The US Election, Australian politics etc.

[tcpip]

There has been a number of interesting correlations between state-by-state voting in the US elections. cptjohnc notes the votes on a
county-by-county basis. From rumplstimskin I've picked up a correlation between IQ and the states and the
states and university degrees, although some have questioned the IQ range (all within one standard deviation). I'm currently working on a distribution based on votes and high school graduation - at least the figures seem more precise for that one.

But in general, it is fair to say that one of Kerry's main points - that America is divided - is actually an
advantage to the Republicans. The Republican states are poor, ill-educated, Christian conservative, and rural. Whilst I wish to avoid the denigrating tone of John Stuart Mill, his comment on conservatives ("Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives") does seem to be an apt electoral strategy. As democracy can only survive through informed decisions, it seems that the ancient Greek idea that despotism follows a failed democracy may indeed be apt.

Meanwhile in Australia, the fundamentalist Catholic Tony Abbot had put fuel to the fire on the abortion "debate", and John Anderson says it's out of control. Of course, these self-righteous wealthy individuals would never consider getting an abortion themselves if they found themselves pregnant and without the means to support a child. Of course not. In my opinion, these are the immoral people. These are the people who think that they have the right to determine what you do with your body.

Mark Latham, having already promoted fellow incompetent losers (Wayne Swan and Stephen Smith) is now taking an "axe to dud poll promises", including the troops home by Xmas pledge. Asylum-seeker supporters will get no joy from the recent appointment of Laurie Ferguson, and his unbelievable ignorant and divisive comments. In other words, the conservatives in the ALP, having delivered us a Howard government, want to dump the few good reasons that people voted for Labor in the first place.

On a related note, Labor for Refugees had it's first post-election meeting on Saturday. As expected there was a great deal of anger of how the Victorian branch distributed Senate preferences and how the party failed by pandering to the "aspirational voter". Sadly the meeting witnessed the departure of Kevin Peoples, the hard-working Secretary of the organization.

Outside of all this political analysis, I continue, strangely enough to have a life - although a great deal of it at the moment seems to be caught up with problems relating to land tax, the distribution of wealth in Australia and NZ political parties. I'm having a weird experience at work trying solve an otherwise simple problem; connecting a Mac to a Windows network printer (some applications work, others don't). The ICT newsletter Red Friday is now into its third issue and the Ten Thousand Islands play-by-email roleplaying campaign has reached its
second major scene.

Last Sunday was the annual Unitarian Church fete (rather uninteresting) and the chosen speaker, a natural health/alternative medicine advocate, was a bit of a conspiracy theorist. His best points were the need to regulate natural therapy and integrate it into the university system and the systematic reasons on why pharmaceutical companies - and many doctors - are so much against to the practise. Still, one practical upshot was getting some plants for verylisa's housewarming in Altona Meadows. So far away! Deepest darkest suburbia, yet still in zone one for public transport. Spent a bit of time chatting with cvisors, fizit and, of course, caseopaya. The evening concluding with a few pints with severina_242 and friends at a dodgy faux-Irish pub (for the love of God, how many more must we have?) in Port Melbourne.

The arrival of that writing madness, NaNoWriMo reminds me that my rewritten and much reduced version of my thesis is due in by the end of the month. Better get on with it.

Comments

By whose standards?

[erudito.livejournal.com]

The Republican states are poor, ill-educated, Christian conservative, and rural.

Poor by whose standards? Lower average inicome sure, but poor? As I recall, the US State with the lowest GDP per capita is still higher than most EU states.

Ill-educated by whose standards? The US has the lowest proportion of people who have only attained juniour secondary of any OECD country. For those 25-64, the figures are:
USA 12
Switzerland 13
Norway 15
Japan 17
Germany 17
Canada 18
Sweden 19
Denmark 20
Austria 24
NZ 24
Finland 26
France 36
UK 37
Australia 41
Belgium 42
Ireland 42
Netherlands 45
Italy 57

Now, there are issues with the quality of US education, but, hey, they're not the only ones.

Since IQ and income are correlated, the fact that the Dems tend to do better in lower-income ranges and the Republicans better in higher income ranges suggests there are some problems with your stupid-people-are-conservative notion.

Approaching electoral politics from the notion that there is something inherently wrong with people who vote differently is just not a good way to be persuasive. As for the notion that people voting differently means democracy is on the path to failure, that leads to very bad places.

By the standards of 'programmatic NE liberals' Kerry actually did quite well; much better than McGovern in 1972, Mondale in 1984 or Dukakis in 1988. And if the hot 'morals' issue is gay marriage, the debate has actually moved a long way. Indeed, the proportion of people citing some form of 'moral values' as the most important issue is actually much lower in the 2004 election than in the previous 3 Presidential elections.

People really need to calm down.

Re: By whose standards?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Poor, ill-education and rural relative to rest of the population.

I'd question the junior secondary figures. The suggestion that 41 percent of Australian's only complete year 10 and 42 percent of Belgians and up to 57% of Italians, just doesn't seem to make sense to me.

Approaching electoral politics from the notion that there is something inherently wrong with people who vote differently is just not a good way to be persuasive.

I'm not attempting to be persuasive, I'm attempting to be empricial.

As for the notion that people voting differently means democracy is on the path to failure, that leads to very bad places.

As can refusing to admit that a democracy can be on the path to failure. Fifty percent plus one of uninformed prejudice is a substantive danger to democracy. Informed, considered decisions is what differentiates a democracy from mob-rule.

People really need to calm down.

Really?

http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2004/11/08/1099781320016.html

Re: By whose standards?

[erudito.livejournal.com]

On Rove's commments, we'll see. I note, towards the end of the campaign, Dubya thought civil unions were a matter best left to the States. I strongly doubt that 2/3rds of both houses of Congress and 3/4 of State legislatures will go for a constitutional amendment.

Remember, the educational-attainment figures are for the 25-64 population, so it covers the effect of schooling participation rates starting 50 years ago. There has been a rapid increase in high school completion in Australia over the last two decades. I don't find the figures implausible.

I don't find anything in the 2004 election results which suggest any inherent problems with American democracy. Even if you think voting for a NE liberal is a sign of sanity, American voters are clearly more willing to do so in 2004 than they were in 1972, 1984 and 1988.

As for being empirical, you seem to have used the wrong adjectives.

Re: By whose standards? Maps

[erudito.livejournal.com]

You can take some comfort in these very cool electoral cartograms.

Re: By whose standards? Maps

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

On Rove's commments, we'll see.

And then what? When gay marriages are illegal constitutionally, when women have to go to backyard abortions? When creationism is taught as a science in public schools?

At what point will you think it is time not to be calm about the end of the great hope to the world that America once represented?

I don't find anything in the 2004 election results which suggest any inherent problems with American democracy.

1) Lack of a proportional voting system for the electoral college.

2) Lack of a preferential voting for electoral college representative (government of the biggest minority).

3) Use of electronic voting machines without a paper trial, lost votes.

4) Use of insecure voting programs in said machines, whose source code has not been released for public scrutiny.

5) Lack of an national independent scrutineer or pollsters. Indeed, Walden O'Dell, CEO of Diebold (which ran the electronic voting in Florida in 2000) stated his commitment "to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

6) International observors refused entry to large number of polling stations.

7) Over 100 reported instances of fraud and malpractise.

As for being empirical, you seem to have used the wrong adjectives.

All of the above are facts. I can also justly raise questions of the qualitative choices as well. If you do not recognize that there are serious problems with American "democracy" I would suggest that you're being politically partisan on the issue.

I would say the same things if Bush were a Democrat, that's for sure.

Re: By whose standards? Maps

[erudito.livejournal.com]

I have been having a long (debate?) with thorfinn about the use of the Diebold machines. That seems fairly clearly, as they say, not good practice.

Long-term features of American democracy like the electoral college can be criticised or supported, but they have hardly stopped it functioning as a pretty effective democracy.

It is, for example, a lot harder to frustrate strong popular preferences in the US than it is in, say, Europe, which is why Europe's electoral results have such interesting features (let's discuss the support for, say, Le Pen).

My 'we'll see' comment was, in the context, expressing pretty clear scepticism that the universal gay marriage ban will actually happen.

Nor is a ban on abortion likely. Even if Roe v Wade is overturned (by no means certain) that would return the issue back to the normal political process, where it should always have been. A majority of Americans support some level of abortion rights. New laws would reflect that.

And so on. Of course democracies can fail. But American democracy survived a Civil War, two World Wars, a decade-long struggle with a rival Superpower. In fact, you can reasonably argue that it was much more democratic at the end of all that. A 51% vote for Dubya is eminently survivable.

Since I don't agree with the line 'the Christian crazies did it', I don't see the result as A New Theocracy Is Upon Us.

In fact, I suggest there is an excellent chance the next President will be a Democrat.

Labor

[erudito.livejournal.com]

I don't think you can really claim that Latham and Labor failed to provide a genuine choice against Howard and the Coalition. It just wasn't a majority-persuasive choice.

I have a lot of sympathy for the notion that Oppositions need to be something other than the Government-lite. After all, why not simply go for the real thing in that case?

But the Australian electorate are small c conservative. You're not going to win by moving even further away from where the majority is at.

The ALP has a genuine problem in cultural politics: there are a range of issues where the private views of Coalition candidates are not only closer to the Coalition voters than the private views of ALP candidates, their closer to ALP voters. Which means, when up against a Coalition leader prepared to play cultural politics effectively, the ALP is going to either have to concentrate on those issues where that is not true or fine some way of dealing with the problem directly.

(Of course, where the Coalition doesn't manage to be anything other than Beaut Bookkeepers, then, absent a financial crisis, the ALP has the definite inside running -- see 6 States and both Territories).

Re: Labor

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Your first paragraph seems to contradict the second - and it's the second I agree with.

You once remarked that the only thing that Labor has thought up in the last thirty years in Medibank/Medicare. And you're right. They lack creative intellectuals (not surprising after what they did to higher education in the late 80s).

The fact that Australia is "small c conservative" is a fact borne by a physical geography which means the source of most information is the Herald-Sun and the Channel Ten news. This is the ersatz public sphere. The fact that Labor panders to this body rather than thinking of ways of reducing its input is an act of short-term self-destruction.

I do have an alternative. ;-)

Re: Labor

[erudito.livejournal.com]

Having operated for some years in political circles where Blame-The-Media was all the rage, I strongly recommend you don't go there. It is both highly misleading and very unproductive.

After all, Reagan won big in 1984 and Dubya won in 2004 with notably hostile press. The monarchists won in 1999 with an unrelentlingly hostile press.

Australians tend to be small c-conservative because the place generally works for them. (And Channel Ten news, when I was involved in a media study of the 1998 campaign, was easily the most pro-Labor, because of the youth/Western suburbs demographic it aims at.) The tabloids play to what sells newspapers.

And I don't believe I was contradicting myself. The Coalition may have an advantage in cultural politics, but being Beaut Bookkeepers means not playing to those advantages. And the working class vote is pretty economically pragmatic. If Labor looks like a better service deliverer and promises not to screw the finances, being Beaut Bookkeepers -- the meanies taking away everyone's candy -- is so not enough.

Re: Labor

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The tabloids play to what sells newspapers.

Exactly. Sensationalist rubbish. Populist nonsense over informed choice. Regardless of who they say people should vote for, they're the people setting the cultural political agenda.

This is what I want to put an end to.

I am not being politically partisan about this, which is the point which you seem to be missing.

Re: Labor

[erudito.livejournal.com]

Working-class culture, particularly in the C19th and early C20th, was rather more 'highbrow' than is the fashion today.

Since then, their education and welfare has been nationalised -- with all the quality and loss-of-control issues inherent in that -- and progressive opinion decided that Western culture was corrupt and needed replacing.

So, surprise, surprise, crass commercialism had a lot less competition.

The problem is not commercialism or even sensationalism, that's just normal and human, (The Guardian et al engage in plenty of sensationalism themselves). The problem is the institutional and cultural context -- which is enormously more dominated by state provision than it was when these things were healthier -- has become much poorer at providing any public alternative.

Which is, of course, in some ways what the myriad personal projects, networks and sub-cultures are about. People wondering off and trying to find their own solutions to issues of meaning.

[caseopaya.livejournal.com]

Ten Thousand Islands play-by-email roleplaying campaign has reached its
second major scene.

Yes, I'm avoiding the politics again, I'm slack. But to get to the point, you REALLY should proof read your game play before you put it up on the web *cheeky grin*

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I probably should, but in the interest in keeping the game going... If I ever need to seriously publish the material, yes I'll check it (or get a certain someone to do it)...

I'm really happy with the way that the game is progressing, actually. It's fun to be involved and it's not too onerous on people.

[caseopaya.livejournal.com]

I know, just teasing. It has been an interesting game so far and should be even more so as things develop

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

although some have questioned the IQ range (all within one standard deviation).

That is perfectly reasonable. With normally-distributed data (which IQ scores are for purposes of this), you'd expect one-third of *individuals* to lie more than 1 SD off the mean. If the numbers given were ratings for 50 individuals, it would be very suspicious indeed that there were no outliers. But they're *not* individual ratings - each of them are averages across a large population.

However, from that page: I originally posted this to a few friends on a forum, using information from a list just like this created after the 2000 election. The list was carried by the St. Petersburg Times and the Economist, amongst others. The IQ data was originally attributed to the book "IQ and the Wealth of Nations", though I checked and couldn't find them in the current edition... The Economist could not independently verify the IQ data and the retraction can be found here.

In other words, it's even less credible than most things that rely on IQ scores...

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

But they're *not* individual ratings - each of them are averages across a large population.

Quite so. However, high school graduation rates in the United States also vary from 93% (Iowa) to 54% (Georgia). So whilst suspicious of the figures, I am not prepared to totally write them off.

[excessivepurple.livejournal.com]

I'm currently working on a distribution based on votes and high school graduation

Please post when you're done! Not that high school graduation == intelligence, by any means, but it would definitely make that correlation more persuasive. "Democracy can only survive through informed decisions", I do like that.

(I'd question whether or not IQ scores == intelligence, either. But that's another kettle of educationally disadvantaged fish.)

And 'troops home by Xmas' wasn't a "core promise" after all...

[greg.livejournal.com]

I've read exits where people with high school diploma or less actually voted higher for Kerry.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I have the table for state-by-state high-school graduation and the state-by-state votes. It's just a case of getting the thing converted into an easy to read table. I should have it finished by tomorrow.

The correlations are as we would expect, although not quite as great as the somewhat suspect "IQ table".

[greg.livejournal.com]

geek

I have full confidence in your table rendering, however, as a graduate with a political science degree, I will only accept graphical evidence and not actual tables. :D

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Please post when you're done!

Most certainly - the entire point is to make it produce something that is more verifiable than IQ scores, which, as you rightly pointed out, are quite suspect.

"Democracy can only survive through informed decisions", I do like that.

The other half of the story, to paraphrase Jefferson, is that it needs to expand and be decentralized every day. Mind you, like Jefferson, I support the idea of every neighbourhood constituting it's own mini-republic.

Beats the hell out of the mass media. ;-)

And 'troops home by Xmas' wasn't a "core promise" after all...

Ahh, it scares me that "core" and "non-core" promises are part of our political parlance... :/

[belegdel.livejournal.com]

Which disturbs you more: The fact that lies (now called "non-core promises") are considered entirely acceptable or that Howard can vomit forth spin to (poorly) conceal his inherent deceiptful nature and that spin is almost instantly absorbed into our political system as accepted practice?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... That's a challenge because the two are so close in a way. I guess the former, because it is after the fact. "Spin" could be after the fact, but it is more a case of trying to market a particular point of view. And all advertising contains falsehood.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

"Democracy can only survive through informed decisions", I do like that.

Ahh, Jefferson again...

"If a Nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be".

[greg.livejournal.com]

Why do you think I'm expating mate!

This is pretty in an eerie sort of way... http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/2004/11/06#286

[smilesnspiders.livejournal.com]

Just wondering if you had heard of the Given the Chance program run by the Brotherhood of St Laurence's Ecumenical Migration Centre offering employment and education pathways for refugees?

I think you would make a great mentor...

www.bsl.org.au/giventhechance if you wanted to know more.

(-:

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I had heard of it, but hadn't had the chance to be comprehensively involved... I have a few good friends in the BSL...

[smilesnspiders.livejournal.com]

I went ot a breakfast briefing about a week and a half ago - it seems to be a really good program producing some wonderful results. The business unit that I am part of will be looking to become actively involved...and pushing for the rest of the company to take up an interest. Our corporate social responsibility is constantly on the table at the moment which is wonderful and to be taken advantage of while the going is good and minds are open.

I am looking to become a mentor personally. See if I can make a difference somewhere along the line (-:

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Gosh, what a nice company you work for! "Corporate social responsibility"... Heavens, those are indeed, rare words these days..

When you get to BSL keep an eye out for Basil Varghese and Julie Kun..

[smilesnspiders.livejournal.com]

I may be a little jaded but I think that it is a bit of a trend at the moment to be looking at social responsibility and the work/home life balance - but it does create an environment for those that are truly interested and passionate about being socially conscientious to have their voices heard. The company is also looking at having 2 days a year available for staff members to be paid to volunteer for a recognised cause or organisation. I think it is a wonderful incentive to get people thinking about life outside of their comfort zone, improving tolerance and understanding/empathy for other people - as well as increasing inter company relationships by adding more links between staff members (-: But I could waffle on about this forever...I will keep an eye and ear out for your friend in my dealings with BSL (-:

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

A happy community creates happy workers which are productive workers.

I think I want work for you ;-)

[smilesnspiders.livejournal.com]

A happy community creates happy workers which are productive workers.

People need to stay concious of that little truth on so many levels (-:

The company that I work for has it's good points and it's bad ones - like any. I am lucky in that I get to help make a real difference in peoples lives, help them to achieve more for themselves (-: Not quite sure that working for accountants would be your cup of tea though (-;

[severina-242.livejournal.com]

I'll have you know that dodgy faux Irish pub has been around years longer than most AND thankfully doesn't have old farm implements on the wall and/or bad paint jobs. In fact the other room is filled with James Joyce stuff. And the occasional instrument ;-)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know it's been around for years. It used to be one the hardest pubs in Melbourne. Leave your guns on the table.

Now, if you want to go to a really bad faux Irish pub, you can't beat Finbar's in Brighton...

[severina-242.livejournal.com]

Been there. Sucks arse.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Quite possibly the worst faux Irish pub I've ever, ever been to. Almost so bad that it's worth an outing to go there for sheer bad taste.

off topic from this thread

[military-chic.livejournal.com]

You Do Rock,Mr Lafayette
thankyou for adding me(you have, i hope??)
the comment you left in my LJ. appreciated. but, "please explain"> does this guy sound like a T-Bag?Danke

Re: off topic from this thread

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

does this guy sound like a T-Bag?

Well, it was well-written, but yes, s/he does sound a bit weak... Or nervous?

I wouldn't ponder too much on it. But I'd check the headers of the email to see where it really came from.

States

[erudito.livejournal.com]

When you're listing categories of Republican-voting States, don't forget also being more philanthropic.