Taken in conjunction with the, what, 67% of people who supported Bush but didn't have a good idea of where he stood on issues, this further underlines that the problem for Dems isn't values, but perception of the Dems vs. Republicans.
posted
I think the problem might be something to do with people like this guy going around trying to tell the red state voters that they are a bunch of hypocritical, murdering, suicidal morons, 2/3 of whom have no idea why they chose their candidate.
This is not the way to win people over.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
As much as it may be politically satisfying, the implication of any causality is problematic. Actually, I'd bet you'd find most of the things in question stem from the education level cited in the last bit of the article.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Unfortunately, there has been a lot of talk about people voting for Bush based on values, that people, states, who voted for Bush have different values than those who voted for Kerry, and that in order for the Dems to capture the votes of these people, they have to shift their values.
Though I agree the last bit about degrees was unnecessary, this article does offer evidence that that idea may be false.
This article isn't about showing red states to be "hypocritical, murdering, suicidal morons, 2/3 of whom have no idea why they chose their candidate". (That last bit doesn't make sense as it isn't even a part of the article.) This article is about showing that the idea that the values between red and blue states are so different may not be valid, and that the idea of a values gap is a bogus one.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Ah, forgive me for leaving "ignorant" out of my list.
<goes to by a subscription to the new yorker>
P.S. - I think I understand you correctly, Fugu, to not be saying this... I am trying to be funny, not deliberately obtuse and hypersensitive.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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I understand what you are trying to say... the problem is you all consistently come off as if Bush voters are patients who need to be cured, not as people who need to be appealed to.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
This was a long time ago when I was an undergrad, but when we studied voting behavior we spent two weeks going over the pitfalls of comparing traits across populations with only aggregate data. I can't find anything good on the web, but when I took the class, we found a lot of correlations that were represented in reverse when you looked at percentages of people exhibiting traits in a population compared to surveys that identified the traits for individual people.
posted
I know I can be a snarky, arrogant, jerk... but then my side appears to have won, haven't they?
Seriously, I will try to meet people on their terms and admit when I've said something stupid, but it all goes out the window for me when someone starts being deliberately obtuse about my point or if they are painting my side with a broad brush, particularly if they are attributing motivations. I have no patience for that and will often respond in kind or worse.
More often, now, I'm just staying quiet and avoiding these types of discussions. I just had a little extra time on my hands at the moment.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
This site is indeed bias, but if it's true, then what do people who voted on values have to say? I think they'll just have to sit there and eat their crow. Posts: 925 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote: I understand what you are trying to say... the problem is you all consistently come off as if Bush voters are patients who need to be cured, not as people who need to be appealed to.
Jim-Me, sorry if the article or the post came off that way. I didn't see it or intend for my post to sound like that.
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Ogburn and Goltra's data no longer appear to be available, but the problem they raised can be illustrated by this simple hypothetical example reconstructed in part from their verbal descriptions. Consider two equal-sized precincts voting on Proposition 22, an initiative by the radical ``People's Power League'' to institute proportional representation in Oregon's Legislative Assembly elections: 40% of voters in precinct 1 are women and 40% of all voters in this precinct oppose the referenda. In precinct 2, 60% of voters are women and 60% of the precinct opposes the referenda. Precinct 2 has more women and is more opposed to the referenda than precinct 1, and so it certainly seems that women are opposing the proportional representation reform. Indeed, it could be the case that all women were opposed and all men voted in favor in both precincts, as might have occured if the reform were uniformly seen as a way of ensuring men a place in the legislature even though they formed a (slight) minority in every legislative district. But however intuitive this inference may appear, simple arithmetic indicates that it would be equally consistent with the observed aggregate data for men to have opposed proportional representation at a rate four times higher than that of women.gif These higher relative rates of individual male opposition would occur, given the same aggregate percentages, if a larger fraction of men in the female-dominated precinct 2 opposed the reform than men in precinct 1, as might happen if precinct 2 was a generally more radical area independent of, or even because of, its gender composition.
Apparantly there have been developments to overcome this, but what's clear is that given
1. 65% of the people in state A exhibit X characteristic. 2. 55% of the people in state A exhibit Y characteristic. 3. 35% of the people in state B exhibit X characteristic. 4. 40% of the people in state B exhibit Y characteristic.
You cannot make a meaningful statement about a relationship between X characteristic and Y characteristic without more information.
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