Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State - Why ...

Geography, Income, and Voters

Explanations and Implications

Extra material

Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State

Why Americans Vote the Way They Do

Andrew Gelman

Dept of Statistics and Dept of Political Science, Columbia University

29 Oct 2010

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Andrew Gelman

Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State

Geography, Income, and Voters

Explanations and Implications

Extra material

Election 2010

The Paradox

Journalists Get It Wrong (and Right)

Election 2010

I Public opinion and voting

I Factors that predict congressional elections

I What's going on with public opinion?

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Andrew Gelman

Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State

Geography, Income, and Voters

Explanations and Implications

Extra material

Election 2010

The Paradox

Journalists Get It Wrong (and Right)

Public opinion and voting time series

I Most variable: Presidential approval

I Less variable: Trial-heat polls (Whom party do you plan to

vote for?)

I Less variable: Presidential election outcomes

I Less variable: Congressional election outcomes

I Slowest to vary: Party identication

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Andrew Gelman

Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State

Geography, Income, and Voters

Explanations and Implications

Extra material

Election 2010

The Paradox

Journalists Get It Wrong (and Right)

Congressional and presidential voting

4/62

Andrew Gelman

Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State

Geography, Income, and Voters

Explanations and Implications

Extra material

Election 2010

The Paradox

Journalists Get It Wrong (and Right)

Unpredictability of polling trends

I Polling is essentially a random walk . . . the polls are about

equally likely to move toward one or another candidate,

regardless of which way they have moved in the past. 

Nate Silver, New York Times, Oct 2010

I You can't use past polling trends to predict the future

I Analogy to coin ipping, ecient stock prices

I Random walk sounds reasonable, but . . .

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Andrew Gelman

Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State

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