Statistical Analysis Stack Exchange
Statistical Analysis Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [politics]

For questions about political data (such as approval ratings of US presidents) and political events (such as elections).

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Probability of a single real-life future event: What does it mean when they say that "Hillary has a 75% chance of winning"?

As the election is a one time event, it is not an experiment that can be repeated. So exactly what does the statement "Hillary has a 75% chance of winning" technically mean? I am seeking a statistically correct definition not an intuitive or…
pitosalas
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Explanation of what Nate Silver said about loess

In a question I asked recently, I was told that it was a big "no-no" to extrapolate with loess. But, in Nate Silver's most recent article on FiveThirtyEight.com he discussed using loess for making election predictions. He was discussing the…
a.powell
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How to calculate "Paths to the White House" using R?

I just came across this great analysis which is both interesting and beautiful visually: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/02/us/politics/paths-to-the-white-house.html I am curious how such a "path tree" can be constructed using R. What…
Tal Galili
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Is there a known bias with telephone polls in the U.S.?

I was looking at a WashingtonTimes/ABC poll, and the results breakdown, especially by age, seemed surprising to me. So I went looking for bias. It said: "poll was conducted by telephone Dec. 11-14, 2014, among a random sample of 1,000 adults.…
Darren Cook
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Which statistical topics to teach in European Studies study programme?

Next year, I will teach statistics in bachelor study programme European studies (Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava). According to programme description, the aim of the study is to acquire knowledge of basic…
sitems
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Electoral college simulation using SQL Server

As I'm sure will be apparent to most here, I'm not a statistician or a programmer, but one of my hobbies is politics. I've created a (very simple) USA electoral college simulation, seen below. The idea is that if you think you have a good estimate…
user269144
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How do I use a distribution as an independent variable in a regression?

I'm trying to build a regression model that predicts Trump's vote share in a county in the 2016 election, given demographic data about that county. One of the demographic variables I would like to use is the distribution of income in that county;…
KD89042
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Multicollinearity confusion

so for my master's thesis, I am examining the influence of union density (% of the workforce in a union) and top marginal tax rates on pre-tax CEO pay. These two independent variables are very highly correlated in my sample. When I include both…
Jordan
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Election modeling : How is this a valid approach?

With the recent US presidential election, there seems to be a plethora of election "modelers" (e.g. 538). Given their "accuracy" of predicting the election outcome, I have come up with a couple of criticisms of what I perceive to be deficiencies in…
irritable_phd_syndrome
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Comparing differences between overlapping groups

I am trying to analyse the differences between people who vote in the European Parliament (EP) elections and people who vote in national elections, based on the EES dataset (http://eeshomepage.net/). The objective is to find significant differences…
Daniel
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Where to find datasets related to US elections at the individual level?

I am currently looking for datasets that I can use to predict how an individual voter will vote in a US election. Ideally, the dataset that I am looking for includes socioeconomic features such as age, sex, income, county, and include an outcome…
Berk U.
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What are cross-sectional election data?

I am currently writing a thesis and struggling with this problem: I have election data for N countries over a time period of 25 years. The elections were (obviously) held in different years. I need to conduct an analysis with country fixed effects…
clara_____
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Clustering standard errors at individual and/or organisation level with fixed effects

So, I have a relatively large panel dataset (26,000 observations) with data on speech by individuals belonging to political parties. The data is grouped by individual-week (i.e. an observation for individuals for each week) over the course of a…
MCC89
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Commonly-used Predictor Function?

I was recently taking a look at some political projections (similar to the ones published by 538), and I am wondering about a particular function used to calculate the likelihood of a given party winning a political district. The function $F(p)$,…
apizzimenti
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Multi level modelling, conceptual questions

I am studying national election campaigns of individual candidates by means of an elite survey (N around 500). Due to the nature of my country case, there are several contextual factors i would like to place special emphasis upon within my IVs.…
persephone
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