into limbo because of that word.
Soonergrunt
@Raven: I never felt superior to anybody who wasn’t Infantry. I figured that all the jobs were necessary. What superiority I did feel was mainly because they all existed to support ME! It really was all about ME, ME, ME! BOW DOWN BEFORE THE BLUE CORD HOLDER!
Sorry. (Breathe in…breathe out…)
No, really, everybody had to do their part for me to succeed and thrive, and I’m thankful to those who did, but you are 100% correct that my experience of Iraq and Afghanistan was quite different from the Clerk Typists at Camp Victory and Camp Phoenix with their ice cream and salsa lessons.
jeffreyw
@Raven: Sorry! I should have narrowed my too inclusive damnation, but I fear that it was already too long for a bumpersticker.
Mr Stagger Lee
@Raven: Living in the shadow of Joint Base Lewis-McChord I can venture a guess, they think he will support them better, they think that the Democrats are a bunch of hippie, pot-smoking, Gay Loving, Muslim Commie traitors. Nevermind that Romney’s BFF Paul Ryan will screw them royally in the benefits,(My boss a 20-year AF veteran got his disability upgraded, But Ryan will want him to pay private insurer rates…Tee Hee) The Republicans service them with words and Rush loves them too.
Raven
@jeffreyw: Shit, you know I don’t give a fuck. I yam what I yam and that’s all that I am. I went were they sent me and, sometimes, I did what they told me to do. FTA
Villago Delenda Est
@Soonergrunt:
My branch (Signal) is combat support, but I spent most of my time in tactical units, division or below. A lot of other Signal officers track fixed station, and rarely rub elbows with combat arms types.
So my attitude is more combat arms than combat support in a lot of ways. If I’d been serving when the first gulf war broke out, for example, I’d have been at division level or below, and probably close enough to the fighting to smell the cordite.
Others are far away, imagine that they were in the shit, and act as if they were, but were not. This is of course not true of all of them…Al Gore was upfront that while he was in ‘Nam, he only visited the shit, he didn’t live in it. John Kerry, otoh, lived in it. Not that it makes a difference to the craven Jerome Corsi, mind you.
Redshift
In the summer of 1980 I worked as a lifeguard at the swimming pool at the Navy Yard in DC. I still remember talking to Marines there who were all for Carter because they figured Reagan was going to get them into a war. Smart guys.
(And it seems so sad to remember that back then we didn’t say “another war”…)
acallidryas
Well, I think there are a disturbing number of Americans who are lying to pollsters, not just themselves. I’d also agree that those not voting for Obama because he’s black have given other reasons, and not pretending they’re voting for him.
I think in particular of a woman in my office from southern Ohio who has voted Democrat all her life, but didn’t vote for Obama in 2008 because “there’s just something about him I don’t like.” I don’t think she was lying when she said it wasn’t because he’s black, I think she totally believed that.
And my mother-in-law, a Democrat from West Virginia, who wasn’t voting for Obama because he’s too extreme and never pretended that she was. But I think she knows she’s lying.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Why does this discussion suddenly remind me of the scene in Kelly’s Heroes where Clint is trying to sell Big Joe on the mission. Crapgame is there, the quintessential REMF
“It’s a top-line outfit! I personally recommend them!”
“You butt out! The only time you come out of the ground is when you smell a profit….For you it’s a vacation. Six days
out of seven you’re behind the lines. We’re at the broken end of a bottle all the time, so you butt out!”
Can’t find a YouTube clip.
Villago Delenda Est
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
That term is common, and I even used it on myself when I was in Korea, living in Yongsan in Leave-it-to-Beaver quarters, a large patch of green in the endless grey of Seoul. Quite far away in mental space from the cold of those 2ID guys who were a living trip wire to insure the US got involved in any future Korean conflict.
Someone has to stay back and guard the beer.
Soonergrunt
@Villago Delenda Est: And thanks for that, because there was beer when we came off the line.
smintheus
It was curious that this researcher didn’t use his Google data to evaluate the effect on the 2008 primary vote. I’m pretty sure, looking at his map, that there’s a correlation between racism and several of the large losses that Obama suffered. For example, he was hammered pretty badly in RI…which might surprise you if you didn’t realize that RI is rather more racist than most of New England.
danimal
My anger is towards those who have a conniption fit when anyone asks about whether vets are ‘heroes’ while pursuing policies to limit their access to medical assistance and other social services. Bastards.
RSA
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m not a vet, but I first came across a comparable phrase in Bill Mauldin’s wonderful book, Up Front, about his time in WWII. He used the phrase “rear echelon bastard”, though I’m guessing he toned down his language. I wonder how far back it goes? Probably to Roman times.
flukebucket
I know this will seem like concern trolling but I have wondered how Obama will replace the votes he has lost during his first term. In other words I know folks who voted for Obama originally who will not vote for him again because he is not progressive enough but I do not know anybody who did not vote for Obama who will vote for him because he turned out to be more centrist.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
The flip side of this is that the Republicans have voters who will vote for them solely because of Obama’s race, and they know it, hence the large number of ways to mention his race: Born in Kenya, Muslim, socialist-Marxist (there’s no other meaning for the combination of those words. On the other hand, the Democratic party is full of people who have gotten beyond race and are totally focused on the issues. Imagine losing the 2012 election not only because the other side is racist, but because your side is not.
shortstop
I’m not so sure about this. Anecdotes ain’t data, but I know two people who did, including my jerk father-in-law. I certainly agree that there are a lot fewer of this kind than the other kind and that both kinds are unlikely to invalidate the polls.
SatanicPanic
@flukebucket: How many votes will Romney lose by not being McCain?
Omnes Omnibus
@flukebucket: I think that most of those who find Obama too centrist will still vote for him. Aside from a few noisemakers, no one left of center wants Romney.
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
Sort of — the whole point of the Bradley Effect was that people told pollsters that they were planning to vote for Tom Bradley, but voted otherwise once they got into the voting booth. It sounds like the difference here is that people seem to be being honest about who they’re voting for, but may not be honest about the actual reasons.
I think pollsters looking for a genuine Bradley effect (ie voters who claim they will vote for Obama but vote for Romney instead) will not have much success.
AliceBlue
Remember those little purple heart bandaids at the 2004 Republican convention? My dad was the recipient of several Purple Hearts; when I saw that, I wanted nothing more than to soak that convention center in lighter fluid and strike a match.
Mnemosyne
@flukebucket:
If your friends want to put Mitt “Let’s kill Planned Parenthood” Romney in charge because Obama isn’t pure enough for them, then they can go fuck themselves. Clearly they are not meant to be voting in actual elections where real people run for office and should confine themselves to imagining fantasy elections where they can argue whether Russ Feingold or Noam Chomsky would be a better president.
I have no time for fantasists who insist that there is an imaginary perfect candidate out there somewhere who is a perfect fit for the glass slipper they’re carrying around in their pocket. If you’re too pure for the reality of politics, get the fuck out of the way and let the people who are willing to get their hands dirty and do the work get things done.
rlrr
@Omnes Omnibus:
Obama’s centrism shouldn’t be surprise to anyone who paid attention in 2008. He ran as a centrist and is governing as a centrist (or at least trying). To think he was going to do otherwise was just wishful thinking. Having said that, he was, and still is better than the alternative.
rlrr
@AliceBlue:
And if something like that had ever happened at a Democratic convention, we’d still be hearing the howls of outrage from our so-called liberal media.
Steve in DC
@flukebucket:
Annecdotal but…
This isn’t 2008. In 2008 we’d had eight years of Bush and we wanted to end that, we were also electing the first black president which drove a lot of people out. Obama had no history so we believed what he said.
This is 2012, on healthcare we got a Republican policy that Obama said he opposed. We got coddling of the banks. Civil liberties got worse. We are bombing people in yet more Arab nations. The middle class keeps being asked to sacrifice.
Obama has been proven to be full of crap on what he said and the factor of electing the first black president is gone. The sole driving force is that Romney will probably be worse.
That’s not exactly as much of a motivational message and rallying cry.
Cacti
I guess I’m not understanding Mr. Davidowitz’s premise.
Racial prejudice could prove decisive in 2012 because…
There is an untapped trove of voters who were unaware that the President was black in 2008?
Forgot that they were racist in 2008?
Cacti
@Steve in DC:
Do you ever have anything else?
Forum Transmitted Disease
@flukebucket: I know some of these people too. They never actually vote, it’s always cutting into their quality time with their weed.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Cacti: He’s got a stone-cold direct admission that he’s a member of the Republican party. Check his comments.
SatanicPanic
@Cacti: I think he’s saying that the 2008 situation was more favorable for Obama (and Democrats in general) so he was able to overcome the built-in 3-5% that he loses just for being black.
Rob in CT
Yeah, you have to figure this is already baked into the cake.
People might say they’re not voting for Obama for whatever reason, avoiding race as a factor. But hardly anyone is going to tell a pollster they’re voting for Obama, but actually vote for Romney because Obama’s black.
grandpa john
@Amir Khalid: I would suspect that this desire is inversely related to how much actual combat time the person saw
Egg Berry
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Just tell SteveinDC Romney has promised a cat in every house mandate. That’ll turn him.
El Cid
Strong correlation often indicates that you should look for causation.
gene108
@Steve in DC:
Messaging matters.
Even, when Bush, Jr. was flubbing around pushing Democratic legislative goals, such an Rx plan for Medicare, conservatives were touting his conservative bona fides in doing this because Bush, Jr. was taking a conservative approach to Big Government; they didn’t curse him out for not being pure enough a conservative.
Even Reagan, when he raised taxes, etc. was given political cover by conservatives, who didn’t try and destroy him because of political realities that he faced and the fact he’d give them what they wanted.
When the Right is saying Obama’s a failure and the Left is saying Obama’s a failure, what’s the guy in the middle supposed to think?
I’m guessing, it’s Obama’s a failure.
I know folks, who will most likely vote for Romney in November because they keep hearing negative crap about Obama, when they turn on CNN. Their attitude is what’s Obama done? CNN talking heads say not much, the economy stinks, so lets get some change in for changes sake.
The real issue isn’t the picking the lesser of two evils, it’s what Presidential candidate (and Party) will give you more of what you want from the political system.
Democrats delivered on a HCR bill that’ll get us closer to universal coverage (the liberal goal) than any other bill passed in this country. It’s not a failure, but a starting point to make this country more equitable.
Brachiator
No rational human being should be overly concerned with polls. This leaves, I suppose, pundits.
Rational Democrats need to be concerned with getting the vote out in November.
@Steve in DC:
People ain’t got jobs. This is where the rubber hits the road. None of the shit that is so damn important to you doesn’t matter at all to the majority of Americans, probably not even to the majority of Democratic voters.
Also, your summary of Obama’s positions here are either mischaracterizationis or outright lies. Again and again, people substitute what they wanted or expected from Obama for what he actually said or promised.
For example, exactly where and when did Obama promise not to wage war? You can be entirely against the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, an entirely reasonable position. You can even say that Obama’s actions are unncecessary or even evil. But you cannot say that he promised you that he was going to stop military action in the region.
No, the Republicans currently are worse. What is there to guess or speculate about?
I really wonder what kind of bubble world some Democrats live in where they are unaffected by what the GOP has been doing at both the state and federal levels.
MonkeyBoy
This racism effect was noted back in 2008 just by looking at the famed NYTimes map of counties that voted less for Obama in 2008 than Kerry in 2004. See the US map in this discussion at Obsidian Wings.
Nate silver gave a Ted talk: “Does race affect votes?” in which he said for white (highland/upland/hillbilly) voters that the racism was (I recall) correlated with
1) lower income
2) lesser education
3) rural living
4) NOT HAVING ANY BLACK NEIGHBORS.
This map analysis was only able to notice racism in white Democrats. If someone is going to vote Republican anyway (maybe because the party embraces racism) then it couldn’t factor out racial effects. So maybe “google interest” may be able to factor racism in Republicans.
[ also too, here is Yglesias discussing “American” as an ethnic category from before the election where such people are mostly Scots-Irish. Their geographic distribution is concentrated in the hillbilly areas of the vote difference maps. ]
rlrr
@Brachiator:
You can even say that Obama’s actions are unncecessary or even evil. But you cannot say that he promised you that he was going to stop military action in the region.
He actually said he’d increase military action in Afghanistan, while reducing it in Iraq during the election…
Mnemosyne
@Steve in DC:
So, instead, people should vote for the candidate who will completely repeal healthcare reform and let health insurance companies do anything they want; repeal Dodd-Frank and deregulate the banks because the real problem is regulation; start a war with Iran; and implement the Ryan economic plan, which takes the Social Security money that middle-class people have paid in their entire working lives and gives it to the 1%.
Good thinking there, Steve. Clearly electing Romney will solve every problem you pointed out with Obama. You’ve sure convinced me.
feebog
And yet, Obama will get:
97% of the African American vote
68% of the Latino vote
54% of women who vote
better get a whole lot more racists out to the polls.
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
This. People whine about how Bush was able to get his agenda pushed through but Obama can’t manage it, but ignore the fact that Congressional Republicans worked in lockstep to get Bush’s agenda passed (including holding votes open long after the rules said they should be closed) but that some of the biggest opponents of Obama’s agenda came from the Democratic side.
We can pride ourselves on being a herd of cats and not mindless zombies like the Republicans, but we can’t simultaneously whine when the chief cat wrangler has a hard time getting shit done because all of the cats want to wander in different directions.
Seriously, how many Republican pundits criticized Bush when he was in office? Can you name even one harsh article that George Will or Bill Kristol wrote criticizing a policy of Bush’s?
Brachiator
@El Cid:
No, it doesn’t. At best, it just might mean that you should investigate further.
I have never understood why anyone would want to insist that “strong” correlation is particularly meaningful.
cum hoc ergo propter hoc, and all that.
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: If I look and dig really really hard, I could probably find one Will column voicing displeasure with Dubya. But I bet you ten quid it has to do with him acting insufficiently conservative enough. As I recall Will was no fan of Medicare part D. And no I’m not looking for it. I feel gross enough as it is.
Brachiator
@Yutsano:
Will was vociferously disgusted with Dubya’s selection of Harriet Miers’ as a potential Supreme Court nominee.
You don’t have to look to far to find that one.
gene108
@Mnemosyne:
Liberals/Progressives overestimate how much Bush, Jr. actually got through Congress.
His second round of tax cuts, in 2003, only passed the Senate by VP Cheney casting the tie breaking vote.
In his second term he didn’t manage to get squat passed and his own Party rebelled against his attempt at immigration reform. His other major initiative, privatizing Social Security died a swift death before even getting to Congress.
In his first term his major policy accomplishments were bi-partisan. Yes. Bi-partisan.
He took Democratic ideas and tricked them out with conservative principals, like Medicare Part D and expanding the Dept. of Education. Many Republicans had wanted to shut down the DoE in the 1980’s, but didn’t make a fuss, when Bush, Jr. expanded it.
The other two that come to mind, were also bipartisan and got pushed on him by Congress and current events: Sarbanes-Oxley and McCain-Feingold.
Even the AUMF passed in 2002, didn’t have to lead to troops invading Iraq in March of 2003. It could’ve been a huge victory for the neocons. Through their show of force, Saddam let the inspectors back in for the first time in four years. If Bush & Co. had left it at that, they’d have scored a big political victory for unilateral use of American power.
No one talks about how the 2003 tax cuts only got passed by a VP tie breaking vote in the Senate and the many Republicans, who voted against them in both 2001 and 2003.
Yet we all feel like Bush, Jr. got whatever he wanted in Congress done, because that’s the message the right-wingers sold the MSM and the MSM sold to us.
Even with Democrats raising their own objections to Obama’s agenda, he still got a lot of stuff liberals tend to support passed.
Yet we feel like Obama’s a failure, whose gotten very little done because that’s the message the left pushes out on blogs and so the MSM decides, “heck, if his ‘supporters’ think he sucks, why should we sing his praises” and so you get endless negative coverage of Obama.
Jebediah
@danimal:
This. I was never in the military but I have always felt strongly that if you send someone out to potentially get their ass blown off*, you cover their care. For life. Period. Even if you have to raise taxes to do it.
Too expensive? Then fucking think twice about military adventurism.
*I personally would define that as everyone “in theater.” On the other hand, medical benefits for life even for non-combat service isn’t much crazier than the benefits-for-life that Senators and Representatives get.
Mike G
@AliceBlue:
And still the vets line up to vote for the Repukes, because they get gung-ho lip service while being shafted on benefits.
If that happened at the Dem convention the clip would have been repeated on Fox News every day for the last eight years.
Karen
@feebog:
AA vote: may be cancelled out because of voter suppression.
Latino vote: may be cancelled out because of voter suppression
Women: questionable, depends on which state, whether they have the ID needed.
That is what the real issue is people. How many “voters” will be denied the right to vote.
As far as I’m concerned, the folks on the far left who won’t vote for Obama because he’s not enough of a Nader or Kucinich for him are the same as the people who won’t vote for him because he’s too: socialist, leftist, Kenyan and any of the other euphemisms people use for too dark for them.
But what I really find amusing is that the racists are too afraid of appearing racist yet they believe their racism is normal. How is that possible?
Soonergrunt
@El Cid:
Look for causation. NOT assume causation.
Kyle
@Brachiator:
Harriet Meiers, an epic moment in the corrupt cronyism of the Cheney/Chimp assministration.
The funny part of that whole sad spectacle was watching Repuke stenographers get caught out when the GOP Borg suddenly turned against her nomination, like blowhard Hugh Hewitt: “Harriet Meiers is SUPERBLY qualified to be on the Supreme Court…wha? Aw, dammit, guys, no I didn’t get the new talking points!”
shortstop
@Karen:
All part of the bully-as-victim syndrome. Their belief that they’re superior to people with more melanin is perfectly reasonable, but unreasonable thought police have destroyed this country with our “tyranny” over “ideas” and made it impossible for white people to point out the deficiencies of black people without being cruelly punished for speaking truth to librul power.
IowaOldLady
Chris Hayes had a segment on Saturday about how racially charged beliefs interact with voters’ judgment of Obama.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46979738/ns/msnbc_tv-up_with_chris_hayes/#47750206
The researcher assessed respondents using a standard test of beliefs such as “Everyone has an equal opportunity in this country, including African-Americans if they’d just work hard.” Then he asked them to respond to various things ranging from the ACA to a picture of the president’s dog, which he identified either as Ted Kennedy’s dog or Barack Obama’s dog. Those with more racially charged beliefs liked Bo less when he was Obama’s.
It was a fascinating segment.
Ruckus
@Jebediah:
You have a point about in theater but remember most of us went where we were sent and did what we were told.(H/T to raven for adding “most of the time” for the last part) And that was drafted or enlisted.
I think a nation should take care of the health of all it’s citizens. 100%. At that point in time we wouldn’t need workers comp or the VA. You get sick or injured, you get fixed, if humanly possible. We have all these separate pieces of health care, providers, rent collectors, religious nut organizations, all pushing their agendas, which is less about actual care and more about profit. And despite all this there are people providing amazing care.
Congress gets platinum, if you have platinum, you can too.
rikyrah
@Tokyokie:
just like they used to call MLK a socialist.
Continental Op
Don’t assume that all of the individuals who vote against Obama because of his race admit even to themselves that this is the reason. We lie to ourselves at least as much as we lie to others.
jl
@dmsilev:
I think you have it right, except that I remember Silver, or some one who does similar analysis looked for the ‘Bradley effect’, that is misleading poll results of voter intentions that were biased because the poll respondents did not want to admit anything that might indicate racial bigotry to another person. So, their behavior inside the pooling booth was different from how they reported their intentions. The Bradley effect has not been robust out of sample, and that sample is an old CA gubernatorial election.
This guy used what may be a very good or a very flawed model to measure Obama’s potential vote in the absence of racial bias. But from what I can see, for the purposes of interpreting the polls for the current election, the author did no analysis at all.
regarding the post:
” The number one golden rule of statistical analysis: Correlation does not always equal causation. ”
I think better to just sa “correlation is not causation”
There is another saying in statistics: “no causes in, no causes out”. If you want to support a causal mechanism, you need to propose a causal hypothesis, and show how the statistical correlations can be consistent or inconsistent with your causal analysis.
As far as I can see, this blog post might be useful if we wanted to use polls for Kerry to predict Obama. But, we have polls for Obama with some evidence that for Obama’s polls, hidden racial bias does not effect the results of surveys on voter’s intentions on election day.
I don’t get the logic of the following:
“I used data from 2004 to 2007 because I wanted a measure not directly influenced by feelings toward Mr. Obama.”
Now well does a model for election results for 04 and 07 perform when applied to 2008? That is crucial. And even if you could show it is good, what use is it for trying to predict the 12 results when we should have some data on stated preference versus actual vote for Obama and other minority race candidates.
Model might be useful for predicting how relationship between polling and election results, and relationship between the two would change if you had two candidates that were equal in all ways except race. But that is not an interesting question for predicting the results of the 12 race. Other research answers the interesting question of how well will polls of voter intentions for Romney versus Obama predict?
Matt McIrvin
If I recall correctly, results from 2008 support your hypothesis.
The “Bradley Effect” was no longer present (and in fact hasn’t been evident in elections for some time); many voters undoubtedly voted against Obama because he was black, but they didn’t lie or refuse response in such a way as to confound poll results about the election.
Where a similar effect does seem to still exist is in votes on state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage. The amendments typically outperform late polls by around 6-7 points. There is probably a “social desirability bias” that suppresses pro-amendment polling but not secret voting.
The two facts together make me think that this kind of confounding effect might be a transitional effect that happens when some kind of prejudice is just starting to become a taboo. 30 years ago, there were a lot of people who wanted to think of themselves as unprejudiced, but still couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a black person, and were ashamed of it. Today, the crowd whose vote really is determined that way has been reduced to an unrepentant core who either do admit it publicly, or don’t mind finding some rationalization. On the other hand, the taboo against homophobia is new enough that we’re still in Bradley Effect territory.
Jebediah
@Ruckus:
I am working today (yay!) so I didn’t take the time to be really clear. My first preference is that EVERYBODY gets health care, no matter who or what they are. If we can’t have that, but we can cover all military personnel, great. If we are going to fuck around with not covering all military personnel, then at minimum injured vets should never have to worry about being taken care of. (ETA: regardless of where or how injured.)
I in no way meant to imply that vets who didn’t actually get shot at are in any way “lesser” – if you sign up and go where you’re told, well, you signed up and did your job, and should be taken care of. To me that includes not just health care but GI Bill type benefits too.
It just really, really chaps my ass that a soldier can get wounded in action, come home, and find out that certain people are trying to dick around with their treatment. (Stuff like claiming soldiers with PTSD actually had pre-existing personality disorders.)
El Cid
@Soonergrunt: Which is why I said it the way I indeed did.
Patricia Kayden
Seth’s article is interesting but doesn’t everyone already know that some Americans are racist and that some Americans wil not vote for a Black man under any circumstances. Feels like a “water is wet” type of argument.
Soonergrunt
@El Cid: I wasn’t sure, but I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt because it could be read either way, and you’re pretty smart so I didn’t think you meant it the other way, but sometimes people get it wrong, and you want to clarify without being dickish but sometimes you want to be dickish without clarifying and did I mention how much I have certain aspects of commenting on the internet specifically how hard it is to read nuance?
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
) The Bradley Effect was never real, and was more an artifact of lazy reporting and analysis than it was a matter of voters hiding their true motives and intentions.