Talk Elections

If If you randomly pick out a 2004 voter and then ask “what is the probability that this individual voted for Bush?” The answer would be simple and clear: 0.51, since Bush got close to 51% of the popular vote. That’s the case when the voter is absolutely random. If, however, you know one item of information about this voter, then the probability would change. If, for example you know that that the person is from Texas, then the probability goes up to 0.61. If the only information you have is, that the person is black, then the probability goes down to 0.11. Etc…. We don’t have problems with these numbers since these are the official ones. But there are several other categories which could indicate how someone voted but these are not official numbers, and every one can assign his/her subjective probabilities.
Here are some categories.
What is the voting-for-Bush probability you would assign to a voter if you know
   1 - that this person  earns $150,000 per year ?
   2 - that this person  earns $50,000 per year ?
   3 - that this person  is older than 70?
   4 - that this person  is younger than 25?

   that this person :
   5 -Lives in a town of 7,000 residents
   6 - Lives in a city of 700,000 residents
   7 - Has never been out of the US.
   8 - While driving to work listens to NPR?
   9 - Goes to church at least once a week.
   10 - Does not go to church.
   11- The color of the person’s eyes is light blue.
   12 -The color of the person’s eyes is brown..
   13 -The person’s last name is Kaminski.
   14 -The person is a truck driver.
   15 -The person is a high school teacher.
   16 -The person is a lowyer.
   17 -The person is a physician.
    18 - The person has invested $600,000 in the stock exchange.
    19 - The person listens to Rush Limbaugh during launch hour.
    20 -The person watches CNN one hour per day.

The following are my subjective probabilities to the above:

1 - 0.4
2 - 0.55
3 - 0.4
4 - 0.3
5 - 0.75
 
6 - 0.4
7 - 0.8
8 - 0.4
9 - 0.8
10 - 0.35

11 - 0.6
12 - 0.3
13 - 0.3
14 - 0.7
15 - 0.2

16 - 0.4
17 - 0.5
18 - 0.7
19 - 0.9
20 - 0.4

Where is this from? The eye color thing is VERY interesting.

Again:
These are my subjective estimates.

What is a 'lower'?

Btw, I think you're right on most of those.   My favorite is the 'never left the US' one.

They never left the U.S. (80% for Bush) one is clearly wrong and is an attempt to paint the average Repubican as parochial.  The most frequent world travelers are business travelers- A group that would favor Bush.  Furthermore, the urban black and poor don't make it to the other side of the Atlantic very often either.  The eye color thing is not verifiable but you must remember that there are lot of Irish, German, English Italian etc etc that have brown eyes.   
High School teacher is also way off.  Maybe 60-40.  There is no way Kerry would get 80% likelihood.

Here are some of mine:

Has a kid who plays baseball:   .80
Has a kid who plays soccer:  .40

Has a bumper sticker on their car for their choice in President: .35

Has a yard sign for their choice in President: .20

Is between 10 and 30 pounds overweight: .60
Is more than 30 pounds overweight: .30

Owns a motorcycle: .75
Owns a gas-guzzling SUV:  .45
Owns a Land Rover: .20
Owns a hybrid-electric car: 0.60
Does not own a car: 0.35

Prefers pro football to college football: 0.75
Can name a team in the English Premier League other than Manchester United: 0.3

60% hybrid car for Bush??  The South and Plains also generally prefers College Football- Nebraska, Oklahoma, Alabama, Ole Miss, etc

there is no way 75% of people who live in towns of 7000 residents voted for Bush. Probably closer to 58% or so.

Here's the income data.

Under $15,000 (8%)
Bush  36%
Kerry  63%   

$15-30,000 (15%)
Bush  42%
Kerry  57%

$30-50,000 (22%)
Bush  49%
Kerry  50%

$50-75,000 (23%)
Bush  56%
Kerry  43%   

$75-100,000 (14%)
Bush  55%
Kerry  45%   

$100-150,000 (11%)
Bush  57%
Kerry  42%

$150-200,000 (4%)
Bush  58%
Kerry  42%

$200,000 or More (3%)
Bush  63%
Kerry  35%

I wonder what the odds on me are:

Male
White
Heterosexual
Protestant
age 20
makes $10k a year
Lives in a city of 45k

True^^^.  80% Kerry for cities of 700,000 is too high also.  L.A., Houston, Phoenix , San Diego, San Antonio, Dallas, Indianapolis etc, etc would all bring this down margin down significantly.  Kerry's results in New York City wasn't even 80%- Result was 75% to 24%.  For people living in a city with over 700,000 people I would guess somewhere in the 60's. 

You are around the 0.5

Kerry actually did better with small town voters than Gore did (albeit by a small amount).
There's a lot of (understandable) discontent in small towns (and has been for ages) and it's an open goal that Kerry missed.
If he'd done what I'd have done and based his campaign around small town discontent he'd have won Ohio for sure.
He didn't. He didn't win Ohio.

Income is probably the single most useful indicator, so someone like BRTD isn't all that unusual. However, with someone age 20 you sometimes look at their income, sometimes family income (my income might by 5K, but my parents are in the top tax bracket).

Remember the "fuzzy math" tag that went around in 2000?  I think it fits on Shira's statistics pretty well.  HAHAHA

Say someone asks you what is the probability that voter X voted for Bush. You have never seen this person you don't know where he/she lives. In other words you don't have any information about him/her. In this case your answer must be 0.51.

Now, assume you get some limited information: the person has never left the US. Will you, in this case continue with the 0.51 or will you change it?

I imagine I would brake the mold for this.

well my parents are in the $50-75k bracket that voted 56% for Bush, although I know for sure my mom voted for Kerry, don't know about my dad.

Not an issue for me though, once I get out of college and get my CIS degree I could probably land a job making $60-70k a year, that wouldn't change my voting though.

Of course my Protestant denomination probably voted for Kerry, even if only marginally (at least in my state), my ethnicity probably voted for Kerry (if you go beyond "white", Scandinavians in the upper Midwest tend to be Democrats) and my city voted 54% for Kerry.

Were I in a room with 10 such persons, I would not presume that 8 of them were Kerry voters.  Being a betting man, I would take Bush if the point spread was an 80% line that he would vote for Kerry.  It is just too high of an assumption.  Bush .45 seems more reasonable only because people from the N.E. and California do tend to travel aboard slightly more than some other parts. 

On Election Day, I stood at an intersection with my school's Young Democrats Club waving Kerry signs.  It was remarkable how you could tell almost automatically who would beep in support and who would give you the finger or stick their tongue out at you.  I don't think I saw a single African American not beep in support.  Meanwhile, people in SUV's and pick up trucks who responded at all usually responded negatively.

Where were you for curiosities sake?  Do you go to school in NY?

Does anyone want to take a stab at these...

-white male evangelical in the South
-lesbian Jew in New England
-male with long hair
-alum of Ivy League school
-has 10 siblings
-regular user of pornography
-white without high school degree
-black, income over 100K
-NASCAR fan
-black, married to a white
-white, married to a black

-white male evangelical in the South - 0.8
-lesbian Jew in New England - 0.1
-male with long hair - 0.4
-alum of Ivy League school 0.6
-has 10 siblings - 0.3
-regular user of pornography 0.2
-white without high school degree - 0.35
-black, income over 100K - 0.15
-NASCAR fan - 0.6
-black, married to a white - 0.1
-white, married to a black - 0.2

0.2 seems a tad unlikely there.

By using Shira's method, I should be a Kerry voter.

How come?

I can sometimes tell people's political views just by the tone of voice that they use.  Women who have an "outraged" approach to everything are usually Democrats, as are guys who have a whiny tinge to their voice.

I also think there is a correlation among women between attractiveness and political views.  The more attractive a woman is, the greater the chance that she is a Republican.

I think J. J. is a brother.  I like people who break the mold...

Ditto.

Republicans aren't that pure and Ivy league grads are definetly not that conservative.  NASCAR fan should probably be a bit higher for Bush too.

I know plenty of Republicans who look at porn....it's definitely a myth that Republicans aren't interested in sex.

I would have thought that Ivy League types would be at least 55% Kerry. The lean would be even stronger when controlled for income.

This might favor Kerry only because of the disproportionate number of racial minorities in that group.

My guess, however, would be that whites with 10+ siblings lean conservative.

Part Amerindian, though my brown eyes come from my mother (who was completely European).  Culturally, I've been referred to as "homeboy" on several occasions.  :-)  It has to do with my address.

I do like in a ward, in a large city, Phila, that was 90% for Kerry.  I do NOT make more than $50.000.

I do love how liberals stereotype (he said through grinding teeth).

I tend to agree with you except for
-regular user of pornography - 0.2
-white without high school degree - 0.35

I would assign:
-regular user of pornography - 0.5
-white without high school degree - 0.65

More accurately: a likely Kerry voter.
The probability of Jews or Blacks or teachers etc. voting for Bush is low but not zero.

Nationally you belong to the 51%, but among people meeting your categoties you are a tiny minority.

We are having fun here, but the issue of who is a Republican and who is a Democrat is a very serious one. The nation is sharply divided.
The first indicator is the geographical contiguity of the red and blue states. The battleground states are mostly on the bordering area between the two countries. Florida is deep in the south area of the red country, but Florida itself is geographically divided into two states.
More important are the behavioral, mental and cultural differences between the “reds” and the “blues”. It is the same situation as in Canada, except for the lingual differences. Everyone who visited Quebec noticed that the difference with the rest of Canada is not only French vs. English but much deeper than that.

I've traveled to different parts of the country, and I am a conservative living in a "blue" state.  I have to say that except for the lunatic fringe on either end, which are a relatively small percentage of people (San Francisco liberals vs. extreme bible-belt conservatives), our differences are nowhere near as great as the differences in Canada.

Our greatest divide continues to be along racial lines.

I think it's great when people break those stereotypes.  Keep driving those liberals, many of whom are really narrow-minded bigots, crazy.

AHAHAHAHAHA

we have all those Hollywood actresses. You have Tranny Annie Coulter, Linda Tripp, and that woman from the Christian Coalition.

what would these be?

-thinks about sex a lot
-frequent binge drinker
-owns more than 200 vinyls, all modern ones (pressed after the invention of CDs)
-played GTA: San Andreas frequently on election day
-poster of Anna Kournikova hanging on apartment wall
-poster of Che Guevara hanging on apartment wall
-lives in an apartment next to a crack whore (does not apply to me)
-hates suburbs
-hates Nader
-works at a porn store (does not apply to me but almost did)
-runs an indepedent record label

Who are the people with brown or dark eyes?

African-Americans,  Hispanics,  Asian-Americans, majority of Jews and the majority of people whose decadency is from Mediterranean Catholic or Greek-Orthodox counties such as  Greek, Italy, French, Spain etc. All these groups are tending to vote Democrats. Needless to mention that there are Germans or British with brown eyes, but they are in the minority as to the color-of-the-eyes category.
BTW: Kerry and Edwards, both have light-blue eyes.

I said that among those who were not abroad the ratio Kerry:Bush is 20:80.
This does not mean that among those who were abroad the ratio is 80:20

Wonder what my odds are in voting Bush.

-Male
-Caucasian
-Age: 24
-Disaffected Roman Catholic from a practicing family
-Heterosexual
-5-10
-250 lbs.
-Family mixed in ideology
-From union/labor background, but went to 12 years of -Catholic schooling then went ot a secular/state college
-Has lived in mostly white neighborhoods with a spritz of racism (i.e. some of my neighbors were borderline neo-Nazis)
- Lives in very large, African American and Democratic controlled city (remember most whites resent this)

I don't know exactly everyplace you have resided at in the city but I do think it's safe to say that your comment about some of your neighbors being neo-Nazis is an exaggeration. Now if "some" to you means one or two, well ok. You're going to have those type of wackos everywhere. However, your post leads one to belief that you mean more than just a few.

Looks like you voted Kerry (probability 0.7).

Shira, this is a very interesting analysis, and probably not far from what a lot of political strategists do when trying to determine where to find potential votes.

How do you weight different characteristics when they conflict with each other?  For example, what if you have a Jewish member of the NRA?  Or an evangelical Christian who belongs to NOW?

My general characteristics are:

White
Male
High income
Live in suburbs
Own home
Work in finance industry
Heterosexual
Social Moderate to Conservative
Unmarried
Live in Northeast

Except for the last two, all these factors point toward a Republican vote.  In my local town, most people are white and middle to high income, but John Kerry had a very narrow majority in my town.

I would go with 0.7 Kerry as well.  BTW, I voted Kerry.  Some from the same background as me amazingly voted Bush.

More than just one or two.  I could safely say about 3-5% in some neighborhoods.  Remember, I grew up in the Lower Northeast.  The "N-bomb" was heard far more frequently here.  I just went back to my old corner pub and man this one white woman in her 50s made comments about every African American in the place.  I swear she made Archie Bunker look like a bleeding heart liberal.  I've had neighbors who use it like a very common noun. 

I'm not going to deny that there are people in the Northeast that are racist but calling people neo-Nazis is a bit much. By the way, I do know which areas you are referring to when you say there were more  racist feelings and I do agree that those feelings are more common in those areas than in most other Northeast neighborhoods.

Neo-Nazi was a bit much, but I was pointing out some, though very few, are quite close to that.  I've actually heard comments such as "they should bomb every ni--er out of their f---in house or deport them to North Philly."  I'm not being dramatic here.  I know those comments sound very stupid, but they've actually come out of people's mouths in this very own city.  IHMO, it's scary what some people think. 

In terms of NE neighborhoods, I can't pinpoint one particular neighborhood because there are some people who don't have these feelings and it's not just one nieghborhood.  From what I can gather, Bridesburg and Port Richmond (Taylor's areas) are very protectionist of their old neighborhood and don't look too kindly on outsiders moving in.