Do NAMs actually Make a Difference in Voting?
In recent years, the Hispanic population increase has spurred discussion of their commensurate political power. This article enthusiastically states:
To answer this question, I first obtained racial populations (blacks, Hispanics, and non-Hispanic whites) by state. Then, I assumed the political preferences and stances of NAMs, especially blacks, would lean heavily to the left. Example issues include support for affirmative action, diversity initiatives, multiculturalism, welfare programs, unfettered immigration, and African aid. Generally, support for these programs derive mostly from liberal members of Congress. One would assume the more liberal a given politician is, the more likely he would vote for one the programs listed above.
I then looked up non-partisan ratings of Senate members. (If someone is willing to undertake the tedious task of doing so for House members, be my guest. Your results might offer further insight). I obtained these ratings from National Journal, the publication that ranked Obama as the most liberal Senator in 2007.
I then graphed total state NAM population vs Average Liberalism of that state's two Senators. The resulting graph follows:
Surprisingly, the graph represents a completely random relationship (r2 of 0.01) between the two variables. I then looked at just black population vs Senator Liberalism.
Another random relationship (r2 of 0.03). Finally, I considered state black population vs. the most liberal Senator from that state. I hypothesized that possibly one Senator was explicitly voting for black issues and another Senator was opposing him. In this potential case, the black relationship would be canceled out by the other more conservative Senator. The graph follows:
Still a random relationship arises (r2 of 0.02). What conclusion can be made from these somewhat surprising results? Is the MSM incorrect in asserting that black and Hispanic voters will wield more power as corresponding to their populations? Before actually obtaining the data, I had assumed liberalism would be somewhat correlated with NAM population. I surmised two scenarios were plausible. Either NAM populations voted for only liberal politicians or politicians in highly NAM areas pandered to these groups by adhering to liberal perspectives.
From these results, it's also important to consider the white populations of heavily black states. See the following population map:
Notice the most heavily black states are all contained within the Southeast. Much of this area is also filled with strongly conservative, lower-class whites who would assuredly oppose blacks on almost all issues besides those of a religious bent. This could cancel out the large proportion of black voters as these whites would vote largely as a monolith. It's also possible that many of these high black areas also possess the lowest-IQ blacks and these individuals would be unlikely to vote. Thus, their high population density doesn't necessarily translate into actual votes.
But the complete opposite trend is observed in a place with a sizable, but not overwhelming black population, like Delaware. This state has a black population of only 20% (compared to Mississippi with 37% blacks and a maximum liberal Senator score of only 23), yet their maximum liberal Senator is 94. In this case, the white population seems to be dominated by liberals (last three governers have been Democrat), the kind that enact destructive social programs that blacks generally support. Here the white population acts in conjunction with black interests, opposite to a state like Mississippi or North Carolina (22% black and 22 max liberal Senator).
I'll stop here, but the results are rather surprising and point to a possible false assumption amongst the liberal media. Blacks don't seem to have as much independent power as many would believe. Instead, their power lies in recruiting sympathetic whites to buttress their cause. In the Northeast and West Coast, this is a successful strategy. In the South, this tactic largely fails.
If anyone would like to revise or add to this analysis, I'd welcome your feedback. I can send you the Excel spreadsheet with the relevant data.
The country's Hispanic voting population is gaining political ground. What's new in this poll is the growing intensity among Hispanic voters.With the election of Obama, similar sentiments have been expressed regarding black empowerment. This paper assumes a strong black vote will have inevitably positive consequences for blacks:
Black educational objectives will only be achieved if elected officials come to respect the power of an organized black vote.But is all this recent optimism about minority (NAM) enfranchisement actually affecting change? Are the views of NAM populations, especially blacks, being represented by their elected officials?
To answer this question, I first obtained racial populations (blacks, Hispanics, and non-Hispanic whites) by state. Then, I assumed the political preferences and stances of NAMs, especially blacks, would lean heavily to the left. Example issues include support for affirmative action, diversity initiatives, multiculturalism, welfare programs, unfettered immigration, and African aid. Generally, support for these programs derive mostly from liberal members of Congress. One would assume the more liberal a given politician is, the more likely he would vote for one the programs listed above.
I then looked up non-partisan ratings of Senate members. (If someone is willing to undertake the tedious task of doing so for House members, be my guest. Your results might offer further insight). I obtained these ratings from National Journal, the publication that ranked Obama as the most liberal Senator in 2007.
I then graphed total state NAM population vs Average Liberalism of that state's two Senators. The resulting graph follows:
Surprisingly, the graph represents a completely random relationship (r2 of 0.01) between the two variables. I then looked at just black population vs Senator Liberalism.
Another random relationship (r2 of 0.03). Finally, I considered state black population vs. the most liberal Senator from that state. I hypothesized that possibly one Senator was explicitly voting for black issues and another Senator was opposing him. In this potential case, the black relationship would be canceled out by the other more conservative Senator. The graph follows:
Still a random relationship arises (r2 of 0.02). What conclusion can be made from these somewhat surprising results? Is the MSM incorrect in asserting that black and Hispanic voters will wield more power as corresponding to their populations? Before actually obtaining the data, I had assumed liberalism would be somewhat correlated with NAM population. I surmised two scenarios were plausible. Either NAM populations voted for only liberal politicians or politicians in highly NAM areas pandered to these groups by adhering to liberal perspectives.
From these results, it's also important to consider the white populations of heavily black states. See the following population map:
Notice the most heavily black states are all contained within the Southeast. Much of this area is also filled with strongly conservative, lower-class whites who would assuredly oppose blacks on almost all issues besides those of a religious bent. This could cancel out the large proportion of black voters as these whites would vote largely as a monolith. It's also possible that many of these high black areas also possess the lowest-IQ blacks and these individuals would be unlikely to vote. Thus, their high population density doesn't necessarily translate into actual votes.
But the complete opposite trend is observed in a place with a sizable, but not overwhelming black population, like Delaware. This state has a black population of only 20% (compared to Mississippi with 37% blacks and a maximum liberal Senator score of only 23), yet their maximum liberal Senator is 94. In this case, the white population seems to be dominated by liberals (last three governers have been Democrat), the kind that enact destructive social programs that blacks generally support. Here the white population acts in conjunction with black interests, opposite to a state like Mississippi or North Carolina (22% black and 22 max liberal Senator).
I'll stop here, but the results are rather surprising and point to a possible false assumption amongst the liberal media. Blacks don't seem to have as much independent power as many would believe. Instead, their power lies in recruiting sympathetic whites to buttress their cause. In the Northeast and West Coast, this is a successful strategy. In the South, this tactic largely fails.
If anyone would like to revise or add to this analysis, I'd welcome your feedback. I can send you the Excel spreadsheet with the relevant data.
11 comments:
I can think of two explanations off the top of my head:
1. Pervasive racism when the black population gets over a certain percentage.
2. Greater experience with blacks and their levels of criminality and dysfunctional behaviors makes whites resistant to supporting more freebies for blacks.
For the most part, blacks are only liberal on the "Give blacks free stuff" issues. They're generally not down with late-term abortions, gay marriage, sex ed in kindergarten, drug legalization, Chavez & Castro, secularism/Muslim appeasement, sanctuary cities, environmentalism, and all that other hippie bullshit.
Black politicians can waver a bit, and largely do so to fit in with the Democrats. Blacks are fiercely loyal to the Democrats. But regular black voters are hardly liberal at all.
By the way, you need to consider the rampant gerrymandering of congressional districts. Most of the black congressmen are from tailor-made "black" districts.
^mike
Anyway, my point is that just because blacks aren't electing the most liberal senators doesn't mean that they aren't getting their choice of senator.
@ mike:
You raise legitimate points. But look at the issues used to measure "liberalism".
http://nj.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/senate_votes.htm#economic
Economic issues: Blacks would vote for liberal politicians on all those issues.
Foreign Policy: Same thing as above. Watch Rev Wright sermons for evidence of this. Blacks are notoriously liberal on foreign policy.
Social Issues: I would imagine they'd have some conservative views here, but only a few issues are pertinent. They would vote conservative on setm cell research, unborn child, and maybe a couple of others. They would definitely vote liberal on the illegal immigration stuff, the English language bill, anything against Republican persons, government investigation of criminals stuff.
So while your point seems plausible, I doubt that their views on abortion, gay marriage, etc. really would have affected these rankings. Or equivalently, if one ranked the perfect politician for blacks based on these issues, the score would be in the 80's.
"By the way, you need to consider the rampant gerrymandering of congressional districts."
This would only be relevant to the House, not the Senate. Senators are elected by the State as a whole.
I don't have any data to back it up, but my sense is that whites are still in control of pretty much every state as they are better at organizing and voting and also out of inertia from past years.
I think that NAMs have nowhere near the kind of numbers necessary to have significant political control anywhere in the US at the state or federal level.
They do have enough numbers to have an occasional effect. So the media can crow about their growing influence being such a blessing.
However, in my opinion, NAMs (mainly hispanics) will eventually reach a point where they really can seize the reigns of power at a state level. What will happen then? Just look at the governments of cities and towns which are run by NAMs.
"I don't have any data to back it up, but my sense is that whites are still in control of pretty much every state as they are better at organizing and voting and also out of inertia from past years."
This is what I tried to prove. That in states where blacks had a large population, but with an opposing white majority, such as in the conservative Southeast, the black population didn't matter.
The only time their concerns were met was in states where white liberals decided to vote for the same sorts of programs as all the blacks did.
Thus, it's clear that only white yielding will allow blacks to gain political power on a national level.
Black voting doesn't have so much impact because if the Democrats pander too hard to their NAM supporters they will risk losing moderate and centrist white Democrats to the GOP.
However, in my opinion, NAMs (mainly hispanics) will eventually reach a point where they really can seize the reigns of power at a state level.
Over 70% of California voters are white.
The reason McCain lost California had little to do with Hispanics. McCain lost California because the idiot actually managed to lose the white vote to Obama, 50-46%.
Bush only barely won the white California white vote, 48-46%, in 2000.
This is a very interesting article, but it is less effective because you leave out the correlation coefficients between percent NAM and degree of liberalism. Small correlations may be undetectable by just looking at a graph but still be significant. Presumably you are using statistical software to plot these graphs. Surely it must allow you to calculate correlation coefficients.
@ Ian:
I plotted these in Excel. The Rsquared values were around 0 and the other two around 0.02. I guess that shows a very slight relationship, though I doubt it's significant.
If anything, the trendlines were actually slightly negative, so it seems that as black population increases, they have even less power (which means white population is even larger and/or more conservative).
OK, that certainly is not a significant relationship. Couldn't hurt to put those numbers in your article.
Post a Comment