Comments on FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: State Similarity Scores

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Proposal For 2012 Primarieshttp://www.huffingtonpo...

2009-02-26T15:55:00.000-05:00

Proposal For 2012 Primaries

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/will-bower/proposal-for-2012-primari_b_142976.html

From December 2007 to March 2008, I wrote various drafts of a proposal on how our political parties -- starting in 2012 -- might adopt primary election procedures that would better serve our country in selecting presidential candidates. I originally drafted a hypothetical calendar for 2008, based on general election results from 2004. Now that we have the results for 2008, I can now propose a calendar specific to 2012.

The system by which our parties choose their presidential candidates has proven itself to be, at best, highly questionable -- at worst, severely flawed.

The primary calendar we need most is one that is built on an orderly and rational plan -- one that is based on mathematics and on recent historical outcomes -- and not on an arbitrary, publicity-driven, system of one-upsmanship. The change I propose would provide for a more effective, equitable process than the one we have now.

The following factors are the key ones to consider:

Margin of Victory

- The state primaries would be placed in order according to the leading candidates' margins of victory in the preceding general election -- with the states registering the closest margins of victory going first.

For example, John McCain won Missouri by 0.1% and Barack Obama won North Carolina by 0.4%; conversely, McCain won Wyoming by 33%, and Obama won Hawaii by 45%. Therefore, the primary calendar I propose would commence with primaries being held in states such as Missouri and North Carolina -- and would close with such states as Wyoming and Hawaii.

- The purpose of ordering the states according to the margin of victory is to help the parties determine which candidates can appeal to those states that have found themselves most recently on the Electoral Divide. A narrow margin in the general election is reflective of an evenly divided electorate. In this scenario, a candidate who appeals to, say, Florida and Montana is more likely to appeal to a greater number of Americans on the whole.

Iowa, New Hampshire, and Fairness

- Iowa and New Hampshire might object to this new system, given their longstanding tradition of being the first states to cast their ballots. However, so long as Iowa and New Hampshire retain their record of being fairly bipartisan states, they'll maintain their position towards the front of the primary schedule.

- Just because a state should have its primary later in the season does not mean that that state will prove invaluable to the process. Indiana and North Carolina weren't held until May 6th, but those two states might have very well decided the fate of the 2008 Democratic nomination.

- This new system allows other states to play a greater role in how the parties select their candidates. For example, Missouri and North Carolina would be two of the states to get the limelight in 2012. Likewise, based on the results to come in November of 2012, a still-different slate of states could have a more significant role come 2016. A rotating system will be healthier and fairer.

Groupings of Five, and Timing & Spacing

- By placing states into groupings of five, no one state will be overly emphasized on any given date.

- Candidates will still need to address the concerns of individual states, whilst having to maintain an overall national platform. For example, a candidate will be less able to campaign against NAFTA in Ohio whilst campaigning for it in Florida.

- Given that each state has its own system for electing its delegates, these groupings of five states will act as an overall balancer. Ideally, caucuses will be done away with altogether by 2012. However -- should that not happen -- states with caucuses, states with open primaries, and states with closed primaries can all coexist within a grouping, therefore no one system will hold too much influence on any given date.

- Racial and geographic diversity in this process has been a great concern for many. The narrowest margins of victory in 2008 were in a wide variety of regions -- the Midwest, the Great Lakes, the Mid-Atlantic, the South, and the West.

- All parties would have an interest in addressing these narrow-margined states early on. The incumbent will want to win over those states that were most in doubt of him in the previous election, and opposing parties will want to put forth candidates who have the best chance of winning over those very same states.

- Primaries will be held biweekly, giving candidates and the media enough time to process and respond to the outcomes of each wave of primaries.

- Washington DC will be placed in the same grouping as whichever state -- Virginia or Maryland -- is closer to its own margin of victory.

- American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Americans Abroad -- not having Electoral votes of their own -- will determine their own primary dates, so long as they occur between the first grouping and the last grouping.

Under these guidelines, the proposed calendar for the 2012 primary season is:

January 2012

Tue, 1/10

Missouri
North Carolina
Indiana
Florida
Montana

Tue, 1/24

Ohio
Georgia
Virginia
Colorado
South Dakota

Tue, 2/7

North Dakota
Arizona
South Carolina
Iowa
New Hampshire

Tue, 2/21

Minnesota
Pennsylvania
Texas
Nevada
West Virginia

Tue, 2/26

Mississippi
Wisconsin
New Jersey
New Mexico
Tennessee

Tue, 3/6

Kansas
Nebraska
Oregon
Kentucky
Michigan

Tue, 3/20

Washington
Maine
Louisiana
Arkansas
Alabama

Tue, 4/3

Connecticut
California
Illinois
Delaware
Maryland
Washington DC

Tue, 4/17

Alaska
Idaho
New York
Massachusetts
Rhode Island

Tue, 5/1

Utah
Oklahoma
Wyoming
Vermont
Hawaii

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2009-02-09T01:41:00.000-05:00

Can anyone see the image or does anyone have a cop...

2008-12-05T15:17:00.000-05:00

Can anyone see the image or does anyone have a copy of it?

I decided to make a directed graph of the data, wi...

2008-10-31T15:42:00.000-04:00

I decided to make a directed graph of the data, with each state pointing to its top match. The result is a set of disjoint trees, all of whom end in a paired set. Each tree consists of a subgroup of states, and those subgroups are kind of interesting:
1. ME, VT
2. AZ, NM
3. GA, SC, NC
4. DC, MA, CT, NJ, RI, NY
5. AR, MS, OK, AL, TN, WV, KY
6. UT, ID, WY, MT, KS, NE, ND, SD
7. TX, MD, VA, DE, FL, LA, MO, PA, IN, OH, MI
8. CA, IA. NH, IL, WI, MN, AK, HI, NV, CO, WA, OR

The two biggest groups are the most surprising: TX and DE? IL and AK? Of course, the groupings don't necessarily mean anything (other than in a six-steps-to-Kevin-Bacon sort of way), but it was fun.

(I can post the graph itself if anyone's interested.)

In light of Biden, one might care to notice in the...

2008-08-23T21:23:00.000-04:00

In light of Biden, one might care to notice in the paper here:

http://kromkowski.blogspot.com/

how in my nearest cultural neighbor analysis, DE is the link to VA and to MI in a minimum tree spanning network.

I've created an ethno-political map here using a s...

2008-07-16T18:09:00.000-04:00

I've created an ethno-political map here using a similar method:

http://kromkowski.blogspot.com/

This was quickly calculated. But
"ethnicity" is obviously a pretty salient factor.

538 is primarily about prediction. But such analysis also suggests strategic decisions. I don't mean Marc Penn voodoo micro-trend bs or slicing and dicing. Rather, the importance of the "ethnic factor" suggest sensitivity to a pluralistic vision of America that is beyond narrow black/white "racialism" or simplistic black/white/hispanic/asian models.

Beyond race and toward multi-cultural competence

Senator Obama is NOT a descendant of slaves, but an immigrant father’s son. As a catholic Polish Italian American, I don’t connect through his “white” Kansas grandmother who admitted fearing young blacks. I connect because his immigrant father makes him an “ethnic”.

Transcending “race” is not ignoring racial discrimination. But “overcoming” requires abandoning the dualistic black-white "race" language and replacing a pluralistic language of "ethnicity". The late Msgr. Geno Baroni marched with Rev. King and was an organizing voice of the so-called “white ethnic” Neighborhood movement of the 1970s. In 1968, he told American Bishops that little attention was given to the anguish of socially and politically alienated ethnic Americans – descendants of largely but not exclusively catholic immigrants, who were burdened by taxation, dissatisfied with government, fearful of job security and concerned with prohibitive college costs. Baroni claimed that “ethnicity” for these Americans was what gave their children both “roots and wings”. It was a dimension of social justice that couldn’t be overlooked. It is no little coincidence that Obama's first organizing work was funded by the Campaign for Human Development which was in good part Baroni's brainchild.

Race" does not give "roots and wings", it is a political concept used to exclude others.

“Ethnicity” is a familial, psychological and cultural construct which begins with a place – the home – expanding physically, geographically and emotionally to include others.

The confusion has been that “black” or “African American” is a statement of both race and ethnicity. Paired with “white” it’s racial; paired with “Polish American”, it’s ethnicity.

Today, ethnicity is not the “food and festivals” ethnicity of the 1970s. The “new ethnicity” includes ancestry but is broader. It includes cheering for "your team", neighborhood parties, Aunt Anne's three-bean salad, and all family, neighborhood, and community traditions which give our children “roots and wings”.

This more modern attempt at ethno-political mapping shows that we're all "ethnic", even those who choose "American" or choose not to respond to the Ancestry question.

Senator Obama is a product of a mixed marriage, but everyone is a product of a "mixed" marriage. The Notre Dame fan marries the Southern Cal fan. The Irish American marries the German American. Your mother married your father. Ethnic identity is created by addition and iteration. It provokes the questions: “Who am I and Who are We?” as a way to learn how to love ourselves, our neighbors, our world.

I know that McCain has no vision to understand this nuance.

I am confident that Obama having worked in Chicago and being the son of immigrant must understand it. Part of winning will require him to transmit his sensitivity to ethnicity as the paradigm to replace mere racialism.

Since you have similarity/dissimilarity scores, wh...

2008-07-09T19:28:00.000-04:00

Since you have similarity/dissimilarity scores, why not run it though a multidimensional scaling (MDS), so that you can get a map? The first two components will give a 2D map (and almost certainly cover most of the variation captured by your variables).

In this instance the wikipedia page on MDS is not a lot of help, but some other pages are somewhat useful, for example:

http://www.analytictech.com/borgatti/mds.htm
http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/stmulsca.html
http://forrest.psych.unc.edu/teaching/p208a/mds/mds.html

The calculations required for MDS are not onerous (just a couple of lines in Matlab), but in any case, many statistical packages can perform MDS automatically, just using as input a matrix of either distances or similarities between pairs of objects (which you have).

If you don't have it already, the free statistical package /R/ (http://cran.r-project.org/) has MDS built-in (via "cmdscale") and also has an add-on package available that does stress minimization by means of majorization ("smacof").

This page (http://www.personality-project.org/r/mds.html) shows how to do MDS in R.

@Frank from Germany."@ jdk: I think, with the shar...

2008-07-08T13:57:00.000-04:00

@Frank from Germany.

"@ jdk: I think, with the share of catholics, Nate is already including a pretty good proxy for your PI[i]GS in his list of variables." Not really. But I happen to know more about this stuff than almost anyone

"Asides from that, you are wrong when stating that the PI[i]GS (or a slightly extended ancestry mix) represent the non-WASP part of the poulation, since (a) the PI[i]GS do neither include Asian nor Native American population, which are both non-WASP."

First, my model of PIiGs includes certain Asian ethnic communities on the West Coast.

In a post-racial US, it may be that a BASP BlackAngloSpeakingProt. passes as a WASP after you control for age and income.

As to individual ancestry testing, it is more complicated than that which is why a combined value variable makes sense, but how I do it is with some non-continuous functions. E.g. Polish below 3.1% code as 0, Portuguese below 4.0% code as 0, Italian below 4.5% code as 0. Etc. And/or transform the data to Z scores based on national dispersion. Etc.

Using a single an ethnic index variable (which doesn't even use the non-continuous functions described), I can get an R2 almost of .70 to predict Kerry percentage of vote, excluding some difficult outliers like DC, UT, WY in the 2004 election.

To more fully explain would be to aid McCain.

NC also differs from SC in that there are some ser...

2008-07-08T03:29:00.000-04:00

NC also differs from SC in that there are some serious "liberal enclaves" here: Asheville, Boone, much of Durham, and particularly Chapel Hill/Carrboro. While the traditional associations of "The South" do fit for parts of North Carolina, the state is increasingly heterogenous. Outside of the ultra-lib zones and the conservative corners, you've got major cities that feel like... well, cities. Charlotte feels "Southernish" in the way Atlanta does, I guess. But the "Research Triangle" (Raleigh/Durham and surrounds) feels like Dulles Corridor or even maybe Route 128 (warmer, and with a different dialect, and crappy public transit).

The tech sector is one major cultural difference b/t NC and SC, I think. In NC, you have the birthplace of the Usenets, home of Red Hat, and a veritable explosion of tube-related work. In the center of the state, everything is telecom, biotech, IT work - nobody is manufacturing or farming or nuthin. Lots of evil scientists, too.

NC has good public education, not just at the university level, but starting from pre-K (4-term Governor Jim Hunt put major bucks into the "Smart Start" program to ensure that all NC kids start kindergarten with adequate health and educational support).

And even though we are best known for the Helms, NC also has some way lefty pols. Mel Watts and David Price are consistently left of the party leadership in the House. Oh, and just for weirdness, NC gave the Dems their current delegate / superdelegate primary voting structure (via the "Hunt Commission," on which Price served as staff director). So there is also a strong "blue" tradition in the state, in spite of its history of voting red in presidential and (most) senate contests.

Okay, sorry for the long post. To recap, the principle NC/SC differences: NC is more urban and techie, puts a lot of emphasis on schooling, and has traditional, committed pockets (both geographic and legislative) of hardcore liberal dems.

It might be interesting to try to use some version...

2008-07-08T02:12:00.000-04:00

It might be interesting to try to use some version of this to calculate a covariance matrix for poll movement among the states. Then, instead of having separate national and state-specific random variables in your Monte Carlo simulation, you could simply have multivariate normal random variables with the calculated covariances. This would seem to eliminate the concern about double counting, though it would be susceptible to errors in your covariance model.

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Frank from Germany wrote (in response to my Anon c...

2008-07-07T21:19:00.000-04:00

Frank from Germany wrote (in response to my Anon comments above):

"So (in my ínterpretation), the fact that somebody in the USA is either unwilling or unable to state his/her ancestry, and/or just calls it American is more due to socio-political factors. It may be a political statement, which implies neglecting ancestors' own immigration history and is thus in tendency anti-immigrant. It may reflect missing family records and memorables (photographs, letters etc.) and lack of respective interest, which is not neccessarily, but may often be co-inciding with low education and weak social status.

Or, it relates to some sort of shame on disclosing the ancestry, if it is actually known. Check, e.g. 'Melungeon' on Wikipedia."

First, big-time props for someone in another country knowing who the Melungeons are - that's a very interesting piece of Southern/Appalachian history. I didn't know anyone outside of NC or TN know about them. That said, I don't think biracial/triracial groups like that make up much of the large "American" ancestry grouping, in part because census takers probably would have marked anyone they considered black or Indian as members of those groups under the one-drop rule (if they could find them - these groups often were kind of excluded from normal life), and many mixed race people who could have "passed" for white probably would have played up whatever white national origin they could claim.

I do think you're probably right about the political statement, and economic status, parts of it. A lot of early settlers to the South/Appalachia were poor, some of them had been in prison back in Europe, and some of them had religious reasons for leaving as well (in the Scotch-Irish case, in addition to poverty, the British banned Presbyterian baptisms in Ulster around 1700 or 1710). And then, when these people got to America, guess who controlled the Eastern coastal establishments? British Governors and colonists - meet the new boss, same as the old boss, if you were coming from Ulster. In NC, for example, there was a harsh divide between the more British coastal aristocracy and the more Scotch-Irish and German western areas (well, the central and western areas based on modern notions of NC geography). Basically, to use Obama's unfortunate term about (heavily Scotch-Irish and German central) PA, these white settlers were probably bitter, and wanted to be part of something new, in a way that more economically-stable New Englanders may not have felt.

I would also add a racial angle - these Appalachian settlers who were constantly fighting with Indian tribes at the country's western borders probably thought about ethnicity primarily in terms of "us" vs. "Indians." The Indian Wars (and slavery) may have worked to merge these somewhat diverse groups of white settlers into the "white American" ancestry grouping (along with intermarriage between the various groups).

Pretty chart, now if only I could decipher it's me...

2008-07-07T20:51:00.000-04:00

Pretty chart, now if only I could decipher it's meaning. What do the colors refer to?

Frank from Germany said... I was wondering whether...

2008-07-07T18:55:00.000-04:00

Frank from Germany said...
I was wondering whether there was any state that could be regarded as archetype - something like the "centre of US politics" in a socio-demographic sense.

In previous studies, depending which demographics were considered, usually Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri turn up as being the most representative of the nation as a whole. Same ethnic, religious, economic breakdowns. Same education levels. Same ratios of urban to suburban to rural residents. Same party identification breakdowns. Etc.

Personally, I find the diversity of Illinois to be more compelling as a microcosm of the nation as a whole. However, considering that Obama is from Illinois, that probably makes it less effective as a model for this election cycle. For this election year, I think Missouri would be a good archtype.

Dear Anon above: The issue with the "Americans" is...

2008-07-07T18:39:00.000-04:00

Dear Anon above: The issue with the "Americans" is not only one of early settlement. Otherwise, you should find a lot of "Americans" in New England, which you don't. Instead, most people there are pretty well able/ willing to declare themselves in the Census as being of English or French ancestry. You also find a surprisingly high number of people with "Pennsylvania German" ancestry in the US Census.

In fact, I think there is hardly a country in the world which is as obsessed with ancestry research and genealogy as is the USA. And, from what I have learned (corresponding with some Americans researching back on their German roots, or looking for hints on the origin of their family name), there is quite some documentation available for such research, including old US census lists, shipping lists, immigration records, etc.

So (in my ínterpretation), the fact that somebody in the USA is either unwilling or unable to state his/her ancestry, and/or just calls it American is more due to socio-political factors. It may be a political statement, which implies neglecting ancestors' own immigration history and is thus in tendency anti-immigrant. It may reflect missing family records and memorables (photographs, letters etc.) and lack of respective interest, which is not neccessarily, but may often be co-inciding with low education and weak social status.

Or, it relates to some sort of shame on disclosing the ancestry, if it is actually known. Check, e.g. "Melungeon" on Wikipedia. From what I have read, it as well appears that part of the early British settlement to the South and especially to Appalchia was not voluntary, but consisting of deported prisoners and orphans that were forced into mining work (similarly to the British practice when settling Australia in the 19th century). Such a family history
is quite likely to not being transferred over the generations, and even if it were known to you, you would not neccessarily disclose it in the Census.

In any case, it can be statistically demonstrated that, during the primaries, self-declared "Americans" voted differently than people with self-declared Scotch-Irish ancestry. As to why this has been the case is surely a fascinating topic for socio-anthrological research.

JGabriel:WTF are you talking about the Newsmax ad ...

2008-07-07T18:26:00.000-04:00

JGabriel:

WTF are you talking about the Newsmax ad "Over for Obama" could simply be a photo taken with a short focal length lens that tend to shown ones characteristics fuller rather than flat (which telephoto lenses do).

Your post is bs imo. And btw I think Obama looks fine for in the photo

Costa: I visit this site embarrassingly often and ...

2008-07-07T18:08:00.000-04:00

Costa: I visit this site embarrassingly often and I'm afraid I'm not sure what Newsmax ad you're referring to. The only ones I'm seeing right now are the one that says "Obama or McCain?" with a picture of each of them and another that says "Over for Obama?"

I believe it's the Newsmax ad that says "Over for Obama". It didn't come up this time, so I can't verify it, but I think that's the one.

Take a good look at the photo next time you see it. Obama's nose is broadened and flattened, and a shine appears to be added to his nose and forehead. Also, his face is broadened; his unmanipulated face is narrower. There's also a kind of waviness or texturization that's noticable around, or just below, the temples.

If I'm right, it's the equivalent of Time (or was it Newsweek?) darkening OJ Simpson's face for it's cover a few years ago to make him look scarier - only Newsmax's manipulation of the Obama photo is more elaborate.

Anon@4:26pm seems to disagree with that analysis, but the photo he submits as an example still shows a narrower face and lighter skin (though that could be due to lighting differences in the photos). Frankly, I didn't find it a very convincing counter-example.

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Dear Frank from Germany -One problem with breaking...

2008-07-07T17:36:00.000-04:00

Dear Frank from Germany -

One problem with breaking up the US's white population into country of origin is that many of the early settlers took on the name "American" after a few decades. So, for example, it is very hard to tell what percentage of the population has some Scotch-Irish or Welsh ancestry, even in Appalachia, where they
settled most heavily, and I imagine it affects tracking down English, German, and French ancestry, too.

Intermarriage between all these white groups, and with other groups, is probably a reason for that "American" label taking hold as a substitute for one's
ethnic background. I should point out that this problem affects demographic research in much of the country, because these groups (the Scotch-Irish are probably the most obvious example) kept moving, and were among
the early settlers of the Deep South, Texas, and the West, too. There are some interesting maps about this on wikipedia on the Scotch-Irish and "American" ethnicity pages.

JGabriel, I visit this site embarrassingly often a...

2008-07-07T17:34:00.000-04:00

JGabriel, I visit this site embarrassingly often and I'm afraid I'm not sure what Newsmax ad you're referring to. The only ones I'm seeing right now are the one that says "Obama or McCain?" with a picture of each of them and another that says "Over for Obama?" with a similar picture of him. Neither of them looks racist in any way to me. What am I missing?