How Democrats, Republicans compare

Correlation is not causation.

Sure, people who are wealthier and live in more stable societies tend to vote Democrat; but that doesn't mean that electing Democrat representatives causes the societies to be wealthier and more stable.

Working hard and being wealthy are also correlated, but that doesn't imply that you can cause people to work hard by giving them lots of money.

(Lest anyone accuse me of political bias here: If I was in the US, I would be voting Democrat, just like the author.)

Attempting to measure the performance of a political party statistically and without being influenced by the personalities involved is interesting and new. The particular approach described is horrendously flawed, but it seems possible that there is good discussion to be had in proposing a better methodology.

Flag it if you think it's off-topic, and then something mysterious and not well documented might or might not happen. Personally, I decided it merited neither an upvote nor a flag.

Not that I disagree with the conclusion of the article, but I bet you can come up with an equally impressive set of stats showing the Republican party coming out ahead. If the article wasn't so one sided it would have been stronger.

From a glance, his deficit and job growth assessments are likely sensitive to definitions -- what's the first year that counts for an administration? was Ford part of the Nixon administration? etc. -- and assumptions about lag effects. (Were the 70s a hangover from the 60s boom? The 00s from the 90s? How much of a ding should Obama, GWB, Reagan get for 09-10, 01-02, 81-82? Does Vietnam belong to Kennedy, Johnson, or Nixon?)

The reasoning about state-by-state indicators and presidential-party preferences is very bogus; you couldn't turn 'red' states into 'blue' states by adopting blue-state policy preferences; for one thing, the red states can't afford them! (Some of those preferences are luxuries purchased with wealth, rather than the original causes of wealth.)

Also consider the following: richer people lean Republican, but richer states lean Democrat. People with high school diplomas are more Republican than those without... but states with higher levels of high-school graduation are more Democratic. Same with undergraduate degrees.

These counterintuitive results for the aggregates are all examples of Simpson's Paradox:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

> What's the correlation between the budget deficit and the party in congressional control?

None. Because the factor is actually the interaction between executive and legislative. When republicans have both seats, they have marching orders and follow them to the letter leading to rubberstamping of whatever the other seat wants and budget deficit increases.

When democrats control both seats, pretty much the same historically (might have changed with the Obama administration because Obama's house shows a distinct lack of balls and dem congresspeople haven't found their spine in the 15 years they've been looking for them).

Rep+Dem and Dem+Rep theoretically lead to the same thing, which is the necessity for "bipartisanship" (== exchanging favors actually), limiting the excesses of either side (Clinton admin).

Except now you have to get the current behavioral factors:

* Democrat congresspeople haven't had a spine in 15 years at least (since Reps got congress back in 1994), when faced with the GWB administration they mostly did nothing, from half cowardice and half political calculation (the GWB admin was not getting any better, letting it sink 2 more years and shifting any and all blame to the first 6 years would ensure a sweep in 2008)

* Republicans have gone completely batshit insane, they're practicing scorched-earth politics and since ~2007 they're not just pandering to the most insane side of their base, they're pandering solely to it. This voyage started with the Southern Strategy, Reagan's rhetorics gave it a sharp acceleration, GWB and 9/11 propelled into orbit and after 2007 finally got outside of sanity's gravitational well.