California: Tocqueville’s nightmare come true November 19, 2008
Posted by Sverre in : Political Theory, World politics , comments closedI
n the euphoria surrounding the presidential election, other events in American politics have been crowded out in media. A darker chapter in American history was written in the presumably liberal state of California. I haven’t heard many (at least outside the US) discuss this, except a few bloggers – among them the authors of one of my favourite blogs, Voting While Intoxicated.
I’m of course talking about the amendment to the Californian constitution to ban gay marriage, which was voted for together with the presidential election. For those who might not be familiar with the American political system, this is quite common – to include propositions to be voted on by the public together with any election. The infamous Proposition 8, named after its number on the ballot, got 52.1 percent of the vote, more than the necessary simple majority for a new state constitution amendment. It reads as follows:
SEC. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.
As a strong supporter of gay rights, this has ruined some of my new found belief in America. But aside from my personal feelings, this is the kind of thing that would make influential political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville turn in his grave. (more…)
Pollster biases revealed November 3, 2008
Posted by Sverre in : Methods in political science, US Presidential election , comments closed
The Monkey Cage led me to a paper by Len Adleman and Mark Schiling that compares the election polls made by American networks. They’ve compared them to the polls made by Gallup And Rasmussen, and show that the political inclination of the networks seem to influence the polls. Fox’s polls show a trend of predicting more to the right, and CBS/NYT more to the left. This is really interesting.
I agree with Andrew Gelman who comments that this surprises him. I would expect their coverage of the polls to show some bias, but had expected the polls themselves to be done in a professional way eliminating personal biases. This apparently goes to show that being completely neutral is difficult if not impossible, even in quantitative analysis.
What if the whole world could vote? October 30, 2008
Posted by Sverre in : Methods in political science, US Presidential election , comments closed… asks the Economist and tests it. They’ve asked their online readers to vote and constructed a worldwide electoral college. Lo and behold! the world electorate map is shockingly enough painted bright blue. It appears most nations in the world have a distribution in excess of 80-20 in Obama’s favour. Some people (no serious political scientists I hope) take this as evidence that the world supports Obama.
Economist.com voter map screenshot
The world at large probably prefers Obama, but this “survey” does in no way confirm that. Why not? It’s really quite simple. The survey is conducted at the Economist.com website. And who are going to claim that worldwide readers of the Economist represent a fair approximation to a random distribution of the population? None, I hope. For example, I would expect the Economists’ readers to have vastly higher than average levels of education. This is further accentuated by the fact that not every visitor to the website can vote, just registered Economist.com members. This ensures that even those casual visitors not normally reading the Economist are even less likely to vote.
There is no easier way to prove the bias of the survey than just looking at the scores for the US in this survey. In this survey the US supports Obama by 81-19.
This isn’t even very original. I have seen several such maps made on the basis of different surveys already, and must have read a dozen different online articles on it.
So has the Economist suddenly gone naive and stupid? Of course not. This was never intended as a survey by the Economist, so just don’t make the mistake of treating it like one. What the Economist wanted was more hits to their website, and more registered members on their website. I’d guess this got them hundreds, if not thousands. It worked on me. 😉 (more…)
Has Obama already won? October 19, 2008
Posted by Sverre in : US Presidential election , comments closed
Obama has had a good lead on the polls for a few days now – does this mean he’s won? Here’s a side glance at what the internet thinks.
Yes, say Norwegian newspapers. The reason they all agree is of course because they all quote their favourite expert, professor Ole O. Moen from the University of Oslo. To Dagsavisen, for example, he says he thinks it will now take a real or imagined terror threat for Obama to lose. He doesn’t think Obama is going to make any big enough mistakes. But with a single expert being quoted across the board I thought I’d look around a bit.
I assumed I could rely on Fox News to bring me predictions that didn’t favour that black yuppie, but their website did little more than confuse me. They were more interested in telling me that the great-great-great-granddaughter of a slave on McCain’s ancestor’s farm is now a psychology professor.
The Washington Post seems to think Obama will win. Among other things, they can tell us how McCain’s got trouble with media as Obama gets all the endorsements and the great maverick himself is starting a fight with the NYT. Just in case the unthinkable should happen and McCain wins, the Post has posted (ha-ha) some emergency help to journalists to help explain it. At least they list possible reasons why things might take an unexpected turn. (more…)
10-minute guide to Malaysian Politics: A foreigner’s view October 7, 2008
Posted by Sverre in : Malaysia, World politics , comments closed
Malaysian politics are fascinating, but as with any country not easy to understand unless you’ve studied them. I’ve had a keen interest in Malaysia for a few years, so I’ll try to sum up the most important things you need to know to follow what’s going on. This reflects my understanding of things, which I admit may be flawed. Please comment on any mistakes you believe I have made. Also a word of caution: Wikipedia articles on these subjects have occasionally been contaminated by “jokes” or partisan statements and should be used with caution. (more…)
Norwegian media loves Obama, but doesn’t hate McCain September 30, 2008
Posted by Sverre in : US Presidential election , comments closedAs I wrote about some days ago, I’ve been gathering data on the Norwegian media coverage of the US Presidential Election. I’m now up to date with all registering of data, and have taken a little more time to analyze it. With 154 registered articles, the main conclusion still stands: Norwegian media favours Barack Obama both in volume and in positivity of the coverage.
Current numbers (September 30th 2008):
Obama: 106 articles, +29 balance
McCain: 73 articles, -3 balance
It does however seem clear as well that this enthusiasm doesn’t translate into a campaign against McCain. The coverage of McCain’s campaign seems well-balanced, with the number of negatively and positively angled articles roughly balancing each other out. (more…)
The finance crisis: How can the US Congress do nothing? September 30, 2008
Posted by Sverre in : Political economy, World politics , comments closed
The finance crisis certainly took a turn for the unexpected today when the US House of Representatives turned down the $700 billion rescue package proposed by president Bush. Of course it was controversial for USA to consider this in the first place, given that they have been the largest driving force in pushing the International Monetary Fund to try and discourage other governments from doing the same in times of crisis. Wall Street seems to have expected them to go through with it this time though, as the news brought the biggest plummet in stock prices in American history. So how could they possibly risk the crisis getting even worse?
There are a lot of different reasons, possibly as many as the 227 congressmen that voted against. Here are a few. Off the top of my head I’ll try to point to a few. (more…)
Yes, Tun Mahathir – we can fault the BN concept and governance September 21, 2008
Posted by Sverre in : Malaysia, World politics , comments closedIn this post on his blog chedet.com, former Malaysian Prime Minister, Tun Mahathir Mohamad, of whom I have previously written quite a bit asserts his claims that the recent election losses by the Barisan Nasional coalition have been caused by loss of confidence in the BN leadership rather than because of genuine support for the opposition.
His analysis is for the most part sound. It makes sense that people would vote for a genuine opponent rather than a utopian third party candidate if what they wanted was to punish the BN. I believe he is right that at least a good portion of the opposition votes were the result of BN disillusionment. I do however think he underestimates the genuine support in Malaysia for reform, and most importantly I think he is mistaken with regard to his final point:
14. We cannot fault the BN concept and governance. We have to look elsewhere for the loss of confidence in the party.
For reasons I have discussed at much more length earlier, there are several things that make me believe that the very UMNO (and BN) system is unsustainable in the long run: (more…)
Norwegian media loves Obama September 20, 2008
Posted by Sverre in : US Presidential election, World politics , comments closedWith an estimated 23.000 eligible American voters, it isn’t likely the American presidential election will be decided in Norway. Still, there is a great interest in it. USA’s decisions, especially with regards to the economy and foreign policy affect the entire world. This year I’ve started my own little informal and quasi-scientific research project to see how Norwegian media covers the American election.
My hypothesis is that Norwegian media would favor any Democratic candidate very strongly over his or her Republican counterpart. I assume this to be a representation of the general opinion of the Norwegian public. I further assume that in this election, this favoritism will benefit Barack Obama greatly.
| Obama | McCain |
| # of articles | 96 | 50 |
| Bias points | 28 | 4 |
| Data extracted on: | 20. september 2008 |
As the table above shows, the data so far supports this hypothesis quite clearly. With about 130 articles entered, the Obama campaign appears to have had about twice the coverage the McCain campaign has as counted in the number of articles. Furthermore, the amount of of positive coverage outweighs the negative coverage for both candidates, but much more so for Obama than McCain.
(more…)
Malaysia censors news portal August 29, 2008
Posted by Sverre in : Malaysia , comments closed
A number of sources can report that the Malaysian government has ordered a ban on the popular independent news portal Malaysia Today, and Malaysian ISPs have reportedly complied. According to the website owner himself, Raja Petra Kamaruddin, the reason is his article “Malays, the enemy of Islam“, an attack on conservative Malay Islamism and corruption and abuse by the Malaysian Sharia court system.
The article in question is in my opinion neither well written nor particularly constructive in its criticism. Nevertheless it is a matter of course for me to defend the writer’s right to make the claims he does. Freedom of speech is natural to us in the west, not so in Malaysia. Malaysia has never had a completely free press. The government has always reserved itself a right to protect the people against statements that threaten racial harmony or public morale. And the Malaysian government has a long history of abusing this legislation to crack down on political opposition.
Malaysia claims to be a democracy, but this isn’t the behavior of a democratic state. It is further proof to the autocratic nature of the Malaysian regime. (more…)