Today's Slate features an article arguing that terrorism, not moral values, is the real reason for the Democrats' loss.
I may be missing something, but I just don't understand the argument:
Much has been made of the fact that "moral values" topped the list of voters' concerns, mentioned by more than a fifth (22 percent) of all exit-poll respondents as the "most important issue" of the election...Voters who cited moral issues as most important did give their votes overwhelmingly to Bush (80 percent to 18 percent)...I don't understand: voters who cite "terrorism" and "moral values" go for Bush at roughly similar margins. How exactly does an increase in "terrorism" voters translate into a Bush gain while the same increase in "moral values" voters does not? What variable is he controlling for?
Terrorism was cited by 19 percent of voters as the most important issue, and these citizens gave their votes to the president by an even larger margin than morality voters: 86 percent for Bush, 14 percent for Kerry...
These differences hold up at the state level even when each state's past Bush vote is taken into account. When you control for that variable, a 10-point increase in the percentage of voters citing terrorism as the most important problem translates into a 3-point Bush gain. A 10-point increase in morality voters, on the other hand, has no effect.
posted by alex @ 2:14 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
You think so? Its an argument that makes sense, I'm just trying to understand if its the argument he makes here.
Mostly, I'm mystified by the following sentence: "A 10-point increase in morality voters, on the other hand, has no effect."
That makes no sense to me: 10% more voters at the polls who say that morality is the most important issue, breaking for Bush by an 80-20 margin, should make a difference. And its not a theoretical issue.
Hmmmm. I really don't think that this is what he is saying. I mean, he says "When you control for that variable, a 10-point increase..."
Of course, real elections don't control for any variables, so he must be talking about some regression that he is running. That is, there was no 10% increase in real life - its just that "a 10% increase in X leads to a 3% increase in Y" is his way of summarizing the correlation coefficient he got.
I just cant understand what regression he is running since his entire description of it is one vague sentence.
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