Does ignorance or familiarity breed contempt?

Does ignorance or familiarity breed racism against blacks?

To answer this question, I correlated how cool a white person feels towards blacks with the percent of the population in their region that is black (General Social Survey data). The correlation across nine census divisions is .48--a strongly positive correlation.

In other words, whites who live in areas with more blacks--an indication that one has had more actual experience with blacks--tend to feel cooler toward them.

The data suggests that familiarity breeds contempt, not affection. 

 

Conservatism does NOT predict hatred for blacks, but liberalism STRONGLY predicts hatred for conservatives

Using General Social Survey data, I calculated the correlation between conservatism and feeling cool toward blacks. It's practically non-existent--a trivial .07. Next, I correlated a correlation between liberalism and coolness toward conservatives. It's large--.45.

To put this in plain English, conservatism does NOT predict hatred for blacks, but liberalism STRONGLY predicts hatred for conservatives.

The polls suggest that most of the undecideds will go for Trump

Let's take another look at the Trump v. Hillary polls.

It looked to me like the polls that nudge people toward choosing one candidate or another--as opposed to giving some other answer like undecided, don't know, etc--tend to yield a smaller gap.

I calculated a correlation between the size of the gap and the percentage of people NOT saying Trump or Hillary for the 13 recent surveys listed on either RealClearPolitics or the Huffington Post. I threw them all in there, including the ones I considered to be not-so-great surveys.

The correlation is .38 which means of moderate magnitude. In other words, when techniques are used to get people to take a side, Hillary's lead decreases. When nudged, the uncommitted tend to go for Trump. To illustrate, 23% of Reuters participants fail to give either candidate as their answer, and this poll shows Trump behind by 7 points. With the UPI/CVOTER poll, which managed to get all but 4% to make a choice, Trump came out on top by one point.

So this seems like evidence that the undecideds are leaning Trump, and in the end, most will vote for him. 

These polls are closer to the truth: Gravis, PPP, Rasmussen, YouGov, UPI/CVOTER, LA Times/USC, and Zogby

The Huffington Post has a useful interactive website where you can compare poll results by several factors. I wanted to look a little closer to see if polls tend to be biased against Trump because some supporters are shy about admitting that they plan to vote for him, and that the methods fail to fully capture the enthusiasm for him.

What you see below is the average Hillary lead by poll characteristics:

Partisan/Registered Voters/Live Phone  11.0

Non-Partisan/Registered Voters/Live Phone  6.2
Non-Partisan/Likely Voters/Live Phone  7.3
Non-Partisan/Registered Voters/Non-Live Methods  5.9
Non-Partisan/Likely Voters/Non-Live Methods  4.8

You can see that partisan polls REALLY favor Hillary. Non-partisan polls that are otherwise the same produce a gap that is 4.8 points smaller (11.0 vs. 6.2 points).

Likely voter polls do not necessarily yield smaller gaps than registered polls, so there is no clear evidence here that registered voter polls are failing to capture the greater support for Trump. On the other hand, it is possible that there are more Hillary supporters who say they are likely to vote but won't actually do it because they can't get excited about her.


Finally, there is clear evidence that the gap shrinks when private methods are used so participants don't have to tell real humans their preferences. The gap shrinks .3 points for registered voter polls and 2.5 points for likely voter polls.

So, the most reliable polls use non-live methods. On the other hand, registered voters polls are not necessarily inferior at this point in the race. Still, it makes sense to give preference to likely voter polls since many registered voters will not actually vote. Based on this, the surveys to place the most trust in (at least the ones that come out frequently) are: Gravis, PPP, Rasmussen, YouGov, UPI/CVOTER, LA Times/USC, and Zogby.  Reuters should also be on the list, but my confidence in them has been shaken. The results are sometimes really weird, and of course, we've seen reporting that suggests they monkey with the data. The good polls indicate Trump is down 4 or 5 points.

The best polls indicate a small gap between Trump and Hillary

All the forces that hate Trump--the Dems, the Media, and the NeverTrumpers--are all chanting the phrase that Trump is toast, but the polls have seemed a little off to me for a long time. Audacious has addressed this kind of thing before. The Clinton lead seems to be larger in registered voter polls than likely voter polls, and the gap seems to be smaller with online polls. The first suggests more enthusiasm among registered voters for Trump, and the second suggests that some people might hide their preference for Trump from telephone interviewers.

I created a list of polling companies that were not off by more than an average of 1.5 points in the 2012 election that have also conducted polls in the last two weeks. I predict that the nationwide candidate gap will be largest for telephone surveys of registered voters, and smallest for online surveys of likely voters.

Three polls are live interviews of registered voters--IBD, CNN, and Marist. The mean is a lead of 10.3 points for Hillary.

One poll is an online poll of registered voters--YouGov. It gives Clinton a 7 point lead.

Reuters/Ipsos is the only online poll of likely voters that made my list.  Now Audacious and others have rightly criticized this survey, but I'm assuming they've gotten things straightened out over there. They give Hillary a 4 point lead.

Long story short, Hillary definitely seems to be ahead, but the best methodology produces a small gap between the two candidates, not a large one. And keep in mind that most media polls are of registered voters interviewed by telephone, so the gap is repeatedly exaggerated in the news.

UPDATE:  I checked Reuters latest poll, and it looks like their sample is 44% Democrats and 34% Republicans. That sounds biased to Republicans, but these kinds of numbers are used by polling companies that have been accurate in the past. Evidently, a big chunk of the country has screwy political views, and it's an uphill battle for us to win on the national level.  

Part of the reason Hispanics are so liberal is because they are young

I showed recently that some of the reason that Asians tend to vote Democrat is that they are, on average, younger than whites. Let's now see if this is true of Hispanics. Using GSS data, here are the percentage who voted for Romney in 2012:

Percent Voting for Romney

Hispanics
Ages 18-44  15.5
Ages 45+  24.1

Whites
Ages 18-44  47.8
Ages 45+  49.1

You can see than young Hispanics are very liberal. Older Hispanics are liberal, too, just a little less so.  The mean age of whites in 2012 was 49.4. It was only 40.9 for Hispanics, so they are a much younger group. Conclusion: Part of the reason why Hispanics are so much more liberal than whites is because they are younger, but even if their average age was that of whites, they would still be a liberal group.

Elites vote Democrat, not Republican

I'm tired of the old Democrat myth that the Republican Party is the party of elites. Looking at General Social Survey data, it's not surprising to see that only 24% of high school dropouts voted for Romney in 2012, but how many people with advanced degrees voted for him? A whopping 32%. Most highly successful people vote Democrat because their competitors aren't the poor. Their enemies are America's Middle. They seek an alliance with the poor so they have the numbers to subjugate ordinary Americans.

Support for Trump skyrocketed among religious people post-Orlando

The graph is taken from Reuters Polling. It shows trends among religious people (i.e., those who attend church nearly every week, every week, or more than once a week).

You can see the support for Trump (red line) has bounced around since the beginning of April, but it hasn't been impressive since you would expect religious people to support the Republican nominee. As I wrote before, highly religious people are not enthusiastic about Trump, and I suspect it's because they want their candidate to be straightlaced. (You don't have to be religious to not like Trump -- just stuffy and upright -- atheist George Will doesn't like him either.)

But notice the 13 point jump in support since Orlando. That's a big, fast increase. My guess is that moments like Orlando force religious people to face the fact that there are only two choices: either the next Prez will be Trump or Hillary. And who wants Hillary when ISIS wants to kill you? Trump support among the religious has fallen the last couple days (not shown) so it might take several clarifying moments to get these righteous folks to pull the level for the Donald.

Gay men, but not lesbians, are more likely to favor gun control

With the Orlando shooting, I wondered about gun attitudes among gay people. The General Social Survey asked people if they favored a law requiring people to get a police permit before buying a gun. Here are the percentages in favor:

Men
Gay  82.9
Bisexual  64.3
Straight  65.6

Women
Gay  66.7
Bisexual 60.0
Straight 77.6

Among men, gays are more likely to favor a gun permit law. In fact, the vast of majority of them want it. In contrast, bisexual men are like straight men.

The pattern is different for lesbians: their numbers are similar to those of straight men. Bisexual women shows the LEAST support for gun permits of any group.

The overall pattern is consistent with the view that gay men tend to be psychologically like women, while lesbians are like men. Some of this could be due to the level of exposure to prenatal testosterone. Bisexuals in some ways seem hyper-masculine; turned on by anything that moves.

Asians Americans vote Democrat because they're young (and liberal)

An interesting claim was made by Tantum Malorum on Twitter (where I spend all my time these days).  He said that Asians tend to vote Democrat because they are disproportionately young.  I looked into this with GSS data. The mean age of all voters in 2012 was 52.2. Here are the means for Asian groups listed in GSS:

Mean age
Chinese  51.1
Filipino  42.6
Japanese  45.5 
Indian  48.6
Other Asian  45.0

Mean age for all groups was lower than for the total sample, although it's not much lower for Chinese Americans. Since young people tend to vote Democrat, it could be that Asians are not more inclined to be liberal, they're just younger.

Next, let's look at voting in 2012 for: 1) young Asians, and 2) older Asians. I'm going to add all Asian groups together since sample sizes are so low.

Percent voting for Romney

Ages 18-44  
All voters  32%
Asian voters  25%

Ages 45 and up
All voters  40%
Asian voters  38%

First of all, it looks like the numbers are lower than they should be. GSS oversamples women, so this might be a problem.

Anyway, 25% of young Asians voted for Romney, compared to 32% of all young people. For older Asians, there is only a two point gap with all older voters.

So, it looks like the Asian vote is tilted Democrat because they are a younger population, but they are a little more liberal as well.

The numbers are too small to make much of it, but of the Asian groups, Indians were noticeably more likely to vote for Obama.

Data shows that college liberalizes students

I was curious if college liberalizes students. Common sense tells me it does, but I have seen research that throws doubt on the idea.

Listed below are the mean conservatism scores by year of college for those attending college since 2000 (General Social Survey data).

Mean conservatism

Freshmen  4.04
Sophomores  3.71

Juniors  3.62
Seniors  3.69

Students tend to get more liberal as they move through college. The shift from the freshman to junior year is almost half a standard deviation, which means it is a fairly big change.  So it does look like academics are somewhat successful at their goal of turning our youth into progressives. They seem to have the most luck in the first three years--the seniors are no more liberal than juniors.

Which American groups are the most race-loyal?

In a recent post, I found that race predicts political orientation more strongly than does income for many minority groups. It seems to me that the race/politics link, adjusted for the influence of income, is an indication of the importance of race to that particular group.  If members always look at issues through the lens of their racial group, they will tend to vote in the same way and will vote Democrat, regardless of how wealthy they are.

Based on this line of reasoning, here is a ranking of the most race-loyal, race-conscious (if they were white, the term would be race-ist) minority groups.

Race-consciousness ranking
1. Blacks
2. Mexicans
3. Jews
3. Asian Indians
5. Puerto Ricans
6. American Indians
7. Chinese
7. West Indians
9. Japanese
10. Arabs

Not surprisingly, blacks are the most race-conscious group, but it's interesting that West Indians are much less so. Since Jews are white, you might not expect them them to be ethnocentric at all, but they outrank many nonwhite groups.

Asian Indians are quite race-conscious, as are Mexicans and Puerto Ricans (to their own group, not to the fake category of "Hispanic"). Despite being non-white, Chinese and Japanese Americans seem to be less uptight about race. Arabs are even less ethnocentric. (Keep in mind that many of these Arabs are Christians.)

Hispanic IQ in the United States

Average IQ is a good measure of how well a group will do in the United States. A low IQ accurately predicts more problems in a community. Let's see where various Hispanic groups are at. To set white Americans at a mean IQ of 100, I had to set the mean IQ for all Americans at 96.5. This indicates that US IQ has dropped to a level lower than many European and East Asian countries. The results shown below are limited to Hispanics born in the US, since the measure of IQ is a vocabulary test in English, and foreigners are at a disadvantage.

Mean IQ

White Spanish 100.3
White Cuban 99.2
White Mexican 91.5
Mexican--other race 90.5
White Puerto Rican 90.3
Black Puerto Rican 88.4
Puerto Rican--other race 84.0

The only groups with IQs similar to white Americans as a whole are people who describe themselves as White Spanish or White Cuban. We would expect these folks to assimilate well into mainstream America. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, for example, are white Cubans.

For the remaining groups, the average IQs are much lower, ranging from 84 for non-white Puerto Ricans  to 91.5 for self-described White Mexicans. Many Hispanics consider themselves to be white which ignores the fact that most have some American Indian ancestry. As you can see, the IQ difference between white and non-white Hispanics is small. These groups are much more similar to each other than they are to non-Hispanic whites. At least in terms of IQ, it makes sense to lump white and non-white Hispanics into one group, but white Cuban Americans and those who call themselves Spanish should be lumped in with whites.

Based on average IQ, we expect these Hispanic groups with low numbers to fare poorly in the United States, and since IQ is a stable, highly heritable trait, the poor performance is likely to continue indefinitely.  

 

Race is more powerful than income

Marxists tell us that money is more powerful than anything else. I'm not so sure. Watching the primaries has reminded me of the power of race.

Which predicts voting patterns better: income or race/ethnicity?  I want to compare all large ethnic groups in America, so let's choose Americans (like myself) of English descent as our comparison group since they were mostly likely to vote for Romney in 2012. For the first comparison, let's look at blacks. I ran a regression that includes this racial dichotomy along with income as predictors, voting for Obama over Romney as the outcome variable, and I list the standardized coefficients below:

Black  .60
Income  -.05

Income does not predict voting, but race is an extremely powerful predictor: Blacks were MUCH more likely than English-Americans to vote for Obama. Let's do those of Chinese descent next:

Chinese  .13
Income  -.08

Being Chinese (instead of English) had a stronger effect: It predicted voting for Obama more strongly than did poverty. Now let's look at an important ethnic group: Jews.

Jewish  .23
Income  -.09

Even with the small racial difference, being Jewish rather than English was a much better predictor of voting behavior than income.  We're getting the picture here that race is a more powerful determinant of behavior, at least in the context of politics.

Here are the results for the other racial comparisons (all groups are compared with Americans of English descent):

Mexican  .39
Income  -.13

Japanese  .12
Income  -.13

Asian Indian  .23
Income  -.10

Puerto Rican  .21
Income  -.11

West Indian .13
Income  -.13

Arab  .07
Income -.12

American Indian .18
Income  -.15


You can see that for Mexicans, Asian Indians, Puerto Ricans, and American Indians, race determines political orientation more than income. Race is just about as powerful as class for the other groups.

Economic determinists would predict that the race-voting correlation would disappear when income is controlled, but we see that income is the weaker influence.  Removing the effect of income, minorities seem to vote out of fear, as if their security or values might be undermined if Republicans get too much power.  (I didn't control for urbanness which might be another factor.)

Penis envy is real

Folks, have you noticed how women think men are superior? Let's name male traits: competitive, physical, sports-loving, violent, ambitious, power-hungry, aggressive, sexual, worldly. Compared to when I was a kid in the 70s, women, freed to do what they please, have become more competitive, physical, sports-loving, violent, ambitious, power-hungry, aggressive, sexual, and worldly.

From the sixties, feminists have not claimed that they are the superior sex, and that, therefore, they should remain the same while men become identical to them--the standard of everything desirable.

I guess if men have always thought they were the best, and women betray the same beliefs by their actions, men actually are superior.

Why do white liberals in Red States vote for Bernie?

Why do these predominantly white Red States vote for Bernie in the primaries/caucuses? Is there a polarization that goes on? For example, in my mostly white state, about 60% vote Republican and 40% Democrat. The Republicans tend to be ordinary, religious folks. The Democrats are not religious and tend to be hipsters. I wonder if the progressives prefer the more extreme Democrat candidate because their politics are, in part, a reaction to state domination by conservatives. "I want to be the opposite of those bigoted squares," and Hillary is not a sufficiently extreme contrast. Why else would they vote so differently from their demographically similar neighbors? 

High-decorum Republicans hate Trump

Let me expand on the idea that very religious people tend to dislike Trump.  It's not just religious people. It's what I would call high-decorum folks. There is certain kind of person--or maybe two kinds of people--who place a premium on being associated with high symbols, whether symbols be religious or social.

For the first type, maybe it's more internal. I've met many religious individuals who have high standards and are very proper. I suspect it's a component of conscientiousness, and it's seems like an internally-directed trait.

The other kind of person is more concerned with the opinion of others and is very motivated to associate himself with symbols of high status. If he feels he is being linked to low rent people, he's very uncomfortable.

These traits seem to be part of the story of why some Republicans hate Trump so much while others like him. Sure, ideologies matter, but it looks to me like more is going on. Trump is very distasteful to people who really care about such things. Many ordinary people enjoy what's low and that doesn't get in their way of liking him. I find politics in general to be very ugly and sleazy--a constant con game perfectly made for conmen. I get disgusted at piety and self-righteousness, not sleaze. When people get all exalted with this stuff, my reaction is, what horseshit.

Irreligious conservatives LOVE Trump

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.

Trump wins among demographic groups denied by "experts"

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.

Trump should win AZ

Am I missing something. Conventional wisdom says that no one breaks Trump's way in the last few days. Exist polls from Tuesday by the NYT beg to differ as you can see above.  According to RCP, Trump is up 13 points in AZ with one-third undecided.  If AZ is anything at all like FL, a plurality of late-deciders should go to Trump, and he should win.