In every aspect of life, people have a tendency to look for patterns where none exist. Life is too random for most people to handle. If we don’t try to make sense of even the smallest occurrences, some of us will go mad. This is especially true when the subject at hand involves something serious or tragic, like a child getting diagnosed with cancer, or a random, fatal car accident.
It’s difficult to accept the fact that sometimes, stuff just happens. On the plus side, many have admirably tried to convey that message. You could fill a bookshelf with the number of books written on humans’ misguided attempts to find patterns where none exist, from Gladwell to Gilovich and beyond.
Rarely do we see people try to extrapolate big themes and flashy projections from small sample sizes and random data points more than in sports. Probably half the words I’ve ever written about sports have, in one way or another, been aimed at debunking this line of thinking. Alex Rodriguez isn’t a choker if he struggles in 20 postseason at-bats. Tuffy Rhodes’ three Opening Day homers shouldn’t suggest he’s going to hit 50 home runs in one major league season (in Japan, sure). A hot start by the New York Jets and their apparently bullet-proof defense doesn’t ensure that they’re bound for Super Bowl glory (see, I’m guilty of doing this too!).
If there’s one field that might breed this kind of misguided thinking more than sports, though, it’s politics. The field in general is inundated with analysis, some of it great, but most of it awful. Not two seconds had gone by after Barack Obama won last year’s presidential election that we were drowned in a flood of WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?! stories. In that case, the army of talking heads was justified: Even the world’s biggest cynic would grudgingly admit that Obama rising to office meant something – the public wasn’t happy with the Bush years, people craved change, America was ready for a mixed-race president, America wanted someone in the White House who could hit the open 15-foot jumper, whatever.
But the furor over last night’s odd-year elections was merely a stark reminder of how desperate the 24-hour cable news networks are to find actual news, and how we’re once again guilty of trying to make sweeping statements out of very limited results. The GOP in particular are all too eager to make a huge deal out of last night’s results. As they should be. Any kind of advocacy group should be spinning as hard as possible whenever something goes their way; to have two governorships change hands from Democrats to Republicans certainly qualifies as spinable for the GOP base (never mind that the special election in the NY-23 district went against their man Doug Hoffman, a Tea Party advocate who has less charisma than the orange juice I just slugged down).
But while the GOP has every right to play up last night’s results and make sweeping statements about it, why should the mainstream media follow suit? New Jersey voters in particular made their preference clear: They didn’t like incumbent Democrat Governor Jon Corzine’s track record, and they appreciated the more local and less national approach taken by challenger Chris Christie in his campaign. Meanwhile in New York City, the victory by hybrid Republican/Independent incumbent Mike Bloomberg was a win for going with the devil you know and going against the guy who wanted to turn all of New York City into the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
How the media could extrapolate a couple of mayoral races, a couple of governor races and a handful of secondary elections as a devastating blow to the Obama White House and a sign that cats and dogs are now living together is beyond me. Wait, no it’s not. If you report that the apocalypse is coming, you’re more likely to generate ratings and attract eyeballs. The same philosophy that drove the media to cheerlead for the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars (wars = ratings!!!) is also in play when Chazy, New York is suddenly transformed into the epicenter of the political universe, and not some Canada-bordering village where cops like to stop folks going 7 miles an hour over the speed limit near the start of an eight-hour drive (I hate you, Chazy, New York).
All of this is a long lead-in to the economic analysis that’s come out of yesterday’s elections. ABC News Polling Director Gary Langer tells us that these elections reflected voters’ discontent with the current state of the economy. Sure, that makes sense. The latest unemployment figures, due out Friday, are expected to show 9.9% of Americans filing jobless claims. That number’s higher in New Jersey. Double-digit unemployment is going to make people clamor for change, no matter what else is going on. “It’s the economy, stupid” has always been a driving factor of elections.
But apparently it’s not enough to analyze what happened last night. We need to know how a tiny number of elections now is going to impact a much larger number of Congressional races a year from now. And Mr. Langer apparently has a crystal ball on his desk.
Vast economic discontent marked the mood of Tuesday’s off-year voters, portending potential trouble for incumbents generally and Democrats in particular in 2010.
Is that what it portends? How do we know the economy won’t be on the upswing by this time next year? The most recent GDP results showed 3.5% growth. One could (and I would agree, should) be at least somewhat skeptical about those results, since much of that growth came from one-time stimulus spending and other near-term events. Still, by definition, the U.S. is now out of the recession that plagued the country since late 2007, with initial signs of decline starting a year or more before that, as the housing market peaked. Corporate earnings are on the upswing, thanks to a combination of both cost-cutting in some cases (of both jobs and inventory) and real revenue growth in others. The housing market has bottomed, and is now showing tentative signs of a recovery. Whatever one thinks of the government’s steps to prevent a banking industry meltdown, the fact of the matter is that said meltdown was avoided, and the surviving companies are back to turning hefty profits.
Given those conditions, how can anyone predict with any kind of certainty that Americans will be wildly disenchanted with the economy a full year from now, and that as a result, Democrats will get crushed in mid-term elections? Wouldn’t a more prudent analytical approach be to acknowledge the conditions that led to yesterday’s election results, note that the number of elections was a drop in the bucket compared with what’s to come, note that a lot could change between now and November 2010, and that we’ll just have to wait and see what happens?
Well, sure. But prudent, somber analysis is so boring. Better to go out on a limb and be spectacularly wrong than to be intellectually honest and not make predictions rooted in guesswork and speculation.
UPDATE: Make it three Nate Silver links in one post, as this fivethirtyeight.com entry notes the media’s inability to properly analyze the race, beyond the equivalent of “the Yankees beat the Phillies in Game 6 of the World Series because they scored more runs.”
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A Referendum On What Now?
In every aspect of life, people have a tendency to look for patterns where none exist. Life is too random for most people to handle. If we don’t try to make sense of even the smallest occurrences, some of us will go mad. This is especially true when the subject at hand involves something serious or tragic, like a child getting diagnosed with cancer, or a random, fatal car accident.
It’s difficult to accept the fact that sometimes, stuff just happens. On the plus side, many have admirably tried to convey that message. You could fill a bookshelf with the number of books written on humans’ misguided attempts to find patterns where none exist, from Gladwell to Gilovich and beyond.
Rarely do we see people try to extrapolate big themes and flashy projections from small sample sizes and random data points more than in sports. Probably half the words I’ve ever written about sports have, in one way or another, been aimed at debunking this line of thinking. Alex Rodriguez isn’t a choker if he struggles in 20 postseason at-bats. Tuffy Rhodes’ three Opening Day homers shouldn’t suggest he’s going to hit 50 home runs in one major league season (in Japan, sure). A hot start by the New York Jets and their apparently bullet-proof defense doesn’t ensure that they’re bound for Super Bowl glory (see, I’m guilty of doing this too!).
If there’s one field that might breed this kind of misguided thinking more than sports, though, it’s politics. The field in general is inundated with analysis, some of it great, but most of it awful. Not two seconds had gone by after Barack Obama won last year’s presidential election that we were drowned in a flood of WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?! stories. In that case, the army of talking heads was justified: Even the world’s biggest cynic would grudgingly admit that Obama rising to office meant something – the public wasn’t happy with the Bush years, people craved change, America was ready for a mixed-race president, America wanted someone in the White House who could hit the open 15-foot jumper, whatever.
But the furor over last night’s odd-year elections was merely a stark reminder of how desperate the 24-hour cable news networks are to find actual news, and how we’re once again guilty of trying to make sweeping statements out of very limited results. The GOP in particular are all too eager to make a huge deal out of last night’s results. As they should be. Any kind of advocacy group should be spinning as hard as possible whenever something goes their way; to have two governorships change hands from Democrats to Republicans certainly qualifies as spinable for the GOP base (never mind that the special election in the NY-23 district went against their man Doug Hoffman, a Tea Party advocate who has less charisma than the orange juice I just slugged down).
But while the GOP has every right to play up last night’s results and make sweeping statements about it, why should the mainstream media follow suit? New Jersey voters in particular made their preference clear: They didn’t like incumbent Democrat Governor Jon Corzine’s track record, and they appreciated the more local and less national approach taken by challenger Chris Christie in his campaign. Meanwhile in New York City, the victory by hybrid Republican/Independent incumbent Mike Bloomberg was a win for going with the devil you know and going against the guy who wanted to turn all of New York City into the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
How the media could extrapolate a couple of mayoral races, a couple of governor races and a handful of secondary elections as a devastating blow to the Obama White House and a sign that cats and dogs are now living together is beyond me. Wait, no it’s not. If you report that the apocalypse is coming, you’re more likely to generate ratings and attract eyeballs. The same philosophy that drove the media to cheerlead for the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars (wars = ratings!!!) is also in play when Chazy, New York is suddenly transformed into the epicenter of the political universe, and not some Canada-bordering village where cops like to stop folks going 7 miles an hour over the speed limit near the start of an eight-hour drive (I hate you, Chazy, New York).
All of this is a long lead-in to the economic analysis that’s come out of yesterday’s elections. ABC News Polling Director Gary Langer tells us that these elections reflected voters’ discontent with the current state of the economy. Sure, that makes sense. The latest unemployment figures, due out Friday, are expected to show 9.9% of Americans filing jobless claims. That number’s higher in New Jersey. Double-digit unemployment is going to make people clamor for change, no matter what else is going on. “It’s the economy, stupid” has always been a driving factor of elections.
But apparently it’s not enough to analyze what happened last night. We need to know how a tiny number of elections now is going to impact a much larger number of Congressional races a year from now. And Mr. Langer apparently has a crystal ball on his desk.
Is that what it portends? How do we know the economy won’t be on the upswing by this time next year? The most recent GDP results showed 3.5% growth. One could (and I would agree, should) be at least somewhat skeptical about those results, since much of that growth came from one-time stimulus spending and other near-term events. Still, by definition, the U.S. is now out of the recession that plagued the country since late 2007, with initial signs of decline starting a year or more before that, as the housing market peaked. Corporate earnings are on the upswing, thanks to a combination of both cost-cutting in some cases (of both jobs and inventory) and real revenue growth in others. The housing market has bottomed, and is now showing tentative signs of a recovery. Whatever one thinks of the government’s steps to prevent a banking industry meltdown, the fact of the matter is that said meltdown was avoided, and the surviving companies are back to turning hefty profits.
Given those conditions, how can anyone predict with any kind of certainty that Americans will be wildly disenchanted with the economy a full year from now, and that as a result, Democrats will get crushed in mid-term elections? Wouldn’t a more prudent analytical approach be to acknowledge the conditions that led to yesterday’s election results, note that the number of elections was a drop in the bucket compared with what’s to come, note that a lot could change between now and November 2010, and that we’ll just have to wait and see what happens?
Well, sure. But prudent, somber analysis is so boring. Better to go out on a limb and be spectacularly wrong than to be intellectually honest and not make predictions rooted in guesswork and speculation.
UPDATE: Make it three Nate Silver links in one post, as this fivethirtyeight.com entry notes the media’s inability to properly analyze the race, beyond the equivalent of “the Yankees beat the Phillies in Game 6 of the World Series because they scored more runs.”
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