Posted on 10/12/2019 2:55:22 AM PDT by TECTopcat
At a time of deep political division in the American electorate, a small group of counties across the nation has shown extraordinary political flexibility, voting for the winner in every presidential election since 1980.
These 19 counties—well less than 1% of the nation’s total—have in the last 10 elections backed Republicans for the White House six times and Democrats four times.
see https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-counties-backed-every-president-since-reagan-11570786200
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
They think like communists and dictators and as such, MUST play games until they KNOW the dems will fail at impeachment and he wins reelection.
They MIGHT survive a year of playing games, even if they take a hard hit.
They CANNOT take FOUR years of battering and I believe they will bob and weave until the election.
The impeachment is a joke and even their advisers likely know that.
But it’s good to get things rolling now anyway.
Then SMASH them into submission when he gets reelected
These are not “predictive”, they have shown “correlation”. Correlation is NOT causation. Past correlation does not necessarily predict future correlation.
Bingo. Remember when Missouri used to be a bellwether?
But why is this breaking news?
And behind a paywall.
Thank you.
There were ten elections from 1980 to 2016. 2^10 = 1,024. So purely by chance you have a 0.1% chance of “guessing” the outcome of all ten correctly.
The U.S. has 3,007 counties, so you would get 30 correct based on guessing. I’m surprised only 19 got it right.
Obviously, elections are not decided by the flip of a coin, but by the carefully considered thoughts of an informed and educated electorate. Whoops! There’s my flaw in logic right there.
Just because you flip a coin and it comes up heads 5 times in a row doesn’t mean the coin is biased.
Ah, 1/1024 of 3,007 is slightly under 3.
States and counties are only predictive bellwethers until someone realizes that they are and tries to exploit it, or they themselves become self aware of it and start to think it means something.
Ignorant use of statistics.
WSJ needs smarter reporters.
Paywall. Can you just name the counties?
Well, since in practice it's not random, I'm surprised there are 19.
Take for instance an easily explained statistical trap when Bobo won states like Indiana (with Marion Co voting 105%) and North Carolina in 2008, then gave both right back in 2012 to Bishop Dullard. Bobo wins, but those counties that flipped to Dullard weren't 'wrong' - Dullard could have beaten Bobo with any kind of Trump instincts (and take back the "47%" jackleg comment).
Those counties are still useful as bellwethers and they are polled accordingly...
My own home county [Westmoreland, Pennsylvania] narrowly voted for Mondale in the Reagan 49 state landslide of 1984. In 2016, we provided 128% of the vote margin which tipped Pennsylvania and the election to Donald Trump!
Our demographics did not change much, but the jackass party did.
Thanks. 3 AM math during insomnia tends to suffer. I used to be good at all-nighters, too.
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It expires cookies and provides Twitter links that refer to the article. It almost always works to read WSJ articles.
You are welcome.
The math is a bit more tricky than a 50/50 coin flip. One would have to know the percentage of counties that voted correctly in each election, and then multiply those values together. Given that in most elections, the number of counties that voted correctly is higher than 50%, 19 may be closer to the actual random mean than the 3 of a 50/50 distribution.
Let’s hope this continues!
It ought to be, given that only 3 counties + St. Louis City vote Demonrat anymore for President. They don’t deserve THAT many.
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