Category: Politics

Sober Facts from an Overhyped Election

Presidential elections are generally followed by hyperbole about the significance of the outcome, and the American fixation on race has exacerbated the phenomenon this year. Now that some weeks have passed, we might look at the sociological implications more soberly.

Campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, it is hardly the case that the United States has moved into a postracial period. Sen. Obama’s base of electoral support came disproportionately from racial minorities, even for a Democrat. In an election where he won 52% of the total vote, Obama claimed only 43% of the white vote. While 43% is as high as any Democratic candidate of the last 30 years, this is misleading since all those other Democrats were either losing tickets or in three-way races, so they naturally had a lower share of the white vote. If we compare each Democrat’s performance among whites with his share of the overall vote, Obama performed most poorly, as shown in the table below.

Democratic votes by race, 1976-2008

However, we must also note that the white vote has become a progressively smaller share of the electorate. To control for this, we can instead compare the share of the white vote with the share of the non-white vote. Here again, Obama performs poorly compared with recent Democrats, exceeding only the disastrous campaigns of the 1980s.

The ethnic group that decided this election was not whites, where Obama underperformed relative to the strength of his campaign, or blacks, which historically vote overwhelmingly Democratic no matter what, but the Latinos, who have grown to about 9% of the electorate, from about 2% in 1992. The chart below shows that the inroads Bush had made into the Latino electorate were wiped out in this election. The Republicans can no longer afford to neglect Latino voters, so some of them may have to re-examine their nativist stance on immigration and other issues.

Latino votes for president 1976-2008

The shift in the Latino vote is likely related more to economic status than immigration reform, as both candidates were moderates on this issue. Latinos and other minorities that voted two-thirds for Obama are disproportianately in lower income brackets. If we break down voting by family income, we find that the election was decided by those making less than $50,000, which is quite low for the U.S. cost of living. Low-income voters, who now constitute a hefty 38% of the electorate, favored Obama over McCain 60% to 38%, while those making over $50K split 49%-49%.

If we look at the middle and higher income brackets in more detail, we find that the brackets between $50K and $200K split about evenly, slightly favoring McCain. Interestingly, those making $200,000 or more favored Obama 52% to 46%. This suggests a defection of the Rockefeller Republicans, meaning that the GOP, momentarily at least, are not the party of the rich, but have their base in the middle class. It would be wise for them to build on this strength rather than appease the high-income crowd, who constitute only 6% of the electorate, at the expense of the middle class.

Contrary to post-election hyperbole, this election does not indicate a sharp ideological turn toward liberalism. Only 22% of voters self-identify as liberal, compared with 34% who call themselves conservatives. Ironically, the racial minorities who vaulted the Democrats to victory also made possible the defeat of same-sex marriage in California. As the Democrats become increasingly dependent on ethnic minorities for election victories, they may have to respect the social traditionalism of these groups.

In light of these facts, it would be foolish for the Republicans, or indeed any political party that loses an election 52% to 46%, to completely reinvent itself ideologically. Such hysterical overreaction is what doomed the McCain campaign, which was constantly looking for game-changers like the desperate Palin pick. Political success comes through real work, starting with learning the concerns of one’s constituents – which this year were principally economic – and by reaching out and engaging them. Perhaps the most telling statistic regarding the differing energy levels of the campaigns is that the Obama campaign personally contacted 26% of voters, while McCain’s volunteers contacted only 19%.

Now that “change” is upon us, reality will soon set in. Contrary to rhetoric by both campaigns, Obama is a moderate on economic and foreign policy, and this is already being reflected in his cabinet selections. Obama will likely give us more of the same Israeli-leaning policy on Palestine, if his chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, a hard-line Zionist, is any indication. His choice of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State is perplexing, considering the only substantial difference between Clinton and Obama is on foreign policy. While it is possible that Obama is trying to patch up rifts with the Clintonites, it is more likely that these appointments reflect his own policy preferences, which, for the most part, are unremarkable Democratic boilerplate. Still, though his ideas are unoriginal, Obama appears to be a genuinely thoughtful man, so the possibility of surprise remains.

Sources

2008 national exit polls
1976-2004 election results by demographic

Studies Show Most Do Not Understand Statistics

In this election season, repeated citations of polls provide reminders of how little even most educated people understand about statistics. I should like to review a few basic errors that cause most people to overvalue the accuracy of polls and other studies based on statistical samplings and correlations.

Journalistic polls often state a “sampling error” of 3 or 4 percentage points. This sampling error is a measure of the statistical error resulting from taking a sample of several hundred or several thousand random people out of the entire population represented. It does not include other sources of error, such as systemic sampling bias resulting from favoring, say, urban over rural respondents, women over men, etc. Thus the total error of a poll is usually more than the stated sampling error. This is why voter exit polls turn out to be inaccurate more frequently than their sampling error would indicate. If the error were truly 3 percent, we would expect the poll to be accurate within that margin of error two-thirds of the time, following a normal distribution.

Understatement of the error is also common in economics. Recently, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin opined that the current financial crisis was a “low probability” event, following conventional economic models. However, as Benoit Mandelbrot has pointed out, conventional economic models of asset valuations substantially underestimate risk, since they assume a normal Gaussian distribution of variations in price when a Cauchy distribution would be more accurate. Higher mathematics aside, we could gather as much when we consider that “low probability” events occur with remarkable regularity and frequency. Rubin’s understatement of error in his economic model leads to a tragic failure to appreciate that there may be systemic reasons for our propensity for bubbles and busts; instead, he regards the crisis as a freak occurrence.

Worse still is when polls are advanced to support claims for which they may have little relevance. Telling us that a majority of economists support Candidate X is not an economic argument for Candidate X, any more than a majority of physicists supporting Candidate X would prove the candidate is good for physics. If anything, it tells us about the political affiliations of economists or physicists, which is sociological data, not a scientific argument. Hard science does not work by taking polls of scientists, but demands that reasons be produced for a position.

Medical studies are often interpreted by journalists to prove causality when they only show statistical correlation. A good rule of thumb is to never assume causality unless a clear aetiology can be shown. Here, common sense may serve as an adequate substitute for mathematical expertise. When the consensus on medical wisdom constantly changes in a matter of decades, we can be sure that the facts were never as firmly established as originally claimed. Medical studies understate their errors by failing to take into account measurement error and systemic error in their statistical analysis. Further, they usually show correlations or “risk factors” without demonstrating causality. For these reasons, the certitude of medical wisdom should be viewed skeptically. Lastly, the claim “there is no evidence that X is dangerous” can simply mean no adequate study of the matter has been done.

In all these cases, a healthy skepticism combined with common sense can guard against most statistical fallacies, even when mathematical sophistication is lacking. Mathematics, after all, is wholly derived from intuitive, rational principles, so it cannot yield absurd results. When a presentation of statistical results seems completely contrary to reality, it is usually a safe inference that there is a wrong assumption underlying the analysis. Even sophisticated statisticians can err, though they calculate impeccably, if they misconstrue the assumptions or conditions of the question they believe they are answering. When studies claiming 90 or 95 percent accuracy prove to be inaccurate more than 10 percent of the time, it doesn’t take a mathematician to realize that there is a lot of overclaiming in the soft sciences.

Update: 29 December 2008

To give a current example of misleading statistics, a new study claims that teens making abstinence pledges are no less likely to have premarital sex than those who do not. If that sounds counterintuitive, it is because it is not true. Pledgers indeed are less likely to fornicate, but the current study decided to control for factors such as conservatism, religion, and attitudes about sex, and compared pledgers and non-pledgers with similar characteristics. Unsurprisingly, this yielded no difference, since the pledge itself does not magically cause abstinence, but rather the underlying attitudes and values are the cause. This is a far cry from showing abstinence programs are ineffective. It would be like saying education is ineffective, but rather it is knowledge that changes behavior. Once again, competent scientists blinded by their biases can make inapt choices of groups to compare, and make interpretations that do not follow.

The New Politics, Same as the Old Politics

Both candidates for the U.S. presidency have portrayed themselves as transcending politics as usual, tacitly admitting the venality of the republic. Nonetheless, the actual conduct of their campaigns has shown that Senators McCain and Obama are creatures of the Washington establishment and Chicago political machine, respectively, and will do little to change their parties’ tactics or policies in anything but the superficial.

Sen. Obama began showing his true colors after the primaries against Hillary Clinton. Posturing as an agent of radical change and appealing to pacifists, he had long advocated for withdrawal from Iraq in 16 months. In his debate with Clinton before the Pennsylvania primary, he answered affirmatively to whether he would give a “rock-hard pledge” to withdraw in that time frame, regardless of what military commanders recommended, “Because the commander-in chief sets the mission.” Once the nomination was sealed, however, Obama backtracked, saying in July he would “refine” his policies based on conditions on the ground as reported by commanders. Hedging his bets, he clarified his clarification, with such nuance that no one can confidently claim he would withdraw sooner than McCain, as both make withdrawal contingent on unpredicable security conditions.

Obama is just another establishment imperialist, who merely disagrees with the strategy, but not the goal of U.S. hegemony. He would withdraw from Iraq only to fortify Afghanistan, and would even invade Pakistan without its consent, effectively embracing the Bush doctrine.

Sen. McCain, it may be argued, began his transformation as early as two years ago, voting in closer alignment with the Bush administration, and passing an opportunity to illegalize waterboarding. He increasingly emphasized his pro-life stance in the primaries, while in the general election he calls himself a maverick, an apode better fitting when given by others. His campaign received a jolt when he chose the unheralded governor of Alaska as his running mate, in what seemed a shameless affirmative action choice designed to garner female votes. This perception has not abated, as Gov. Palin has proven astoundingly inept at addressing basic policy questions intelligently, thoroughly undermining the Republican claim of superior judgment and experience.

Obama, for his part, strengthened his ticket but weakened his credibility as an anti-establishment reformer by selecting the well-entrenched, loquacious politico Joe Biden. Sen. Biden, who not long ago championed the partition of Iraq, brings a dubious sort of foreign policy experience to the table. The selection of Biden makes clear that Obama is just another Democrat, not a post-partisan messiah, as should be evident from his voting record and his proposed domestic policies.

The belief that we have entered a new era of politics is based on platitudinous slogans and a literally skin-deep distinction from previous candidates. If Senator Obama were white, how many people would think he is a different sort of Democrat, on the basis of his policies? If Senator Palin were a man, who in their right mind would consider her (him) as a VP candidate? For all the talk of sexism and racism, it is clear that two of the candidates have benefited from their “underrepresented” status, even if they might pay a penalty in the final election. The important point here is that there has been no sea change in party positions or tactics since the Bush-Kerry campaign of 2004. Some say McCain is not fit to lead a 21st-century America – such a criticism presumes that there is anything really different about 21st-century politics, compared with the late 20th century. We have some new gadgets, better computers and telecommunications; our demons are Muslims instead of Communists; but the same old thought processes, allegiances and tactics persist.

N.B.: As an academic point, McCain was correct in his distinction between “strategy” and “tactics” in the first debate, according to military usage. Strategy involves large-scale force movement and campaign planning, while tactics is combat movement on the small-scale, brigade level. Obama followed a common English usage of these terms, using “strategy” to refer to a grand objective, while “tactics” are the means by which an objective is pursued.