A week or so ago, I described which contender for the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination dominated in each state of the nation, if you take popularity in bumper sticker and button sales as a proxy for committed and public support. The result was a state-centered measure, answering questions like “who has been the most popular contender in Nebraska?” But it’s also possible to ask a different question, a candidate-centered question, that still takes state trends into account, such as “in which states is support for Hillary Clinton strongest?”
To answer this second question, we need a different measure. It can’t be simply the number of bumper stickers and buttons supporting Hillary Clinton, since that number will be mostly influenced by the different numbers of people living in states like, say, California and South Dakota. Indeed, our measure should take that into account. Let’s start by measuring a few things:
p(c)(s) = Proportion of ALL button and bumper sticker sales supporting Hillary Clinton that come from a particular state
p(p)(s) = Proportion of the population of the United States that lives in that particular state
We can compare the two by taking their ratio, p(c)(s) divided by p(p)(s). If p(c)(s) is bigger than p(p)(s), the ratio will be greater than 1, which will mean that more of the items supporting Hillary Clinton were sold to people in a given state than we would have expected by chance alone. If, on the other hand, p(p)(s) is bigger than p(c)(s), then the ratio will be less than 1, which will mean that fewer of the items supporting Hillary Clinton were sold to people in a given state than we would have expected by chance alone.
To take a concrete example, from March 2 to August 9, 2005 2.1% of all bumper stickers and buttons supporting Hillary Clinton were sold to people in the state of Maine. Yet Maine holds only 0.45% of the people living in the United States. You can eyeball these two numbers and notice that Maine took nearly five times the share of bumper stickers as we would have expected by chance alone. To formalize that idea, you the first number by the second and get 4.66667, a result telling us the same thing more precisely. In the same period, another 2.1% of all bumper stickers and buttons supporting Hillary Clinton were sold to people in the state of Illinois. However, Illinois holds a full 4.3% of the people living in the United States. The ratio of the two numbers is 0.488, which we can read to mean that only a bit less than half as many (48.8% to be precise) sales of pro-Clinton bumper stickers and buttons went to Illinois as we would have expected by chance. The bottom line: Hillary Clinton’s candidacy is hot in Maine, but not in Illinois.
Running these calculations, sorting the results into five categories, and graphing them on a map, we get the following pattern:
I’d like to hear your reflections on these trends. What’s striking to me is the big pink/red hot stripe running right down the country’s midsection. If I’m reading it right, that tells me that support for Hillary Clinton comes disproportionately from the middle of America. Interesting.
I find this stuff interesting, but maybe that’s just me. Would anyone else be interested in seeing similar state-by-state trends for the other Democratic contenders for the 2008 presidency?
Why is Irregular Times pushing Hilary so much? I will vote for her if she gets the nomination, but I’m sure we could pick someone else with out the baggage that she has (which would be all we hear about for the following 8 years). Aren’t there any other women?
We’re not pushing Hillary Clinton at all, much less so much. We just ran a piece on her a couple of weeks ago in which we accused her of the most base pandering. And, finally, we do sell stickers regarding other women candidates. I used her as the first example among many possible candidates for which you might describe this sort of trend because, empirically speaking, she is the most popular Democratic contender right now (see my post at the beginning of the month for verification of this).
Where do you get the idea that we are pushing Hillary Clinton as a candidate — that, namely, we like the idea of her as president? Really, where do you get that from?
I concur, Jim. There’s a big difference between reporting information and arguing in favor of a particular candidate or idea. Trust us, Dave, when we’re in favor of a candidate, we’ll say so, very clearly.
In answer to your question at the bottom of the post, I’d be interested in seeing more about other candidates. I can’t stomach Hillary at all. The question is not whether she has or can accomplish anything; that much is a given, based on the support and un-earned media attention she’s received. The real question is: what is her motivation? Would she ever honestly tell us that?