andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-283 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Dan Corstange writes : Who sells their votes? Clientelism and vote buying are pervasive electoral practices in developing-world democracies and autocracies alike. I [Corstange] argue that buyers, regardless of regime type, prefer cheap voters, but that parties operating in uncompetitive environments are better able to price discriminate than those operating in competitive elections. I use an augmented list experiment to examine vote selling at the microlevel in Lebanon, in which both types of environment existed in its 2009 elections. I find that just over half of the electorate sold their votes, which is more than double the proportion willing to admit it. The evidence further shows that voters with low reservation prices are most likely to sell, and that monopsonistic buyers are better able to price discriminate among sellers than are dueling machines. My comments: This is a fascinating paper. I particularly like the speculations in the conclusion–it’s always interesting t
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1 Dan Corstange writes : Who sells their votes? [sent-1, score-0.118]
2 Clientelism and vote buying are pervasive electoral practices in developing-world democracies and autocracies alike. [sent-2, score-0.503]
3 I [Corstange] argue that buyers, regardless of regime type, prefer cheap voters, but that parties operating in uncompetitive environments are better able to price discriminate than those operating in competitive elections. [sent-3, score-1.415]
4 I use an augmented list experiment to examine vote selling at the microlevel in Lebanon, in which both types of environment existed in its 2009 elections. [sent-4, score-0.64]
5 I find that just over half of the electorate sold their votes, which is more than double the proportion willing to admit it. [sent-5, score-0.837]
6 The evidence further shows that voters with low reservation prices are most likely to sell, and that monopsonistic buyers are better able to price discriminate among sellers than are dueling machines. [sent-6, score-1.053]
7 I particularly like the speculations in the conclusion–it’s always interesting to think of wider implications. [sent-8, score-0.187]
8 In the abstract, I would rephrase slightly, change “I find that just over half of the electorate sold their votes” to “I estimate…” Also, I have to admit there’s something about list experiments that make me just slightly uneasy. [sent-9, score-1.029]
9 It’s too late for this study, but maybe in a future study of this sort, you could try varying conditions in which each item (not just the vote-buying question) is removed from the list. [sent-10, score-0.243]
10 But I strongly, strongly, strongly recommend rotating them 90 degrees so I can read them without turning my computer sideways. [sent-15, score-0.469]
11 Also, I recommend labeling your line directly rather than using a legend. [sent-17, score-0.206]
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same-blog 1 0.99999994 283 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-17-Vote Buying: Evidence from a List Experiment in Lebanon
Introduction: Dan Corstange writes : Who sells their votes? Clientelism and vote buying are pervasive electoral practices in developing-world democracies and autocracies alike. I [Corstange] argue that buyers, regardless of regime type, prefer cheap voters, but that parties operating in uncompetitive environments are better able to price discriminate than those operating in competitive elections. I use an augmented list experiment to examine vote selling at the microlevel in Lebanon, in which both types of environment existed in its 2009 elections. I find that just over half of the electorate sold their votes, which is more than double the proportion willing to admit it. The evidence further shows that voters with low reservation prices are most likely to sell, and that monopsonistic buyers are better able to price discriminate among sellers than are dueling machines. My comments: This is a fascinating paper. I particularly like the speculations in the conclusion–it’s always interesting t
Introduction: Someone wrote in: We are about to conduct a voting list experiment. We came across your comment recommending that each item be removed from the list. Would greatly appreciate it if you take a few minutes to spell out your recommendation in a little more detail. In particular: (a) Why are you “uneasy” about list experiments? What would strengthen your confidence in list experiments? (b) What do you mean by “each item be removed”? As you know, there are several non-sensitive items and one sensitive item in a list experiment. Do you mean that the non-sensitive items should be removed one-by-one for the control group or are you suggesting a multiple arm design in which each arm of the experiment has one non-sensitive item removed. What would be achieved by this design? I replied: I’ve always been a bit skeptical about list experiments, partly because I worry that the absolute number of items on the list could itself affect the response. For example, someone might not want to che
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Introduction: Fabio Rojas points me to this excellently-titled working paper by Joseph DiGrazia, Karissa McKelvey, Johan Bollen, and himself: Is social media a valid indicator of political behavior? We answer this ques- tion using a random sample of 537,231,508 tweets from August 1 to November 1, 2010 and data from 406 competitive U.S. congressional elections provided by the Federal Election Commission. Our results show that the percentage of Republican-candidate name mentions correlates with the Republican vote margin in the subsequent election. This finding persists even when controlling for incumbency, district partisanship, media coverage of the race, time, and demographic variables such as the district’s racial and gender composi- tion. With over 500 million active users in 2012, Twitter now represents a new frontier for the study of human behavior. This research provides a framework for incorporating this emerging medium into the computational social science toolkit. One charming thing
Introduction: The above graph shows the estimated support, by state, for the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, a gay rights bill that the Senate will be voting on this Monday. The estimates were constructed by Kate Krimmel, Jeff Lax, and Justin Phillips using multilevel regression and poststratification. Check out that graph again. The scale goes from 20% to 80%, but every state is in the yellow-to-red range. Support for a law making it illegal to discriminate against gays has majority support in every state. And in most states the support is very strong. And here’s the research paper by Krimmel, Lax, and Phillips, which begins: Public majorities have supported several gay rights policies for some time, yet Congress has responded slowly if at all. We address this puzzle through dyadic analysis of the opinion- vote relationship on 23 roll-call votes between 1993 and 2010, matching members of Congress to policy-specific opinion in their state or district. We also extend the MRP opinion e
5 0.10136799 997 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-07-My contribution to the discussion on “Should voting be mandatory?”
Introduction: My short answer (based on the research of Leighley and Nagler): Whether or not mandatory voting is a good idea, I think it’s unlikely to happen at a national level. Even setting aside the practical difficulties of taking a now-voluntary action and making it compulsory, bringing in the other half of the potential electorate would change the political conversation so much that it’s hard for me to see current officeholders supporting such a plan. For the full story, see here .
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Introduction: Dan Corstange writes : Who sells their votes? Clientelism and vote buying are pervasive electoral practices in developing-world democracies and autocracies alike. I [Corstange] argue that buyers, regardless of regime type, prefer cheap voters, but that parties operating in uncompetitive environments are better able to price discriminate than those operating in competitive elections. I use an augmented list experiment to examine vote selling at the microlevel in Lebanon, in which both types of environment existed in its 2009 elections. I find that just over half of the electorate sold their votes, which is more than double the proportion willing to admit it. The evidence further shows that voters with low reservation prices are most likely to sell, and that monopsonistic buyers are better able to price discriminate among sellers than are dueling machines. My comments: This is a fascinating paper. I particularly like the speculations in the conclusion–it’s always interesting t
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Introduction: Actually, $100,000 auction. I learned about it after seeing the following email which was broadcast to a couple of mailing lists: Dear all, I am now writing about something completely different! I need your help “voting” for our project, and sending this e-mail to others so that they can also vote for our project. As you will see from the video, the project would fund *** Project: I am a finalist for a $100,000 prize from Brigham and Women’s Hospital. My project is to understand how ***. Ultimately, we want to develop a ***. We expect that this ** can be used to *** Here are the instructions: 1. Go to the web page: http://brighamandwomens.org/research/BFF/default.aspx 2. scroll to the bottom and follow the link to “Vote” 3. select project #** 4. FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN. Best regards, ** I love that step 4 is in ALL CAPS, just to give it that genuine chain-letter aura. Isn’t this weird? First, that this foundation would give ou
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Introduction: I came across the following headline: Unemployment Extension Fails: Senate Rejects Jobless Benefits 58-38 Actually, though, the Senate voted 58-38 in favor of the bill. But the opponents did a filibuster. Here’s another try: Congress Fails to Pass an Extension of Jobless Aid But it’s still not clear that the vote was strongly in favor–not even close, in fact. A better headline, I think, would be: Senate Vote on Unemployment Extension: 58-38 in Favor, Not Enough to Beat Filibuster Or maybe someone more journalistic than I can come up with something better?
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Introduction: Jan Vecer writes about a new voting system that is now being considered in the Czech Republic which faces a political crisis where some elected officials became corrupted: I came across a new suggestion about a voting system. The proposal is that in each electoral district the voter chooses 2 candidates (plus vote), but also chooses one candidate with a minus vote. Two top candidates with the highest vote count (= number of plus votes – number of minus votes) are elected to a parliament. There are 81 districts in total, the parliament would have 162 members if the proposal goes through. The intention of the negative vote is to eliminate controversial candidates. Are there any clear advantages over the classical “select one candidate” system? Or disadvantages? Any thoughts on this? I am not an expert on this topic but maybe some of you are.
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Introduction: A student journalist called me with some questions about when the U.S. would have a female president. At one point she asked if there were any surveys of whether people would vote for a woman. I suggested she try Google. I was by my computer anyway so typed “what percentage of americans would vote for a woman president” (without the quotation marks), and the very first hit was this from Gallup, from 2007: The Feb. 9-11, 2007, poll asked Americans whether they would vote for “a generally well-qualified” presidential candidate nominated by their party with each of the following characteristics: Jewish, Catholic, Mormon, an atheist, a woman, black, Hispanic, homosexual, 72 years of age, and someone married for the third time. Between now and the 2008 political conventions, there will be discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates — their education, age, religion, race, and so on. If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happene
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1 0.93450159 337 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-12-Election symposium at Columbia Journalism School
Introduction: Here’s the announcement: ELECTIONS 2010 How sustainable is the current Republican coalition? Why has support for the Democratic Party taken a nosedive? Has there been a fundamental change in political conflict since Obama took office? How might policy (health care, TARP, the stimulus) influence election outcomes? Join J-School Prof. TOM EDSALL and a bevy of some of the quickest political minds around for an examination of the upcoming November elections: * BEN SMITH & MAGGIE HABERMAN of Politico * CHARLES BLOW of the New York Times * MELINDA HENNEBERGER of Politics Daily * SAM STEIN of the Huffington Post * J-School Prof. TODD GITLIN and * Columbia University political scientists ANDREW GELMAN & BOB ERIKSON. This lecture is sponsored in part by the Sevellon Brown Lecture Fund. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12 * 7 P.M. Journalism School Lecture Hall
2 0.92853153 300 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-28-A calibrated Cook gives Dems the edge in Nov, sez Sandy
Introduction: Sandy Gordon sends along this fun little paper forecasting the 2010 midterm election using expert predictions (the Cook and Rothenberg Political Reports). Gordon’s gimmick is that he uses past performance to calibrate the reports’ judgments based on “solid,” “likely,” “leaning,” and “toss-up” categories, and then he uses the calibrated versions of the current predictions to make his forecast. As I wrote a few weeks ago in response to Nate’s forecasts, I think the right way to go, if you really want to forecast the election outcome, is to use national information to predict the national swing and then do regional, state, and district-level adjustments using whatever local information is available. I don’t see the point of using only the expert forecasts and no other data. Still, Gordon is bringing new information (his calibrations) to the table, so I wanted to share it with you. Ultimately I like the throw-in-everything approach that Nate uses (although I think Nate’s descr
Introduction: Sandeep Baliga writes : [In a recent study , Gilles Duranton and Matthew Turner write:] For interstate highways in metropolitan areas we [Duranton and Turner] find that VKT (vehicle kilometers traveled) increases one for one with interstate highways, confirming the fundamental law of highway congestion.’ Provision of public transit also simply leads to the people taking public transport being replaced by drivers on the road. Therefore: These findings suggest that both road capacity expansions and extensions to public transit are not appropriate policies with which to combat traffic congestion. This leaves congestion pricing as the main candidate tool to curb traffic congestion. To which I reply: Sure, if your goal is to curb traffic congestion . But what sort of goal is that? Thinking like a microeconomist, my policy goal is to increase people’s utility. Sure, traffic congestion is annoying, but there must be some advantages to driving on that crowded road or pe
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Introduction: Dan Corstange writes : Who sells their votes? Clientelism and vote buying are pervasive electoral practices in developing-world democracies and autocracies alike. I [Corstange] argue that buyers, regardless of regime type, prefer cheap voters, but that parties operating in uncompetitive environments are better able to price discriminate than those operating in competitive elections. I use an augmented list experiment to examine vote selling at the microlevel in Lebanon, in which both types of environment existed in its 2009 elections. I find that just over half of the electorate sold their votes, which is more than double the proportion willing to admit it. The evidence further shows that voters with low reservation prices are most likely to sell, and that monopsonistic buyers are better able to price discriminate among sellers than are dueling machines. My comments: This is a fascinating paper. I particularly like the speculations in the conclusion–it’s always interesting t
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Introduction: Charlie Saunders writes: A study has recently been published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) which uses survival analysis to examine long-acting reversible contraception (e.g. intrauterine devices [IUDs]) vs. short-term commonly prescribed methods of contraception (e.g. oral contraceptive pills) on unintended pregnancies. The authors use a convenience sample of over 7,000 women. I am not well versed-enough in sampling theory to determine the appropriateness of this but it would seem that the use of a non-probability sampling would be a significant drawback. If you could give me your opinion on this, I would appreciate it. The NEJM is one of the top medical journals in the country. Could this type of sampling method coupled with this method of analysis be published in a journal like JASA? My reply: There are two concerns, first that it is a convenience sample and thus not representative of the population, and second that the treatments are chosen rather tha
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