Friday, April 21, 2017

Age and Party Identification in Texas 2017


Here are the Ages of the Party Identifiers from the April 2017 Texas Lyceum Poll. There are a few interesting facts that emerge: young people (18 to 29 years old) are much more likely to be independents; Democrats are older than one would imagine (75 percent are 45 years old and older); and 50 percent of Republicans are 45-64 (74 percent are 45 years old and older).


Thursday, April 20, 2017

Texas Party Idenitification, April 2017


The Texas Lyceum Poll of 1007 Adult Texans in April 2017 produced the following results in terms of party identification. A special thank you to Joshua Blank for providing the data for the crosstabs on Party identification and other variables.

The question was: PID: Do you consider yourself to be a Democrat, a Republican, or neither?

I have substituted “independent” for neither since that is the definition of an independent.


This result is somewhat different from the results of the Texas Lyceum Poll of 2015. The percentage of independents is 10 percent fewer, and the percentage of Republicans is 6 percent more. The percentage of Democrats is nearly the same.

The ideological self-identification of each category of partisanship


Wednesday, April 12, 2017

On Poverty


Stephen Pimpare wrote in the Washington Post:

In response to a question about his party’s plan to increase the cost of health insurance, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) suggested that people should “invest in their own health care” instead of “getting that new iPhone.” He doubled-down on the point in a later interview: “People need to make a conscious choice, and I believe in self-reliance.” Of course, Chaffetz is wrong. But he isn’t alone.

While he has been met with justifiable derision for the comparison (Christopher Ingraham walked through the math for us, pointing out that a year’s worth of health care would equal 23 iPhone 7 Pluses in price), the claim he is making is hardly new. Chaffetz was articulating a commonly held belief that poverty in the United States is, by and large, the result of laziness, immorality and irresponsibility. If only people made better choices — if they worked harder, stayed in school, got married, didn’t have children they couldn’t afford, spent what money they had more wisely and saved more — then they wouldn’t be poor, or so the reasoning goes.

This insistence that people would not be poor if only they would try harder defines the thinking behind the signature welfare restructuring law of the Clinton era, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. It’s the logic at the heart of efforts to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, to drug-test people collecting unemployment insurance or to forbid food stamp recipients to buy steak and lobster.

Since the invention of the mythic welfare queen in the 1960s, this has been the story we most reliably tell about why people are poor. Never mind that research from across the social sciences shows us, over and again, that it’s a lie. Never mind low wages or lack of jobs, the poor quality of too many schools, the dearth of marriageable males in poor black communities (thanks to a racialized criminal justice system and ongoing discrimination in the labor market), or the high cost of birth control and day care. Never mind the fact that the largest group of poor people in the United States are children. Never mind the grim reality that most American adults who are poor are not poor from lack of effort but despite it.

This deep denial serves a few functions, however.

First, it’s founded on the assumption that the United States is a land of opportunity, where upward mobility is readily available and hard work gets you ahead. We’ve recently taken to calling it grit. While grit may have ushered you up the socioeconomic ladder in the late 19th century, it’s no longer up to the task today. Rates of intergenerational income mobility are, in fact, higher in France, Spain, Germany, Canada, Japan, New Zealand and other countries in the world than they are here in the United States. And that mobility is in further decline here, an indicator of the falling fortunes not just of poor and low-income Americans, but of middle-class ones, too.

To accept this as reality is to confront the unpleasant fact that myths of American exceptionalism are just that — myths — and many of us would fare better economically (and live longer, healthier lives, too) had we been born elsewhere. That cognitive dissonance is too much for too many of us, so we believe instead that people can overcome any obstacle if they would simply work hard enough.

Second, to believe that poverty is a result of immorality or irresponsibility helps people believe it can’t happen to them. But it can happen to them (and to me and to you). Poverty in the United States is common, and according to the Census Bureau, over a three-year period, about one-third of all U.S. residents slip below the poverty line at least once for two months or more.

Third — and conveniently, perhaps, for people like Chaffetz or House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) — this stubborn insistence that people could have more money or more health care if only they wanted them more absolves the government of having to intervene and use its power on their behalf. In this way of thinking, reducing access to subsidized health insurance isn’t cruel, it’s responsible, a form of tough love in which people are forced to make good choices instead of bad ones. This is both patronizing and, of course, a gross misreading of the actual outcome of laws like these.

There’s one final problem with these kinds of arguments, and that is the implication that we should be worried by the possibility of poor people buying the occasional steak, lottery ticket or, yes, even an iPhone. Set aside the fact that a better cut of meat may be more nutritious than a meal Chaffetz would approve of, or the fact that a smartphone may be your only access to email, job notices, benefit applications, school work and so on. Why do we begrudge people struggling to get by the occasional indulgence? Why do we so little value pleasure and joy? Why do we insist that if you are poor, you should also be miserable? Why do we require penitence?

Just because what Chaffetz is saying isn’t novel doesn’t mean it isn’t uninformed and dangerous. Chaffetz, Ryan and their compatriots offer us tough love without the love, made possible through their willful ignorance of (or utter disregard for) what life is actually like for so many Americans who do their very best against great odds and still, nonetheless, have little to show for it. Sometimes not even an iPhone.

This frame for poverty and its causes is the mainstay of the media followed by conservatives and echoed in Hillbilly Elegy by Vance. Vance, by his own intelligence and the assistance of his grandmother, was able to graduate from Ohio State in what I calculate to be two and one-half years, go to law school at Yale, and secure a job at a capital venture firm in California. He and his wife, also a lawyer, do well because of what Pimpare calls “grit,” which is also the term used by Fox News Channel personality and cohost of the highly-rated show The Five and his own weekend program Eric Bolling in Wake Up America: The Nine Virtues That Made Our Nation Great—And Why We Need Them More Than Ever. 

As Pimpare notes, social science research shows that poverty is not a personal problem; it is a social problem, caused by conditions that too many Americans, especially ethnic minorities, face in America today. Despite these studies, there are courses to eliminate poverty, such as those created and promoted by Ruby Payne, author of A Framework for Understanding Poverty. Payne also lectures and conducts training sessions for teachers and others interested in poverty, its causes and remedy. Unfortunately, according to this study, her truth claims bear no truth and are not substantiated by research. But that does not prohibit her from benefiting from sales of her book or speaking fees. Furthermore, her view of poverty and the poor is perpetuated by the conservative media. As the article that tested her theory notes:

Nowhere in her book does Payne state that poverty, rather than the poor, is the problem that must be addressed. She offers no perspective that people should hold elected officials accountable for the number of families in poverty, or the conditions in which people must live when their incomes are low. Although the fourth edition was published almost a decade after welfare reform, A Framework for Understanding Poverty makes no reference to the elimination of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). She does not connect the misfortunes of the poor to the fortunes of the middle class and wealthy by examining policies regarding housing, segregation, taxation, or public expenditures. She does not analyze the degree to which wealthy and middle-class families proactively structure advantage for their children at the expense of the children of the less fortunate (Biddle, 2001; Brantlinger, 2003; Cookson,1994). At no time does she suggest that the hundreds of thousands of educators she addresses might attempt to advocate for the basic needs of the children they teach. Poor children do not only have trouble in school; they are likely to live in substandard housing, eat an inadequate diet, wear threadbare clothes, lack health insurance, and have chronic health and dental problems. Though we know many teachers of poor children who regularly feed their students with their own money, one will not find such priorities in Ruby Payne’s work. We believe that to discuss poverty among caring people obligates one to challenge others to do something about poverty itself—to give, to volunteer, to speak out, to hold politicians accountable—in short, to change a system that perpetuates poverty.

Furthermore, nowhere in Payne’s work is there a suggestion that students might be taught to think about social class and poverty. There is no hint that people ought to be taught to question the structures that oppress them and others like them systematically (Freire, 1970). We would suggest that a curriculum that addresses class as a significant conceptual lens through which to view people’s lives, their society, and the texts they read is essential to the responsible education of all people in a social world divided by class, and it might be especially motivating and liberating to those oppressed by such a system (Bomer & Bomer, 2001; Edelsky, 1999; Fecho & Allen, 2003; Finn, 1999; Hicks, 2002; Macedo, 1994; McLaren, 1989; Shor & Pari, 1999; Swenson, 2003; Yagelski, 2000).  

We would also suggest that an ethical education system does not teach students to think of anything that makes one secure in the middle class as an unquestioned good. Transforming one’s character in order to climb a social ladder should not be necessary and is not a noble thing to do. Other values are available than simply conforming to the middle class. In fact, it has been demonstrated repeatedly that when people without advantage, social position, or opportunity internalize US middle-class values, those very values cause significantly more damage in their lives than they offer new opportunity (Bourgois, 1995; Foley, 1994; Liebow, 1967/2003; Mahler, 1995; Newman, 2000), partly because by internalizing the views of those who are financially better-off, poor individuals come to blame themselves for their failure to get ahead.

This lack of attention to a critical perspective is consonant with Payne’s individualistic, deficit, blame-the-victim perspective. Such a perspective aligns well with right-wing social policy. If the poor are poor simply because they do not know how to behave as if they were not poor, then the middle class and the wealthy should not be taxed to provide public assistance, public health, public schooling, or a public sphere in which the poor might participate. According to such a perspective, neither structural inequality, nor public policy, nor barriers to good jobs, nor lack of money cause the plight of the poor; they just don’t have the right story structure, or tone of voice, or register, or cognitive strategies.

As we said at the beginning of this article, Ruby Payne’s success with her program on poverty is impressive. Her book is self-published; she earns the royalty as well as the publisher’s margin; her only expense is having it printed. If in fact over 800,000 copies have been sold between the 1998and 2005 editions, as the most recent cover claims, that single book has probably made many millions of dollars. The success of the book and the business to which it is attached is not attributable to entrepreneurship alone. The appeal of the book relies on a set of values—a framework—that exists outside of education, and is pervasive throughout middle-class US society. Policy that constructs poverty as a problem of schools creates a large industry that consists of many more businesses than just Payne’s. Her success indicts all of us in education, indeed most of the American public, as it reveals the degree to which we use the education system to protect our own sense of entitlement to privilege.

It’s time to admit that poverty is a social problem, that we are a society that includes all of us, and that we have a duty and obligation to help those who have the least to more fully participate in the benefits of our economic condition. It’s time for a renewal of the War on Poverty.


Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Partisan Gerrymandering: The Efficiency Gap



The US Supreme Court ruled long ago in Davis v. Bandemer (1986) that partisan gerrymandering is a justiciable issue; however, the court in Vieth v. Jubelirer (2004) failed to provide a measure that could be applied in cases involving alleged partisan gerrymandering.

In a Wisconsin case that is headed for the US Supreme Court, a three-judge US District Court panel determined that the legislature had engaged in partisan gerrymandering and adopted a test developed by Stephanopolous and McGhee in a law review article. The measure—the efficiency gap—tallies the wasted votes by each party in electoral contests for legislative seats. In a paper by Eric Petry, the method of calculating the efficiency gap is provided.  Using this method, I calculated the efficiency gap for the 52 House contests that included two major party candidates in 2016. Here are the calculations:

In the first step, Petry’s method requires the calculation of votes for each political party’s candidate in each district that met the criterion of two major party candidates and the total votes cast in those contests.


District
Rep
Vote
Dem Vote

Total
11
42,481
14,276
56,757
13
55,073
14,965
70,038
23
36,501
25,501
62,002
26
39,693
28,910
68,603
27
21,536
45,718
67,254
29
44,713
28,505
73,218
33
56,802
24,199
81,001
40
8,266
23,257
31,523
41
18,924
24,863
43,787
43
31,040
19,735
50,775
44
53,997
20,411
74,408
46
10,209
37,457
47,666
47
54,785
42,635
97,420
50
24,882
43,637
68,519
53
54,741
14,256
68,997
54
28,894
23,794
52,688
64
42,158
26,288
68,446
65
34,418
26,759
61,177
66
40,368
27,240
67,608
67
41,440
29,036
70,476
70
56,684
24,057
80,741
71
44,335
10,647
54,982
78
18,030
31,185
49,215
85
35,594
23,334
58,928
89
48,341
24,861
73,202
92
35,622
24,806
60,428
93
37,002
23,987
60,989
95
11,376
35,246
46,622
96
38,991
29,434
68,425
97
39,537
27,019
66,556
98
65,348
21,547
86,895
101
15,530
30,591
46,121
102
31,595
26,208
57,803
105
23,720
23,656
47,376
107
27,086
27,992
55,078
109
11,155
53,458
64,613
111
12,520
44,918
57,438
112
31,234
23,351
54,585
113
30,501
24,795
55,296
114
37,588
27,367
64,955
115
29,987
28,939
58,926
117
27,783
29,319
57,102
118
20,831
25,632
46,463
126
35,528
23,991
59,519
134
48,192
38,958
87,150
135
32,682
26,905
59,587
136
41,643
34,077
75,720
137
8,178
18,088
26,266
144
10,745
16,287
27,032
147
11,985
43,900
55,885
149
15,840
27,613
43,453
150
47,892
27,893
75,785

1,723,996
1,441,503
3,165,499

The second step requires the calculation of the wasted votes by each party in each district and the sum of wasted votes for each party. Note that the wasted vote total in a district is the number of votes in excess of the votes necessary to win the district (50 percent of the total vote plus one vote) for the party that won the district. For the party that lost the district, all of the votes for the party are wasted. The calculation of wasted votes by party:

District
Votes To Win
Rep Wasted Votes
Dem Wasted Votes
11
28,380
14,102
14,276
13
35,020
20,053
14,965
23
31,002
5,499
25,501
26
34,303
5,391
28,910
27
33,628
21,536
12,090
29
36,610
8,103
28,505
33
40,502
16,301
24,199
40
15,763
8,266
7,495
41
21,895
18,924
2,969
43
25,389
5,652
19,735
44
37,205
16,792
20,411
46
23,834
10,209
13,623
47
48,711
6,074
42,635
50
34,261
24,882
9,377
53
34,500
20,242
14,256
54
26,345
2,549
23,794
64
34,224
7,934
26,288
65
30,590
3,829
26,759
66
33,805
6,563
27,240
67
35,239
6,201
29,036
70
40,372
16,313
24,057
71
27,492
16,843
10,647
78
24,609
18,030
6,577
85
29,465
6,129
23,334
89
36,602
11,739
24,861
92
30,215
5,407
24,806
93
30,496
6,507
23,987
95
23,312
11,376
11,934
96
34,214
4,778
29,434
97
33,279
6,258
27,019
98
43,449
21,900
21,547
101
23,062
15,530
7,530
102
28,903
2,693
26,208
105
23,689
31
23,656
107
27,540
27,086
452
109
32,308
11,155
21,151
111
28,720
12,520
16,198
112
27,294
3,941
23,351
113
27,649
2,852
24,795
114
32,479
5,110
27,367
115
29,464
523
28,939
117
28,552
27,783
767
118
23,233
20,831
2,400
126
29,761
5,768
35,528
134
43,576
4,616
48,192
135
29,795
2,888
32,682
136
37,861
3,782
41,643
137
13,134
8,178
4,954
144
13,517
10,745
2,770
147
27,944
11,985
15,957
149
21,728
15,840
5,886
150
37,894
9,999
27,893
Total

558,230
1,058,582

The final step involves calculating the net wasted vote (Democratic Candidates’ wasted votes minus the Republican Candidates’ wasted votes) and dividing by the total number of votes cast for all candidates (3,165,499). The result is the efficiency gap, expressed as a percentage.

Rep Wasted Votes
Dem Wasted Votes
Net Wasted Votes
Efficiency Gap
558,230
1,058,582
500,352
15.81%

Consequently, the Republican Party candidates were better at converting their votes into Texas House seats. They won 15.81 percent more seats, which is 8 seats since 15.81 percent of 52 seats is 8 seats. According to Stephanopoulos and McGhee, any efficiency gap that exceeds 8 percent is unconstitutional. The efficiency gap in Texas is nearly twice that threshold.