Digging into the State Story in the Rust Belt

We've already seen that on the national level, the story of the 2016 Presidential election was simply that the rough trend continued, with turnout approaching the norm.

As more analysis on the state specific level comes in, particularly with regard to the states that defied conventional wisdom, we can now get a more data-backed analysis of what happened there:

"4. The real story—the one the pundits missed—is that voters who fled the Democrats in the Rust Belt 5 were twice as likely either to vote for a third party or to stay at home than to embrace Trump."

-- from The Myth of the Rust Belt Revolt

The supposed flight of working class voters to Trump just didn't fit, as some had already guessed just from looking at the overview, particularly in income bracket totals. Instead, it was that people who'd previously shown a leaning towards Democrat decided for whatever reason that they weren't going to vote for a front-runner this year.

And since this change wasn't well reflected in the general trend of polls leading up, we can figure a good bit of it was a last minute change. Exit polls don't tell us much about the specific reasons why there, so it's hard to get more than speculation on the full details spurring such a turn.

Perhaps that last minute flurry of attacks on the Democratic candidate among "fake news" outfits?

And just how much of it was because of Comey's unconventionally timed interference?

Taxes Are Pro Growth

Will we ever get people to stop pretending lower and lower taxes are somehow more and more "pro growth"?

Infrastructure spending is pro growth.

R&D spending is pro growth.

Educating the labor pool is pro growth.

Setting safety standards is pro growth.

Grants to startups are pro growth.

Safety nets mitigating risks are pro growth.

Redistribution so all can spend is pro growth.

All of these things tend to come from taxes. Maintaining at least moderate taxes is pro growth. Increasing taxes on those of us with more tends to be pro growth.

Lowering taxes is anti-growth, unless it's strictly done only for those who already lack a surplus.

Broad Stroke Story of The Election: National Versus State

In broad strokes, the national-level story of the United States 2016 Presidential election could be described as that the rough trend continued.

	D/VAP	R/VAP	Avg/VAP
1996	0.2409	0.1992	0.2200
2000	0.2431	0.2405	0.2418
2004	0.2689	0.2826	0.2757
2008	0.3022	0.2607	0.2815
2012	0.2802	0.2590	0.2696
2016	0.2575	0.2487	0.2531

There was a swing up between the mid 90s and the mid 00s. The Democratic and Republican percentages of the voting age population (VAP) both increased in 2000 and 2004, with a much bigger Republican increase in 2000.

Then there was a transition in 2008. That year, the Democrats had a much bigger increase equivalent to the Republican jump of 2000. Meanwhile, the Republican turnout began sliding down.

And now we're in a swing down in the 10s. The Democratic and Republican percentages of the voting age population both decreased in 2012 and 2016.

Where will we go from here? For both parties, the percentage of the VAP in 2016 was still up from what either party saw in 1996 and 2000. Considering the past two decades on average, we can't really say there was low turnout in 2016; just not quite as high as the peaks. Both candidates this year got a higher percentage of the potential vote -- more support -- than even the winning candidates from 16 and 20 years ago. We'd have to go back to 1984 to find a higher percentage of the VAP turning up for the two major parties; and that was the only higher year between 1980 and 2000. Based on the trend of the last 10 elections, we're likely only approaching the valley and barring some particular phenomenon drawing more people out to vote we'll likely see yet another decline in overall turnout next Presidential election.

If there's one thing we can say from the overall national trend, it's that the narrative of unenthused voters doesn't really fit. We've heard claims that voters were particularly disinterested in these candidates. Yet what drop there was this year was only in keeping with the direction of the past few elections. The turnout / VAP in 2016 remained over the average for the last 10 elections.

There also quite clearly was no national surge whatsoever toward the Republican party. On the contrary, the Republican specific turnout was yet again down slightly, just like in the previous election. In fact, this year's Republican turnout brought it low enough at 24.87% to be below the 25.47% average Republican turnout for the last 10 elections.

Democratic turnout also was only down this year by about the same degree it was down the previous Presidential election. And that was only returning it towards the rough trend, smoothing out from previous big gains. The 2016 Democratic turnout of 25.75% remained slightly above the 24.92% they've seen for the last 10 elections.

By and large, the nation continued a return towards trend. The Republican party dipped slightly below their average; and the Democratic party remaining slightly above. There may have been changes in the character of each party's support, such as the widely reported gains among the less educated for Republicans and among the more educated for Democrats. But these qualitative fluctuations did not budge the totals from the previous quantitative heading nationally.

If there's a major story specific to this 2016 Presidential election that differs from the typical trend of the previous years, it would have to be at the state-by-state level. It isn't just that a few states decided the election in the electoral college; it's also that what happened in those particular states and the states that went the other way from them would together have to be the entire story of how this election might differ from the norm in voting.


* Popular vote totals used for the above analysis were derived from Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections as of 11/28/2016.

Broad Stroke Story of The Election: National Versus State

In broad strokes, the national-level story of the United States 2016 Presidential election could be described as that the rough trend continued.

	D/VAP	R/VAP	Avg/VAP
1996	0.2409	0.1992	0.2200
2000	0.2431	0.2405	0.2418
2004	0.2689	0.2826	0.2757
2008	0.3022	0.2607	0.2815
2012	0.2802	0.2590	0.2696
2016	0.2575	0.2487	0.2531

There was a swing up between the mid 90s and the mid 00s. The Democratic and Republican percentages of the voting age population (VAP) both increased in 2000 and 2004, with a much bigger Republican increase in 2000.

Then there was a transition in 2008. That year, the Democrats had a much bigger increase equivalent to the Republican jump of 2000. Meanwhile, the Republican turnout began sliding down.

And now we're in a swing down in the 10s. The Democratic and Republican percentages of the voting age population both decreased in 2012 and 2016.

Where will we go from here? For both parties, the percentage of the VAP in 2016 was still up from what either party saw in 1996 and 2000. Considering the past two decades on average, we can't really say there was low turnout in 2016; just not quite as high as the peaks. Both candidates this year got a higher percentage of the potential vote -- more support -- than even the winning candidates from 16 and 20 years ago. We'd have to go back to 1984 to find a higher percentage of the VAP turning up for the two major parties; and that was the only higher year between 1980 and 2000. Based on the trend of the last 10 elections, we're likely approaching the valley if not having bottomed out for the current downswing.

If there's one thing we can say from the overall national trend, it's that the narrative of unenthused voters doesn't really fit. We've heard claims that voters were particularly disinterested in these candidates. Yet what drop there was this year was only in keeping with the direction of the past few elections. The turnout / VAP in 2016 remained over the average for the last 10 elections.

There also quite clearly was no national surge whatsoever toward the Republican party. On the contrary, the Republican specific turnout was yet again down slightly, just like in the previous election. In fact, this year's Republican turnout brought it low enough at 24.87% to be below the 25.47% average Republican turnout for the last 10 elections.

Democratic turnout also was only down this year by about the same degree it was down the previous Presidential election. And that was only returning it towards the rough trend, smoothing out from previous big gains. The 2016 Democratic turnout of 25.75% remained slightly above the 24.92% they've seen for the last 10 elections.

By and large, the nation continued a return towards trend with the Republican party dipping slightly below their average and the Democratic party remaining slightly above. There may have been changes in the character of each party's support, such as the widely reported gains among the less educated for Republicans and among the more educated for Democrats. But these qualitative fluctuations did not budge the totals from the previous quantitative heading nationally.

If there's a major story specific to this 2016 Presidential election that differs from the typical trend of the previous years, it would have to be at the state-by-state level. It isn't just that a few states decided the election in the electoral college; it's also that what happened in those particular states and the states that went the other way from them would together have to be the entire story of how this election might differ from the norm in voting.


* Popular vote totals used for the above analysis were derived from Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections as of 11/28/2016.

Eichenwald on How

In Opinion: The myths that cost Democrats the election

Awash in false conspiracy theories, protest voters and angry non-voters put Trump in the White House.

newsweek.com|By Kurt Eichenwald

Before And After

November Elections

In November of 1932, eighty-four years and two days before the 2016 American election, the majority of the German people did not do anything quite like the way hindsight and simplification might make it look. Combined, just slightly more of the German electorate voted for the next two parties than voted for the Nazis. In total, a hair over twice as many people voted for the total of all other parties than voted for the NSDAP (that is, the Nazis). However, this doesn't make it just a matter of what the mere 1/3 who voted for Hitler's party chose.

By and large, what the German people did was fail to unite against the Nazis.

But their grave error wasn't one of failing to vote for a party and its leader who we all now know would commit all the horrors of the Holocaust. Their disgrace came not from the things they didn't know then but from failing to recognize all the relatively little bad that was quite clear at the time. Back then, nobody knew it would mean the atrocity of slaughtering millions and a permanent national disgrace to fail to unite behind the most viable alternative.

They knew the Nazi leader winked at the violence of his party and maybe even encouraged it.

They knew he attacked his nation's negotiated treaties.

They knew his party embraced an ideology favoring one particular race and xenophobic of others.

They knew he used anti-Semitism in his campaign.

They knew his party opposed women being in the workplace, pushing that they stay home producing children.

They knew he'd botched his preferred line of work and essentially gone bankrupt.

They knew about his failed coup.

They saw all his various campaign attacks on people and groups.

They had a pretty good idea he was more than a bit unhinged.

Trump's RCP Average Favorability as of 11/8/2016: 37.5%

And sure, it was only the worst 1/3 of them that embraced him despite all of that.

But the majority of the German people knew all of this and failed to consider it sufficiently crucial for them to unite to keep Hitler and his party out of power. They considered it more important that they not vote for a party other than their particular preference. Or that they punish a party they usually preferred but that hadn't made everything better fast enough.

They saw a lot of warning signs. And they failed to stop it. And that's more than bad enough.

It would have been more than bad enough even if the Hitler of 1932 hadn't eventually become the Hitler of the later 1930s through the mid 1940s. The Hitler of 1932 was not then the Hitler of later history. But what was known in 1932 should have been plenty to unite to stop the Nazis from ever attaining power.

Bookish

Maybe there's something we need to fix as a country when one of the candidates is being warned not to come off as too bookish.

— Guy Endore-Kaiser (@GuyEndoreKaiser) September 27, 2016

Blackford on Friedman

Blackford on Friedman and the need to strenuously denounce pseudo-science,

"This may seem to make sense to an engineer who wishes to learn the current state of the art of bridge building, or to an ideologue who wishes to provide a logical foundation for his or her most cherished delusions irrespective of the circular reasoning and false assumptions upon which that logic is based, but this is not science!  If physical scientists had taken this approach to science throughout the course of history—relying on “folklore” and “the tenacity with which hypotheses are held” and on those who have been exposed to “the ‘right’ scientific atmosphere” as they ignored the realism of assumptions—we would still be living in a Ptolemaic universe cataloging the situations in which Aristotle’s assumptions do and do not work.

"Friedman is quite wrong in his assertion that there is a “thin line . . . which distinguishes the ‘crackpot’ from the scientist.”  That line is not thin.  It is the clear, bright line that exists between those who accept arguments based on circular reasoning and false assumptions as meaningful and those who do not. This should be obvious, yet there are economists who hold tenured positions at prestigious universities and responsible positions in government agencies and international institutions who accept Friedman’s nonsense as gospel. ..."

To wit, economics needs more effort invested in housecleaning, in pointing out those like Friedman's followers who like the emperor believe themselves attired in finery yet in reality wear no clothes.

Red Implications

Anyone else suspecting that -- aside from the direction of the US Supreme Court for the next several decades -- the 2016 US Presidential election will also determine whether Ukraine gets annexed by Russia in 2017 or not?

And who wants to bet Putin would stop there?

Commonsense

from President Obama's remarks in PBS video, June 2, 2016:

"First of all, the notion that I or Hillary or Democrats or whoever you want to choose are hell-bent on taking away folks’ guns is just not true.
And I don’t care how many times the NRA says it. I’m about to leave office. There have been more guns sold since I have been president than just about any time in U.S. history. There are enough guns for every man, woman and child in this country.
And at no point have I ever, ever proposed confiscating guns from responsible gun owners. So it’s just not true.
What I have said is precisely what you suggested, which is, why don’t we treat this like every other thing that we use? I just came from a meeting today in the Situation Room in which I got people who we know have been on ISIL Web sites, living here in the United States, U.S. citizens, and we’re allowed to put them on the no-fly list when it comes to airlines, but because of the National Rifle Association, I cannot prohibit those people from buying a gun.
This is somebody who is a known ISIL sympathizer. And if he wants to walk in to a gun store or a gun show right now and buy as much — as many weapons and ammo as he can, nothing’s prohibiting him from doing that, even though the FBI knows who that person is.
So, sir, I just have to say, respectfully, that there is a way for us to have commonsense gun laws. There is a way for us to make sure that lawful, responsible gun owners like yourself are able to use them for sporting, hunting, protecting yourself, but the only way we’re going to do that is if we don’t have a situation in which anything that is proposed is viewed as some tyrannical destruction of the Second Amendment. And that’s how the issue too often gets framed."

We Now Have More Examples of Libertarianism In Practice, But It Still Isn't Modern Economic Theory

For quite a while, the best example we could give fans of Ayn Rand regarding how their libertarian notions would work out in practice might have been Somalia. But, as Denise Cummins outlines in "What Happens When You Believe in Ayn Rand and Modern Economic Theory," recent times have seen at least two more examples: Sears and Honduras.

If there's one obvious quibble with Cummins' work there, it's in too blithely describing libertarianism as "modern economic theory" and equating libertarians with economists. While there are all too many libertarians who claim to be economists, there are quite a few economists who feel that these libertarians' claims are shaky (at least without inserting the adjective "shoddy" or at least "misguided" in front of "economists" when speaking of the libertarian ones). And there's strong argument that rather than "modern economic theory", libertarian would better be described as a throwback to neoclassical or Walrasian economics (albeit with some updating via Friedman). Friedman's Randian apologetics for neoclassical economics do not make it particularly "modern", even if his efforts combined with the eager fanboys of Rand have made libertarianism all too popular.

Running Government Like a Corporation

Former factory site in Flint by Blueskiesfalling

In the wake of the Flint leaded water scandal, we're seeing many decrying "running government like a corporation" or "running government like a business".

It goes deeper than that. The problem isn't just that we've got people trying to run government like it's a for-profit institution with no concern that should be weighed higher than cost savings. The problem starts with that so many of our businesses run that way. It doesn't work for corporations either. At least not in the long run.

Wages account for a lot of the budget the typical businesses. What happens when an employer is consistently stingy with salaries? They have trouble attracting top talent and maintaining morale.

Another big cost is quality materials. What happens when a company skimps on the quality of materials from which to make their goods? The quality of their products suffers, and customers eventually learn to avoid their products.

Then there's research. What happens when a company puts less into research than its competitors? It falls behind and its product line eventually stops appealing to buyers.

The illustrations could go on and on. In so many ways, a business that uses cost cutting and profit maximizing as a large part of its strategy sets itself up for being a short term success that will fold in the medium to long run.

We don't just need to "stop running government like a corporation". We need to stop running government like a mismanaged corporation in which the short-term profits are being maximized to earn big compensation bonuses for the CEO at the cost of the long term strength and stability of the corporation. And maybe just as important, we need to stop running businesses that way too.

December Just The Tail Of The Fed's Iceberg?

Did the Fed make a mistake in December?

Or is it more accurately put as David Beckworth tells it, "The Fed did not make a mistake in December. It made a mistake all last year by talking up interest rate hikes and signalling a tightening of future monetary policy."

Cognitive Dissidents of Cognitive Dissonance

A more recent Barry Ritholtz article spurred re-reading of his entry from Jan 6th, 2016 remarking on the Big Short, and those of us frustrated by recurring myths can at least take some enjoyment in his prose. At least for some of us, worth a second read.

"These false claims, however, delight fans of cognitive dissonance, and they provide us with a textbook case of what occurs when facts intrude on an ideology that has failed real-life tests. Indeed, some of the people who helped cause the crisis are the biggest proponents of this counternarrative: radical deregulators, free-market absolutists and others simply couldn’t accept the facts, and rather than change their belief systems, they simply refuse to reckon with reality. The psychology behind this is well-understood: The reason to ignore a mountain of facts aligned against an ideological narrative is the brain’s refusal to cope with the possibility that a deeply held belief system might be wrong."