Tag Archives: 2020 election

Patterns in political yard signs

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A new book by three political scientists look at how Americans have deployed and reacted to yard signs in recent election cycles:

We just started being puzzled about it. We did things like code the amount of traffic on a given street, and we thought maybe people on a street with high traffic would be more likely to put up signs. But you find out that those people wanted to let other people know where they stand- that it wasn’t just about catching the eye of passing traffic [to try to get out the vote for a candidate]. We found out that there’s a combination of expressive and communicative motives…

One of the things that was really clear from our studies is that signs are really important to people who display them. They’re emotionally invested in these dynamics and are more likely than people who don’t put up signs to say that it’s a good thing, or a reasonable thing, for neighborhoods to be doing.

I also think this is why we hear about these stories of theft and vandalism-people going to extremes around signs. At least seemingly, in news reports, it can accelerate fast, from people putting up signs to some kind of an altercation, a police report, a fight on the street. I think it’s because people view it as a real affront when someone messes with their expression of self…

You really notice, when you’re walking around, those places where signs are battling one another. But when we did spatial analysis to look at the clustering of signs systematically, in a way that would cut through those strong anecdotal impressions, we found that, really, there wasn’t much evidence of the intermingling of signs-the famous Sign Wars, where there’s a Biden sign at one house and a Trump sign next to it. Really, it was more about like-minded clustering: pockets of Biden supporters signaling to one another, pockets of Trump supporters signaling to one another. More solidarity than outright conflict.

I appreciate the systematic approach for a phenomenon that lends itself to anecdotes. This is how social science can be really helpful: many people have experiences with or have seen yard signs but unless researchers approach the issue in a rigorous way, it is hard to know what exactly is going on.

For example, I regularly walk in two different places in my suburb and I have been keeping an eye on yard signs. At least in the areas I walk, the signs are primarily in favor of one party in the national election while local election signs are more varied. Furthermore, the number of people who have signs is still pretty limited even in a heated political climate. But, just based on my walks, I do not know if what I am seeing match my suburb as a whole let alone communities across the United States. And unless I interact in some way with the people with (and without) yard signs, I have little idea of what is motivating them.

I wonder how the behavior of putting out political yard signs relates to other political behavior. If a political yard sign is expressive, how much does this carry over to other parts of life? Are these the people who are most active in local political activity? Are they the most partisan? Are they the ones always bringing up politics at family gatherings or among friends?

I would also be curious to how this relates to social class and particular neighborhoods. Lawns, in some places, are sacred: they should be green, free of weeds and leaves. Property values are important in many places. Political signs might mess up particular aesthetics or introduce the idea of conflict when suburbanites just want to leave each other alone.

Population density as a factor in deciding suburban votes

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An AP story highlights how “Democrats march deeper into suburbia” and discusses the role of density:

https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-virus-outbreak-phoenix-suburbs-health-care-reform-76dea954e5f5dc13b3ad65fd29ac678c

For decades, an area’s population per square mile has been a reliable indicator of its political tilt. Denser areas vote Democratic, less dense areas vote Republican. The correlation between density and voting has been getting stronger, as people began to sort themselves by ethnicity, education, personality, income and lifestyle.

The pattern is so reliable it can quantified, averaged and applied to most American cities. At around 800 households per square mile, the blue of Democratic areas starts to bleed into red Republican neighborhoods.

A purple ring — call it the flip zone — emerges through the suburbs…

In Dallas, the purple ring through the suburbs was 18.7 miles in 2016 out from city hall, at an average of 714 households per square mile. The border runs close to AT&T Stadium in Arlington, where the Dallas Cowboys play. Arlington is a so-called boomburb that morphed through new construction from a suburb to a city of 400,000.

A few thoughts on the potential role of density. First, an additional graphic (see below) works with the last paragraph cited above to draw concentric circles a city. This, however, suggests density is linear as one moves further out from the city. In general, this may be true but it would be interesting to see how pockets of higher density suburbs at different distances from the city affect these patterns.

https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-virus-outbreak-phoenix-suburbs-health-care-reform-76dea954e5f5dc13b3ad65fd29ac678c

Second, Is it density that predicts these outcomes or factors related to density? A third chart in the story looks at the population demographics at different densities and shows differences. Does the density come first or the population changes? The analysis here suggests a relationship or correlation but it is not clear whether this analysis accounts for other possible factors.

In the larger picture, what do Americans think about having these “flip zones” or middle suburbs be the current political battleground? For example, one current argument about getting rid of the electoral college suggests certain parts of the country should not a disproportionate sway over other more populous parts of the country. Right now, these middle suburbanites, particularly in swing states, have the influence and both parties want their votes. Are the interests of these suburban voters the interests of the entire country?

Trying to use statistics in a post-evidence political world

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Ahead of the presidential debate last night, my Statistics class came up with a short list of guidelines for making sense of the statistics that were sure to be deployed in the discussion. Here is my memory of those strategies:

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
  1. What is the source of the data?
  2. How was the statistic obtained (sample, questions asked, etc.)?
  3. Is the number unreasonable or too good/too bad to be true?
  4. How is the statistic utilized in an argument or what are the implications of the statistic?

These are good general tips for approaching any statistic utilized in the public realm. Asking good questions about data helps us move beyond accepting all numbers because they are numbers or rejecting all numbers because they can be manipulated. Some statistics are better than others and some are deployed more effectively than others.

But, after watching the debate, I wonder if these strategies make much sense in our particular political situation. Numbers were indeed used by both candidates. This suggests they still have some value. But, it would be easy for a viewer to leave thinking that statistics are not trustworthy. If every number can be debated – methods, actual figures, implications – depending on political view or if every number can be answered with another number that may or may not be related, what numbers can be trusted? President Trump throws out unverified numbers, challenges other numbers, and looks for numbers that boost him.

When Stephen Colbert coined the term “truthiness” in 2005, he hinted at this attitude toward statistics:

Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don’t mean the argument over who came up with the word …

It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that’s not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It’s certainty. People love the President [George W. Bush] because he’s certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don’t seem to exist. It’s the fact that he’s certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true? …

Truthiness is ‘What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.’ It’s not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There’s not only an emotional quality, but there’s a selfish quality.

Combine numbers with ideology and what statistics mean can change dramatically.

This does not necessarily mean a debate based solely on numbers would lead to clearer answers. I recall some debate exchanges in previous years where candidates argued they each had studies to back up their side. In that instance, what is a viewer to decide (probably not having read any of the studies)? Or, if science is politicized, where do numbers fit? Or, there might be instances where a good portion of the electorate thinks statistics based arguments are not appropriate compared to other lines of reasoning. And the issue may not be that people or candidates are innumerate; indeed, they may know numbers all too well and seek to exploit how they are used.

Looking at which way Midwest suburban swing-state voters are leaning

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Here is an update on the landscape of suburban voters in Midwest swing states ahead of the 2020 presidential election:

https://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/ohio/

Trump’s chances for a second term rest heavily on being able to maintain the margins he won by in 2016, particularly in suburban areas. He plans to campaign outside Toledo on Monday, as liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death stokes questions of whether the sudden court vacancy would energize more suburban voters who support abortion rights or social conservatives in small-town and rural areas who oppose them.

Republican lawmakers and strategists in Ohio say they are seeing research that shows a near-uniform drop in support from his 2016 totals across every suburban region of the state…

There is less debate in other states. Pennsylvania Republicans say across the longtime GOP stronghold of Chester County west of Philadelphia, for instance, Trump has slipped as far as he has in Ohio’s suburbs, though in more populous towns and in a state he carried by fewer than 45,000 votes…

A central question is whether Trump can, as his campaign predicts, spur even more support than in 2016 from rural voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Several quick thoughts:

  1. The Trump campaign has tried to appeal to suburban voters – see the rhetoric about Democrats wanting to “abolish” suburbs – yet also seems committed to trying to get as many votes as possible from more rural areas.
  2. These suburban locations in the Midwest are an interesting mix of prosperity and problems. They are located within Rust Belt states where changing economic conditions, particularly the loss of manufacturing jobs, have threatened what were once growing, prosperous states. On the other hand, many of these suburban voters are in relatively good position compared to others in their metropolitan region or their state.
  3. As Trump courts rural voters, population change in rural America is more complex than just saying the rural population is declining. See this 2019 research:
Figure 3
https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/rural-depopulation

Our research provides clear evidence of depopulation across a broad swatch of rural America. Depopulation seemingly is now built into the demographic fabric of some parts of rural America—a result of chronic outmigration among young adults of reproductive age, along with population aging and high mortality rates. Yet, depopulation is far from universal. Many rural regions continue to grow, often rapidly, including exurban areas just beyond the metropolitan suburban fringe, and high-amenity recreational and retirement areas. These counties are likely to hold their own demographically in the future. The situation is much different for the depopulating rural counties caught in a downward spiral of population loss.

Some suburbanites do not like more explicit divisiveness or racism

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With the 2020 presidential election riding on the suburbs, some suburban voters do not like the rhetoric and policies of President Trump:

young frustrated woman screaming with closed eyes

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

From North Carolina to Pennsylvania to Arizona, interviews this week with more than two dozen suburban voters in critical swing states revealed abhorrence for Trump’s growing efforts to fuel white resentment with inflammatory rhetoric on race and cultural heritage. The discomfort was palpable even among voters who also dislike the recent toppling of Confederate statues or who say they agree with some of Trump’s policies.

As the president increasingly stakes his candidacy on a message of “law and order,” casting himself as a bulwark against “angry mobs” and “thugs,‘’ there are signs that he is alienating voters in bedroom communities who approach the debate over racial justice with a far more nuanced perspective than the president does.

The disconnect is especially pronounced in the swing state suburbs like Cornelius — traditionally a conservative-leaning area — and along the Main Line outside Philadelphia, where some educated white voters, including some former Trump supporters, are repelled by the president’s divisive rhetoric…

While Trump won suburban areas overall by 4 percentage points in 2016, according to exit polls, white college-educated suburban women have rapidly moved away from his Republican Party, and they helped deliver the House of Representatives to the Democrats in 2018. And now, as some polling shows Trump facing competitive races even in deep-red states, he cannot afford to lose all of those voters again.

What could be behind this discomfort among some suburban voters? A few possible answers:

  1. Suburbanites do not often like open conflict or confrontation in their personal interactions with fellow suburbanites. This could also apply to contentious social issues. If a candidate, party, or figure is openly combative, this may be too much for suburbanites who prefer more polite, refined discourse. Suburbanites have a particular status to protect, particularly those with education, good jobs, and homes.
  2. Suburbia has changed quite a bit in recent decades. Suburbanites themselves, particularly in middle suburbs (stuck between the exurban Republican voters and the inner-ring suburb Democratic votersthe exurban Republican voters and the inner-ring suburb Democratic voters), may have changed views of the world. Perhaps more well-off suburbanites than before do now care about race.
  3. Perhaps this is all still unclear or undecided months out from the election. Some suburbanites are caught in the middle and right now do not like Trump’s approach. If the economy picks up and COVID-19 winds down, will these same voters show less concern about polarizing views? If social movements, which are now in the suburbs too, wane, will this make it easier to support Trump?

Which way these voters go could indeed help decide the 2020 election. Among other things, it will be interesting to see how the candidates pitch themselves to middle suburbia (even as they balance pitches to other groups).

Remember the suburban voters in 2020

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As COVID-19 and police brutality pushed the 2020 presidential election off the front pages for months, recent poll data suggests suburban voters are breaking one way in national polls:

And while Trump has an edge with rural voters, Biden crushes him in the suburbs – which often decide how swing states swing.

Fifty per cent of suburban registered voters told the pollster they planned to vote for Biden, while 36 per cent said they’d vote for Trump.

And in Texas metropolitan areas:

A Quinnipiac University survey released last week found Trump leading Biden by 1 point in Texas. Trump leads by 2.2 points in the RealClearPolitics average.

Texas Republicans are primarily worried about their standing in the suburbs, where women and independents have steadily gravitated away from the GOP since Trump took office.

Republican support has eroded in the areas surrounding Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio, four of the nation’s largest and fastest growing metro areas. Democrats defeated longtime GOP incumbents in Houston and Dallas in 2018.

More background on trying to find a suburban “silent majority”:

The suburbs — not the red, but sparsely populated rural areas of the country most often associated with Trump — are where Trump found the majority of his support in 2016. Yet it was in the suburbs that Democrats built their House majority two years ago in a dramatic midterm repudiation of the Republican president.

Now, Trump’s approach to the violence and unrest that have gripped the nation’s big cities seems calibrated toward winning back those places, in the hopes that voters will recoil at the current images of chaos and looting — as they did in the late 1960s — and look to the White House for stability…

Five months before the general election, according to national polls, the political landscape for Trump is bleak. But there is a clear window of opportunity: Trump remains popular in rural America, and he won the suburbs by 4 percentage points in 2016 — largely on the backs of non-college-educated whites.

There are millions more potential voters where those came from — people who fit in Trump’s demographic sweet spot but did not vote. They live in rural and exurban areas, but also in working class suburbs like Macomb County, outside Detroit. They are who Republicans are referring to when they talk about a new “silent majority” — the kind of potential voters who, even if disgusted by police violence, are not joining in protest.

This probably bears repeating: the American suburbs of today are not solely populated by wealthy, white, conservative voters. This is the era of complex suburbia where different racial and ethnic groups as well as varied social classes live throughout metropolitan regions.

Relatively little media coverage has examined how COVID-19 or police brutality has affected suburbs or how suburbanites feel about all the change. While just over 50% of Americans live in suburbs, coverage emphasized urban areas. And what do suburbanites think when they see these images of urban life, policing, and protest that they may or not understand on an experiential or deeper level?

When protests make it to the wealthier suburbs, this means…

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With protests spreading across the United States, including wealthy suburbs like Naperville, Illinois and Dunwoody, Georgia, this could hint at several forces at play:

NapervilleCorner

-Americans dislike or disapprove of blatant injustice. (Whether that extends to making significant changes or sacrifices is another story. The suburbs are built in part on race and exclusion.)

-The population composition of suburbs has changed in recent decades. As William Frey of Brookings Institution details in Diversity Explosion, minority populations have grown across suburbs.

-The image of primarily conservative voters in wealthy suburbs may not be as valid as it was in the past. The outcome of the 2020 election depends in part on suburban voters with suburbanites closer to big cities leaning toward Democrats and suburbanites on the metropolitan edges leaning toward Republicans. And appealing to suburban women are important for candidates.

-Certain upscale suburban locations have become important sites for attracting attention because of their status. For example, Occupy Naperville occurred in 2012 and Naperville attracts other protestors as the largest community in DuPage County, its walkable downtown with lively stores, restaurants, and recreational options, and its status.

 

Font sizes, randomly ordered names, and an uncertain Iowa poll

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Ahead of the Iowa caucuses yesterday, the Des Moines Register had to cancel a final poll just ahead of the voting due to problems with administering the survey:

Sources told several news outlets that they figured out the whole problem was due to an issue with font size. Specifically, one operator working at the call center used for the poll enlarged the font size on their computer screen of the script that included candidates’ names and it appears Buttigieg’s name was cut out from the list of options. After every call the list of candidates’ names is reordered randomly so it isn’t clear whether other candidates may have been affected as well but the organizers were not able to figure out whether it was an isolated incident. “We are unable to know how many times this might have happened, because we don’t know how long that monitor was in that setting,” a source told Politico. “Because we do not know for certain—and may not ever be able to know for certain—we don’t have confidence to release the poll.”…

In their official statements announcing the decision to nix the poll, the organizers did not mention the font issue, focusing instead on the need to maintain the integrity of the survey. “Today, a respondent raised an issue with the way the survey was administered, which could have compromised the results of the poll. It appears a candidate’s name was omitted in at least one interview in which the respondent was asked to name their preferred candidate,” Register executive editor Carol Hunter said in a statement. “While this appears to be isolated to one surveyor, we cannot confirm that with certainty. Therefore, the partners made the difficult decision to not to move forward with releasing the Iowa Poll.” CNN also issued a statement saying that the decision was made as part of their “aim to uphold the highest standards of survey research.”

This provides some insight into how these polls are conducted. The process can include call centers, randomly ordered names, and a system in place so that the administrators of the poll can feel confident in the results (even as there is always a margin of error). If there is a problem in the system, the opinions of those polled may not match what the data says. Will the future processes not allow individual callers to change the font size?

More broadly, a move like this could provide more transparency and ultimately trust regarding political polling. The industry faces a number of challenges. Would revealing this particular issue cause people to wonder how often this happens or reassure them that pollsters are concerned about good data?

At the same time, it appears that the unreported numbers still had an influence:

Indeed, the numbers widely circulating aren’t that different from last month’s edition of the same poll, or some other recent polls. But to other people, both journalists and operatives, milling around the lobby of the Des Moines Marriott Sunday night, the impact had been obvious.

Here are what some reporters told me about how the poll affected their work:

• One reporter for a major newspaper told me they inserted a few paragraphs into a story to anticipate results predicted by the poll.

• A reporter for another major national outlet said they covered an Elizabeth Warren event in part because she looked strong in the secret poll.

• Another outlet had been trying to figure out whether Amy Klobuchar was surging; the poll, which looked similar to other recent polling, steered coverage away from that conclusion.

• “You can’t help it affecting how you’re thinking,” said another reporter.

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“Live from Des Moines and Miami”: twin spectacles of our time

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At the gym a few days ago, I saw this headline about the temporary location of a morning news show: “Live from Des Moines and Miami.” The Iowa caucuses on Monday and the Super Bowl today in Miami share some characteristics:

1. Weeks and months of hype. The Super Bowl does not get as much lead up since the participants have only been known for two weeks but both are highly anticipated events. The Iowa caucuses only happen every four years so the combination this year is not normal.

2. The media attention paid to both. Even as they come at different parts of their respective processes – the caucuses come after a lot of campaigning and debates and then kick off primary season while the game concludes a popular NFL year – they are great material for news reports, opinion leaders, and everyone else in the media who might not always care about politics or football.

3. Competition and winners and losers. A football game has a clear winner and loser (though more unusual circumstances might cast a doubt on the victors). The caucuses are not so clear as the outcome requires interpretation but everyone will be looking to name the winners and losers once the voting outcome is known.

4. The entertainment value of it all. The football game is more clearly entertainment – it is just a game after all – but politics is in this camp these days as well. Both events are exciting and at least this year relatively close. With all this tension building, why not locate a morning show to live work from Des Moines and Miami?

In sum, these events seem to go together: the largest American sporting event takes place tonight and the fate of the free world/the most important election of our time/the race to beat the incumbent president really takes off tomorrow. For those who will be watching and broadcasting, may they be entertaining and full of high ratings.

Looking at a single suburban district to hint at 2020 elections

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The quest to read the suburban political tea leaves for 2020 is on with eyes focused on a Texas legislature race outside of Houston:

The legislative stakes of Tuesday’s election in House District 28, a rapidly-diversifying suburb of Houston, are relatively low. Whoever wins likely will not even cast a single vote before they have to face re-election in November, as the Legislature does not meet this year. And even if Markowitz wins, Texas Republicans would still control the House by eight seats.

But Democrats are itching to demonstrate on Tuesday that Texas is a competitive state that will be up for grabs in 2020. Texas has 38 votes in the Electoral College; only California has more, with 55. Many say that the district, which is part of the ethnically diverse Fort Bend County, is representative of the demographic changes happening in suburbs around the Lone Star state — trends that could shift electoral results in Democrats’ favor.

“Fort Bend County is representative of what is happening in Texas writ large. There are a lot of immigrants,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas-based Republican strategist who ran GOP Sen. John Cornyn’s 2014 campaign. “Republicans want to hold this and need to hold this to say: ‘Look, we can stem the tide of the Blue Wave that everyone is talking about.’”…

Former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have all endorsed Markowitz. Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro, a native of San Antonio and a former 2020 candidate, has campaigned for her in the district. And O’Rourke, fresh off his failed presidential bid, has spent days at a time in the district, energizing the Democratic base and personally going door to door urging people turn out for Markowitz.

With suburban voters in the balance, both parties plus observers are looking for signs of how suburban voters as a whole will fall in the November 2020 elections. Is demographic change enough to lead to a shift in party affiliation? Will national issues, particularly with the president, dominate or will more local concerns prove influential? How much do individual candidates in such districts matter versus broader patterns and influences?

From a Houston news source:

“Fort Bend County is one of the most diverse counties in the nation. Now we have Indians, Asians, Mexican, Hispanic background, Cuban, Latin American, from all over the world,” Cantu said….

But Republicans, like Jason and Elizabeth Walker, have been relocating to the district too. The couple moved to Katy from San Francisco 10 years ago. Jason works in human resources and is a GOP precinct chair. He said the region may have gotten bigger, but people still care about the same issues, “which are keeping taxes low, having good schools…and keeping Fort Bend a place that is a great place to live for families.”

While both political parties would want to secure districts like these for their side, it looks like a number of suburban districts will be contestable in the near future. And suburbs will continue to change, pushing both parties to look for messages and platforms that resonate with suburban voters.