National Average Trending: An Incredible Waste of My Life

[Beet]

Alcon, are you going to continue doing this in light of Dave's generated maps?

If so, I love what you're doing, but won't you be underestimating the Republican trend disproportionately in counties where Nader was popular in 2000? You probably realize this, but given that you're spending so much time on it, and I was a little confused as to your algorithim, I thought it might be best not take a chance... so this is what I mean:

Suppose County A, Gore gets 47.25, Bush gets 46.75, and Nader gets 5, in 2000. Gore is up about 0.5 here, and he is up 0.5 nationally, so the normalized score is zero.

Suppose County B, Gore gets 50.25, Bush gets 49.75, and Nader gets nothing. The normalized score is again zero.

In 2004/County A, Kerry gets 49.75, Bush gets 50.25, and Nader falls off the ballot. Now Bush is up about 0.5, and assume he is up 2.5 nationally for the sake of simplicity, so the normalized score is -2 for Bush. By my understanding of your algorithim the county trends Bush by (-2)-0=-2.

In County B, Kerry gets 49.75, Bush gets 50.25, again the normalized score is -2. By my understanding of your algorithim this county exhibits an identical trend, away from Bush by (-2)-0=-2.

Is this correct? If this is a wrong intepretation of your algorithim, my apologies.
But I hope you can see, given this algorithim considered here, there's a strong argument for saying that County A trended more stronger towards "the right" or towards the GOP, than County B, making the not-so incredible (IMO) leap that a majority of Nader voters would have strongly preferred Kerry to Bush in 2004. Yet this is not picked up in the data; for the pure county/national comparison, this is significant for all counties that deviated from the national mean percentage Nader vote in 2000; but for the trend it is only important for those counties that Nader did particularly well in, in 2000. There may be some distortions in that regard?

[Beet]

Yes, this does tend to overestimate the trend.  This should not be regarded as a liberal/conservative trend.  At best it is Democratic/Republican trend.  This is very true in areas where Nader did well - a lot of them were just Nader voters moving to Kerry.

I suppose Democratic vs. Republican would probably be best.  Dave might reconsider, if it is not too hard, doing it with the two-party comparison instead.

Well I suppose Dave can do it in a lot of different ways without too much difficulty, if he wants to. I was thinking more along the lines of just looking at the percentage Bush vote, forget about the Democratic vote altogether. Since the libertarian party has been pretty marginal in both 2000 and 2004, I think that would give a more accurate picture of things.

[Beet]

Yes, this does tend to overestimate the trend.  This should not be regarded as a liberal/conservative trend.  At best it is Democratic/Republican trend.  This is very true in areas where Nader did well - a lot of them were just Nader voters moving to Kerry.

I suppose Democratic vs. Republican would probably be best.  Dave might reconsider, if it is not too hard, doing it with the two-party comparison instead.

Well I suppose Dave can do it in a lot of different ways without too much difficulty, if he wants to. I was thinking more along the lines of just looking at the percentage Bush vote, forget about the Democratic vote altogether. Since the libertarian party has been pretty marginal in both 2000 and 2004, I think that would give a more accurate picture of things.

I suppose, although Nader would still make things bothersome, wouldn't he?

I'm tired, so forgive me if I don't make sense. 

Yes he would, . There's really no way to get rid of the problem altogether.

If we take Nader as a true third party where we don't know how his partisans would have behaved, taking the two-party total as the denominator is a better estimate; because you would see a massive surge in the Bush vote where Nader did well in 2000; just on account of him not being on the ballot or collapsing.

On the other hand if we assume Nader as just another "arm" of the left (if not the Democrats), then it makes sense to look just at the Bush vote and take Nader+Dems as a single homogenous entity representing the "left-of-center". In this case there would still be a slight bias, relatively smaller.

So I guess it all depends on the assumptions.

[Beet]

I'm afraid I was operating on the (apparently) wrong assumption of a left-right linear model, such that the important measure is not Democratic vote but "left-wing" vote, and that Green voters (2000) represented a "left" vote so that their total would more accurately be counted as such rather than excluded altogether. If that is not the case, ala Dave's New Hampshire example, then of course no conclusion can be drawn from people who voted Nader. It seems a bit counter-intuitive to me though it's probably the wisest thing to do.

[Beet]

How do you know it was a 9/11 trend effect though? While it's a plausible explanation, has anyone actually gathered any evidence for this? I mean, the biggest GOP shifts were in Rhode Island and New Jersey, not New York. A lot of these northeastern areas voted Republican before Clinton, it could just be the fact that neither Clinton nor Gore was on the ticket.