andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2012 andrew_gelman_stats-2012-1547 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: In an article provocatively entitled, “Will Ohio State’s football team decide who wins the White House?”, Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier report : It is statistically possible that the outcome of a handful of college football games in the right battleground states could determine the race for the White House. Economists Andrew Healy, Neil Malhotra, and Cecilia Mo make this argument in a fascinating article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. They examined whether the outcomes of college football games on the eve of elections for presidents, senators, and governors affected the choices voters made. They found that a win by the local team, in the week before an election, raises the vote going to the incumbent by around 1.5 percentage points. When it comes to the 20 highest attendance teams—big athletic programs like the University of Michigan, Oklahoma, and Southern Cal—a victory on the eve of an election pushes the vote for the incumbent up by 3 percentage points. T
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1 In an article provocatively entitled, “Will Ohio State’s football team decide who wins the White House? [sent-1, score-0.457]
2 ”, Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier report : It is statistically possible that the outcome of a handful of college football games in the right battleground states could determine the race for the White House. [sent-2, score-0.971]
3 They examined whether the outcomes of college football games on the eve of elections for presidents, senators, and governors affected the choices voters made. [sent-4, score-0.628]
4 They found that a win by the local team, in the week before an election, raises the vote going to the incumbent by around 1. [sent-5, score-0.283]
5 When it comes to the 20 highest attendance teams—big athletic programs like the University of Michigan, Oklahoma, and Southern Cal—a victory on the eve of an election pushes the vote for the incumbent up by 3 percentage points. [sent-7, score-0.696]
6 I’ll assume that this would be +1% for the incumbent party and -1% for the other party, I assume. [sent-12, score-0.218]
7 Not as bad as it sounds That said, I’d like to defend democracy a bit and argue that the college football effect isn’t quite as bad as Cowen and Grier imply. [sent-14, score-0.436]
8 27th, a little more than a week before the election, the Ohio State Buckeyes have a big football game against Penn State. [sent-20, score-0.379]
9 If the election remains razor close, these games in these two key battleground states could affect who sits in the White House for the next four years. [sent-22, score-0.576]
10 The decision of whether to punt or go for it on that crucial fourth down could affect the job prospects of more than just the football team’s coaching staff. [sent-25, score-0.282]
11 Unless I’m misunderstanding something, I think Romney’s staff should be giving advice to the Bulldogs, not the Gators (unless Cowen and Grier are subtly riffing last month’s “hapless Romney” meme to imply that the candidate’s best chance to help the Florida team lose is to give them advice). [sent-26, score-0.173]
12 I have two reasons for making this argument, even conditional on assuming that a local win really does count for 2 percentage points of the vote. [sent-28, score-0.206]
13 So a difference of +/- 1 percentage points in Franklin county corresponds to only +/- 0. [sent-36, score-0.303]
14 1 percentage points isn’t nothing, but even swing states are unlikely to be divided that closely. [sent-39, score-0.315]
15 1% of 5 million votes is 5000 votes, which is very close for a state election. [sent-41, score-0.356]
16 And here are a few more football teams in swing states: Colorado, Iowa, and Iowa State. [sent-56, score-0.495]
17 There are multiple games in multiple weeks in several states, each of which, according to the analysis, operates on the county level and would have at most a 0. [sent-57, score-0.402]
18 In summary, it is indeed disturbing that people are more likely to vote for the incumbent party if their local team wins—sure, 2% isn’t much, but it’s a nontrivial proportion of the undecided voters. [sent-60, score-0.534]
19 But the claim, “It is statistically possible that the outcome of a handful of college football games in the right battleground states could determine the race for the White House,” while literally true (if the election happens to be extremely close) is overstated. [sent-61, score-1.124]
20 In addition, Avi suggests that the electoral effect of a football game is likely to be smaller in an intense election such as Ohio 2012, compared to an average election in the dataset. [sent-64, score-0.82]
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