Inductivist

It's always exciting for nerds like me when new GSS data arrives. 2018 is now available. They asked respondents whether they voted for Clinton or Trump. I used logistic regression to determine what predicts voting for Trump (sample size = 904):

Voted for Trump 
Male  .57
Southern region  .33
Black  -3.78
Other race  -1.30
Education  -.11
Income  .01
Church attendance  .16

The coefficients are not standardized, so they can only tell you the direction of the relationships, not the magnitudes. I included age and IQ, but neither one was significantly related to vote choice.  Keep in mind that the relationships are net of the influences of the other factors included in the model, so, for example, age might predict voting for Trump because older people are whiter, wealthier, less educated and more religious, not because they grew up in an earlier era.

So here are the characteristics of people voting for Trump: male, Southern, white, less educated, higher income, with more church attendance. No surprises there. And what mattered the most in order from most to least predictive: 1) white, 2) church attendance, 3) male, 4) education, 5) income, and 6) southern residence.  Trump owes the election to religious, white males, like myself.  You're welcome.

I didn't have data on the impact of Russian colluders.

Presidential election analysts have overlooked the role of religiosity among Republicans. I don't mean evangelicalism, I mean religious commitment. Mormons in Idaho did not like Trump, and data indicates they do not like him in Utah. Some might argue that it's some Mormon peculiarity--their doctrine does give a special status to American Indians (and thus Hispanics)--but I suspect that this is part of a larger pattern. I've been around a lot of religious people in my life. They're often very proper.  They don't like Trump because he's vulgar and unprincipled. The irreligious tend to go the other way--at least non-elites. They love a good dirty joke, they love Howard Stern--Trump's buddy--and are comfortable with having situational values.

The table supports my thinking. These are people who are very or moderately conservative but who hardly ever go to church. They LOVE trump.

How do these pundit frauds get away with it all the time? They constantly claim that Trump cannot win among women, moderates, independents, the young, and Hispanics. I won't address the claim that educated people won't vote for him: Audacious has refuted that repeatedly.

According to the New York Times exit poll of Florida, Trump--going up against Rubio and Kasich squishies--won among women, moderates, independents, and the young. Rubio won among Hispanics, but Trump beat Cruz handily. Among non-Hispanics, Trump destroyed Rubio 49 to 23 percent.

I love this:

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney delivered an impassioned speech last week blasting Donald Trump as a “fraud” who would hand the White House to Hillary Clinton.

But a new poll finds that the 2012 GOP nominee’s attacks might have helped Trump more than hurt him, at least with Republican voters tasked with choosing this year's nominee.

The Morning Consult survey found 31% of registered GOP voters are more likely to vote for Trump given Romney’s speech, while 20% are less likely. Another 43% said it didn’t have an impact either way.

“The poll, which was conducted March 4 through March 6, also finds that only 5% of Trump supporters said they are now less likely to vote for Trump,” the pollster said in a release. “And, of those who voted for Romney in 2012, 30% said they were more likely to vote for Trump, compared to 20% who said less likely.”

Strike the beast, and it just makes him stronger. 

Trump believes in a "business gene."

Check out this link. If I recall, Audacious posted that Trump said he was very smart like his uncle who was a MIT professor, and that he believed in the power of genes. I also heard Trump at some rally using the term "racehorse" to refer to the inheritance of superior qualities. Here he gives a speech today in SC and tells the audience that many of the young people present will probably become successful businessmen because they have the gene for it.

In case you missed it. Is there any better high-profile spokesman for the way we look at things than Ann Coulter?

Reuters asked respondents if, "Donald Trump's recent comments about Muslims offend me." While 70% of Democrats said yes, only 27% percent of Republicans agreed.  Less than half (43%) of independents, perhaps the most important group for deciding the next election, said they were offended.

While elites, including moderate Republicans, flipped out over the idea of temporarily banning Muslims, about half of Americans were not upset about it. Trump has shown more clearly than anyone before that elites and ordinary Americans are very far apart on America First issues.

I wondered if Trump hurt himself with independents, but fewer than half seem to care. If we limit independents to those with at most some college, feeling offended drops to 37%.  So Trump jacks up many voters who feel like American leadership cares more about hostile strangers than its own people, while not turning off too many people that he needs to win.  He seems to be light years ahead of Republican strategists and pundits. And he makes it look easy.  

(Hat tip to Audacious for the link!)

Man, it's weird dusting this thing off.  I still don't have time for a blog, but the Presidential election cycle always gets me jazzed up and wanting to see what the data have to tell us about interesting questions, often political questions.

With the Trump phenomenon, the old "Republicans are stupid people" is back with a vengeance, but the politically correct twist I've heard more of lately is that they are "uneducated."  So is that true?

The General Social Survey asked people who they voted for in 2012.  Here's is the mean vocabulary score--a decent proxy for IQ--for the two groups:

Mean Vocabulary Score

Voted for Romney (n = 421): 6.45

Voted for Obama (n = 615): 6.23


Romney voters were slightly smarter than Obama voters. Now, let's look at mean education:


Mean Years of Education

Voted for Romney (n = 421) 14.45

Voted for Obama (n = 615) 14.23

Again, Romney voters are slightly more educated. It's pretty clear that Trump fans are more working-class than others planning to vote Republican, but liberals constantly make the mistake of thinking that "no more Muslims" is a sign that someone is dumb, when in fact it is a sign that a person happens to not be part of the crowd that is convinced that liberal ideas are a signal of intelligence and enlightenment, and therefore must be adopted. Liberals think these people are sheep, but as Noam Chomsky once said, no group is more sheepish than liberals.