I posted on my Reed College introductory politics class “Moodle”. I shared this on Facebook and getting a lot of requests to share more broadly. Any questions about the class readings and other references below, please email paul@earlyvoting.net.
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Folks,
I’ve spent the day trying to absorb and understand the election results, and I thought it might help to provide a list of resources where I am going to try to reason through this. I certainly don’t mind, and I’m sure Chris would not mind, if people want to talk, or rant, or celebrate, or protest.
We are not suggesting that you should be dispassionate or apolitical about the election outcome. I handle unexpected political changes by doing by best to deconstruct it and understand it. That’s my makeup. It need not be yours. Do what you will with below.
1) The 50,000 Foot Look:
I still think the best place to look and reflect is at a site that allows you to drill down to the county level, and compare vote changes from 2012. I prefer the NY Times, but I list a number of other sites below. Click through at these sites to see the various maps.
2) This election is a game changer and this election is a realignment
Most of the evidence is that this election reinforced the existing divisions between the two parties. What was surprising to many observers was that more Republicans did not abandon their party standard bearer, given a lack of endorsements and many leaders distancing themselves from Trump. If you are able to ignore that for a moment, Trump’s support coalition looks nearly identical to Romney’s. Clinton underperformed Obama, especially among African Americans and Latinos. That’s the election in a nutshell.
3) What about race, ethnicity, gender? Didn’t the horrible things Trump said make a difference?
You know from our class that voters decide based on a wide variety of things–partisanship most importantly, then issues (mostly the economy), and then finally candidate characteristics. It has never been the case that candidate characteristics are the most important consideration. And it is often the case that attitudes about particular “single issues” can overwhelm everything else. While the things Trump said may matter a lot to you, you can’t expect that those same things matter to other people, who may believe in very different things and have very different life experiences. We won’t be able to answer this question in detail for a few months, but I suspect we are going to find not that many Trump voters did not completely ignore the things he said, but they heavily discounted them because of other concerns. And for another big chunk, race and ethnicity in particular get bound up with fear and discontent. That, unfortunately, is very common in the human condition.
This graphic from the NY Times summarizes Trump and Clinton support, compared to elections back to 2004, among key demographics. You may want to look at this first before following up on the links below.http://www.nytimes.com/…/…/elections/exit-poll-analysis.html
3a) On Gender: Clinton simply did not benefit much from her gender, at least that’s what the evidence indicates. Gender identity is very different from racial solidarity, so expecting the gender effect in 2016 to function like the race effect in 2012 and 2008 was probably wishful thinking, no matter how much gender identity may matter to you.
3b) On Ethnicity (primarily Latinos): Evidence is far more mixed. The finding you are seeing in the press is that Trump received 29% of the Latino vote, which exceeds Romney’s margin by 9%. However, others are disputing this finding, critiquing the way the exit polls are conducted. This one will be debated for a while.
Matt Barreto of UCLA and Latino Decisions (and older brother of a recent Reed alum in political science) runs down why he thinks the exit polls overestimate Trump support among Latinos http://www.latinodecisions.com/…/the-rundown-on-latino-vot…/ (UPDATE: Nice article at the Monkey Cage.)
3c) On African American support: Clinton did not do as well as Obama among African Americans. If the 88% number holds, that’s down 5% from 2012. But what appears to have been more damaging is lower turnout overall, and this really hurt in states like Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
Politico story on the number of African Americans in Florida who voted early in 2012 and did not in 2016, citing the work of political scientist Daniel Smith of University of Florida. http://www.politico.com/…/clinton-campaign-struggles-in-get…
4) What about the polls and the forecasts? Does this indicate that polling and statistical forecasting is junk?
It may not surprise that my answer is “no.” There was a systematic miss for the polls, and consequently the forecasts, and the misses were all in red states. If the models were junk, they would have missed in the blue states as well. That means there was something going on in the red states that was missed by the political observers and political scientists who obviously need to scrutinize what they are doing. But your own fundamentals based forecasts predicted Clinton’s vote almost precisely, as did at least two of the forecasts in PS. Something is seriously amiss about Trump support, but there’s no evidence (yet) that there is something seriously amiss about the fundamental underpinnings of election science.
Silver reminds us (as you read in his book) that there is a tendency among people to refuse to acknowledge the meaning of uncertainty and probability. He’s to blame as much as anyone for producing these seemingly precise forecasts, but he’s not to blame for reporters and citizens not understanding uncertainty. http://fivethirtyeight.com/…/final-election-update-theres-…/
—
Folks,
I’ve spent the day trying to absorb and understand the election results, and I thought it might help to provide a list of resources where I am going to try to reason through this. I certainly don’t mind, and I’m sure Chris would not mind, if people want to talk, or rant, or celebrate, or protest.
We are not suggesting that you should be dispassionate or apolitical about the election outcome. I handle unexpected political changes by doing by best to deconstruct it and understand it. That’s my makeup. It need not be yours. Do what you will with below.
1) The 50,000 Foot Look:
I still think the best place to look and reflect is at a site that allows you to drill down to the county level, and compare vote changes from 2012. I prefer the NY Times, but I list a number of other sites below. Click through at these sites to see the various maps.
The best interactive maps in my opinion at the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/president
Great mix of maps and exit polls at BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37889032
USA Today does a better job displaying change in support http://www.usatoday.com/…/intera…/how-the-election-unfolded/
CNN has a different look and feel, not my choice but has very nice individual state results http://www.cnn.com/election/results
2) This election is a game changer and this election is a realignment
Most of the evidence is that this election reinforced the existing divisions between the two parties. What was surprising to many observers was that more Republicans did not abandon their party standard bearer, given a lack of endorsements and many leaders distancing themselves from Trump. If you are able to ignore that for a moment, Trump’s support coalition looks nearly identical to Romney’s. Clinton underperformed Obama, especially among African Americans and Latinos. That’s the election in a nutshell.
Larry Bartels at the Monkey Cage examines election 2016 https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/2016-was-an-ordinary-elec…/
3) What about race, ethnicity, gender? Didn’t the horrible things Trump said make a difference?
You know from our class that voters decide based on a wide variety of things–partisanship most importantly, then issues (mostly the economy), and then finally candidate characteristics. It has never been the case that candidate characteristics are the most important consideration. And it is often the case that attitudes about particular “single issues” can overwhelm everything else. While the things Trump said may matter a lot to you, you can’t expect that those same things matter to other people, who may believe in very different things and have very different life experiences. We won’t be able to answer this question in detail for a few months, but I suspect we are going to find not that many Trump voters did not completely ignore the things he said, but they heavily discounted them because of other concerns. And for another big chunk, race and ethnicity in particular get bound up with fear and discontent. That, unfortunately, is very common in the human condition.
This graphic from the NY Times summarizes Trump and Clinton support, compared to elections back to 2004, among key demographics. You may want to look at this first before following up on the links below.http://www.nytimes.com/…/…/elections/exit-poll-analysis.html
3a) On Gender: Clinton simply did not benefit much from her gender, at least that’s what the evidence indicates. Gender identity is very different from racial solidarity, so expecting the gender effect in 2016 to function like the race effect in 2012 and 2008 was probably wishful thinking, no matter how much gender identity may matter to you.
Michael Tesler at the Monkey Cage, with extensive citations to past work on the comparative weakness of gender identity.https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/why-the-gender-gap-doomed…/
3b) On Ethnicity (primarily Latinos): Evidence is far more mixed. The finding you are seeing in the press is that Trump received 29% of the Latino vote, which exceeds Romney’s margin by 9%. However, others are disputing this finding, critiquing the way the exit polls are conducted. This one will be debated for a while.
Matt Barreto of UCLA and Latino Decisions (and older brother of a recent Reed alum in political science) runs down why he thinks the exit polls overestimate Trump support among Latinos http://www.latinodecisions.com/…/the-rundown-on-latino-vot…/ (UPDATE: Nice article at the Monkey Cage.)
3c) On African American support: Clinton did not do as well as Obama among African Americans. If the 88% number holds, that’s down 5% from 2012. But what appears to have been more damaging is lower turnout overall, and this really hurt in states like Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
Politico story on the number of African Americans in Florida who voted early in 2012 and did not in 2016, citing the work of political scientist Daniel Smith of University of Florida. http://www.politico.com/…/clinton-campaign-struggles-in-get…
Analysis of the exit poll data by political scientists Stanley Feldman and Melissa Herrman http://www.cbsnews.com/…/cbs-news-exit-polls-how-donald-tr…/
4) What about the polls and the forecasts? Does this indicate that polling and statistical forecasting is junk?
It may not surprise that my answer is “no.” There was a systematic miss for the polls, and consequently the forecasts, and the misses were all in red states. If the models were junk, they would have missed in the blue states as well. That means there was something going on in the red states that was missed by the political observers and political scientists who obviously need to scrutinize what they are doing. But your own fundamentals based forecasts predicted Clinton’s vote almost precisely, as did at least two of the forecasts in PS. Something is seriously amiss about Trump support, but there’s no evidence (yet) that there is something seriously amiss about the fundamental underpinnings of election science.
Andrew Gelman does a nice job showing the consistent miss in red states http://andrewgelman.com/…/polls-just-fine-blue-states-blew…/
Gelman shows how a comparatively small yet systematic 2% shift in support toward Trump appears to explain virtually all the “misses.”http://andrewgelman.com/…/11/09/explanations-shocking-2-sh…/
See also Nate Silver http://fivethirtyeight.com/…/what-a-difference-2-percentag…/
Silver reminds us (as you read in his book) that there is a tendency among people to refuse to acknowledge the meaning of uncertainty and probability. He’s to blame as much as anyone for producing these seemingly precise forecasts, but he’s not to blame for reporters and citizens not understanding uncertainty.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/…/final-election-update-theres-…/