This is fascinating.
what the geographic numbers do show is that the specific subset of Mr Trump’s voters that won him the election—those in counties where he outperformed Mr Romney by large margins—live in communities that are literally dying.
That is: Measurements of public health outperform non-college whiteness as an indicator of Trump voting.
Thoughts on why?
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21710265-local-health-outcomes-predict-trumpward-swings-illness-indicator
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21710265-local-health-outcomes-predict-trumpward-swings-illness-indicator
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i think the thoughts in this article sum up a lot http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/
ReplyDeletecracked.com - How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind
Todd Sprang I've read this. A month ago. It doesn't use science, it used speculation. Its also simply not true to fact.
ReplyDeleteyou asked for "thoughts"?
ReplyDeleteCould it just be a combination of young people tend to be healthier than old people, black people tend to be healthier than white people and women tend to be healthier than men?
ReplyDeleteI can't think of any other reason why people who tend to value short term indulgence over long term gain would chose to vote Trump.
Brian Ashford Huh! They said the math controls for age.... as well as race, education, sex, income, marital status, immigration and employment! That's a lot of variables!
ReplyDeleteTodd Sprang Sure, and feel free to share yours on why more illness prone counties are more likely to vote for DT, as opposed to posting links to antiquated and wrong thought pieces.
ReplyDeletepoverty correlates highly to poor health. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=poverty+and+poor+health+a+correlation&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiEtOD1irrQAhUDKyYKHVsfBQAQgQMIGTAA the supposedly wrong-thinking article discusses why one formerly-rural-and-impoverished-town person thinks the poor (read "unhealthy") voted DT.
ReplyDeleteor are you just asking why education wasn't as good a predictor as illness? not sure i'd tease apart the under-education/bad-health/poverty in middle america.
scholar.google.com - Google Scholar
Todd Sprang Have you read the article I posted? It specifically mentions they control for race, education, age, sex, income, marital status, immigration and employment. I don't have their full methodology, but the point is counties that're alike on these other axes are more likely to vote DT if they have more illness.
ReplyDeleteBrian Ashford Also, I mean, illness isn't the same thing as indulgences. I'm not sure what you mean by that.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols No, I know there's more to it than that. I was being facetious.
ReplyDeleteIllness in the family means a loss of hope, and despair setting in. Lots of people in the grieving process, rich or poor, tend to lash out at the world they see as unjust.
ReplyDeletethere was an article to read? i only read headlines!
ReplyDeleteyes i read the article. that's an awfully long list of things to control for, no? i am very curious about their [lacking] methodology. how could someone control for things that appear so commonly correlated? i'm not an economist, so maybe it's possible, but i have real doubts. at least in my world, changing 1 variable can have a huge impact. i gotta keep coming back to the well-established conflation of poor education, poverty and bad health.
so i just don't trust the article is what i'm saying. i admit much ignorance around economics. yet i think "the economist" might be wrong in saying illness alone is the indicator.
maybe it is just age, since health declines, but oh they adjusted for that too, so... yeah i don't buy it.
Dianne Harris Interesting! I wonder what'd happen if they tracked other terrifying life events. Maybe the percent of people who, in the last year, had a diagnosis of a serious illness, stroke, death of a family member, divorce. That is, I wonder how correlated having shitty things happen in your life is to voting for the destruction and despair.
ReplyDeleteBrian Ashford I'd argue that trump is the personification of short term indulgence at the expense of long term improvement. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of folks that looked at trump on the podium and though "that's me"
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