andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2012 andrew_gelman_stats-2012-1635 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: After I posted this recent comment on a blog of Steven Pinker (see also here ), we had the following exchange. I’m reposting it here (with Pinker’s agreement) not because we achieved any deep insights but because I thought it useful to reveal to people that so-called experts such as us are not so clear on these issues either. AG: I noticed your article on red and blue states and had some thoughts. . . . The short summary is that I think that your idea is interesting but that, as stated, it explains too much, in that your story is based on centuries-long history but it only fits electoral patterns since the 1980s. SP: Though the exact alignment between red and blue states, political parties, and particular issues surely shift, I’d be surprised if the basic alignments between geography and the right-left divide, and the issues that cluster on each side of the divide, have radically changed over the past century. (Obviously if you define “red” and “blue” by the Republican
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 I’m reposting it here (with Pinker’s agreement) not because we achieved any deep insights but because I thought it useful to reveal to people that so-called experts such as us are not so clear on these issues either. [sent-2, score-0.394]
2 AG: I noticed your article on red and blue states and had some thoughts. [sent-3, score-0.519]
3 The short summary is that I think that your idea is interesting but that, as stated, it explains too much, in that your story is based on centuries-long history but it only fits electoral patterns since the 1980s. [sent-7, score-0.156]
4 Do the GSS data go far enough back, particularly disaggregated by region, to see how many of the signs of the correlations have flipped? [sent-12, score-0.267]
5 AG: Regarding politics, the Democras have been on the left and the Repubicans have been on the right since the late 1960s on just about every issue. [sent-13, score-0.154]
6 But the red state blue state division that you see in the maps has really been happening only since the 1990s. [sent-14, score-0.72]
7 And if you set aside the south and racial issues, the Democrats have been to the left of the Republicans since 1932. [sent-15, score-0.318]
8 Just to take a couple examples, California used to be a solid Republican state and New York State used to be around the national median. [sent-16, score-0.102]
9 So, to the extent the right/left divide is reflected in voting in presidential elections, yes, the basic alignments have change a lot. [sent-17, score-0.388]
10 Regarding correlations in issue attitudes, we have a paper in the American Journal of Sociology from a few years ago. [sent-18, score-0.248]
11 Corrleations among issue attitudes have been gradually increasing along with partisanship. [sent-20, score-0.345]
12 My guess is that correlations between ideology and geography were lower 40 years ago. [sent-21, score-0.238]
13 I believe you when you say that certain geographic patterns go back centuries, but issue attitudes depend on so many other things. [sent-22, score-0.675]
14 For example, in the two world wars, the east coast was interventionist and the midwest was isolationist. [sent-23, score-0.229]
15 That makes sense based on ethnic sympathies (lots of people of English descent in the east and German descent in the midwest) and also economics of international trade. [sent-24, score-0.43]
16 It’s not necessarily anything to do with deep attitudes toward the military or violence. [sent-25, score-0.373]
17 ) herring of Democratic vs Republican parties, I still get the feeling that there’s a principal component of more-or-less left-right opinion (across issues), and a correlation with a North+Coasts vs. [sent-29, score-0.171]
18 South+Mountain-States geographic vector, across a century or more—though I’m prepared to believe that there is a lot of variance that isn’t accounted for by either, and that both the variance accounted for by the LR component and the magnitude of the correlation have shifted over time. [sent-30, score-0.648]
19 Mind you, this is based on qualitative historical readings by Fisher, Nisbett, Sowell, and others—I don’t have the kind of quantitative data that would settle it. [sent-31, score-0.081]
20 The real point, I suppose, is that neither Pinker nor I are experts here. [sent-32, score-0.148]
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Introduction: After I posted this recent comment on a blog of Steven Pinker (see also here ), we had the following exchange. I’m reposting it here (with Pinker’s agreement) not because we achieved any deep insights but because I thought it useful to reveal to people that so-called experts such as us are not so clear on these issues either. AG: I noticed your article on red and blue states and had some thoughts. . . . The short summary is that I think that your idea is interesting but that, as stated, it explains too much, in that your story is based on centuries-long history but it only fits electoral patterns since the 1980s. SP: Though the exact alignment between red and blue states, political parties, and particular issues surely shift, I’d be surprised if the basic alignments between geography and the right-left divide, and the issues that cluster on each side of the divide, have radically changed over the past century. (Obviously if you define “red” and “blue” by the Republican
Introduction: Psychology is a universal science of human nature, whereas political science is centered on the study of particular historical events and trends. Perhaps it is unsurprising, then, that when a psychologist looks at politics, he presents ideas that are thought-provoking but are too general to quite work. This is fine; political scientists can then take such ideas and try to adapt them more closely to particular circumstances. The psychologist I’m thinking about here is Steven Pinker, who, in writes the following on the question, “Why Are States So Red and Blue?”: But why do ideology and geography cluster so predictably? Why, if you know a person’s position on gay marriage, can you predict that he or she will want to increase the military budget and decrease the tax rate . . . there may also be coherent mindsets beneath the diverse opinions that hang together in right-wing and left-wing belief systems. Political philosophers have long known that the ideologies are rooted in diffe
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Introduction: An interview with me from 2012 : You’re a statistician and wrote a book, Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State , looking at why Americans vote the way they do. In an election year I think it would be a good time to revisit that question, not just for people in the US, but anyone around the world who wants to understand the realities – rather than the stereotypes – of how Americans vote. I regret the title I gave my book. I was too greedy. I wanted it to be an airport bestseller because I figured there were millions of people who are interested in politics and some subset of them are always looking at the statistics. It’s got a very grabby title and as a result people underestimated the content. They thought it was a popularisation of my work, or, at best, an expansion of an article we’d written. But it had tons of original material. If I’d given it a more serious, political science-y title, then all sorts of people would have wanted to read it, because they would
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Introduction: Reacting to my recent post on Steven Pinker’s too-broad (in my opinion) speculations on red and blue states, Dan “cultural cognition” Kahan writes : Pinker is clearly right to note that mass political opinions on seemingly diverse issues cohere, and Andrew, I think, is way too quick to challenge this I [Kahan] could cite to billions of interesting papers, but I’ll just show you what I mean instead. A recent CCP data collection involving a nationally representative on-line sample of 1750 subjects included a module that asked the subjects to indicate on a six-point scale “how strongly . . . you support or oppose” a collection of policies: policy_gun Stricter gun control laws in the United States. policy_healthcare Universal health care. policy_taxcut Raising income taxes for persons in the highest-income tax bracket. policy_affirmative action Affirmative action for minorities. policy_warming Stricter carbon emission standards to reduce global warming. Positions c
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Introduction: Here are my answers to the following questions asked by Pauline Peretz: 1. Many analysts have emphasized that there was a redrawing of the electoral map in 2008. To what extent will the November midterm elections affect this red-blue map? How long will the newly blue states remain blue? 2. Do you think the predictable loss of the Democrats in November definitely disqualifies the hypothesis that Obama’s election was the beginning of a realignment in American politics, that is a period of dominance for the Democratic party due to favourable demographics? 3. Some analysts consider that voting patterns are best explained by economic factors, others by values. How do you position yourself in the debate on culture wars vs. economic wars? 4. In your book Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State, you renew the ongoing debate on the correlation between income and vote, showing it is much stronger in poor states. In light of this correlation, would you say that there currently is
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