When I saw the bombastic headline “North Carolina is no longer classified as a democracy” pop up in my RSS feeds today (article link: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article122593759.html) I knew it’d help feed polarization bear that’s been getting fat on ‘Murica for the past decade. Sure enough, others picked it up and ran with it. I can’t wait to see how the opposite extreme reacts (everybody’s gotta feed the bear).
As of this post, neither site linked to the actual data, so here’s an early Christmas present: The Electoral Integrity Project Data. I’m very happy this is public data since this is the new reality for “news” intake:
- Read shocking headline
- See no data, bad data, cherry-picked data or poorly-analyzed data
- Look for the actual data
- Validate data & findings
- Possibly learn even more from the data that was deliberately left out or ignored
Data literacy is even more important than it has been.
Back to the title of the post: where exactly does North Carolina fall on the newly assessed electoral integrity spectrum in the U.S.? Right here (click to zoom in):
Focusing solely on North Carolina is pretty convenient (I know there’s quite a bit of political turmoil going on down there at the moment, but that’s no excuse for cherry picking) since — frankly — there isn’t much to be proud of on that entire chart. Here’s where the ‘States fit on the global rankings (we’re in the gray box):
You can page through the table to see where our ‘States fall (we’re between Guana & Latvia…srsly). We don’t always have the nicest neighbors:
This post isn’t a commentary on North Carolina, it’s a cautionary note to be very wary of scary headlines that talk about data but don’t really show it. It’s worth pointing out that I’m taking the PEI data as it stands. I haven’t validated the efficacy of their process or checked on how “activist-y” the researchers are outside the report. It’s somewhat sad that this is a necessary next step since there’s going to be quite a bit of lying with data and even more lying about-and/or-without data over the next 4+ years on both sides (more than in the past eight combined, probably).
The PEI folks provide methodology information and data. Read/study it. They provide raw and imputed confidence intervals (note how large some of those are in the two graphs) – do the same for your research. If their practices are sound, the ‘States chart is pretty damning. I would hope that all the U.S. states would be well above 75 on the rating scale and the fact that we aren’t is a suggestion that we all have work to do right “here” at home, beginning with ceasing to feed the polarization bear.
If you do download the data, here’s the R code that generated the charts:
library(tidyverse)
# u.s. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
eip_state <- read_tsv("~/Data/eip_dataverse_files/PEI US 2016 state-level (PEI_US_1.0) 16-12-2018.tab")
arrange(eip_state, PEIIndexi) %>%
mutate(state=factor(state, levels=state)) -> eip_state
ggplot() +
geom_linerange(data=eip_state, aes(state, ymin=PEIIndexi_lci, ymax=PEIIndexi_hci), size=0.25, color="#2b2b2b00") +
geom_segment(data=eip_state, aes(x="North Carolina", xend="North Carolina", y=-Inf, yend=Inf), size=5, color="#cccccc", alpha=1/10) +
geom_linerange(data=eip_state, aes(state, ymin=PEIIndexi_lci, ymax=PEIIndexi_hci), size=0.25, color="#2b2b2b") +
geom_point(data=eip_state, aes(state, PEIIndexi, fill=responserate), size=2, shape=21, color="#2b2b2b", stroke=0.5) +
scale_y_continuous(expand=c(0,0.1), limits=c(0,100)) +
viridis::scale_fill_viridis(name="Response rate\n", label=scales::percent) +
labs(x="Vertical lines show upper & lower bounds of the 95% confidence interval\nSource: PEI Dataverse (https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/YXUV3W)\nNorris, Pippa; Nai, Alessandro; Grömping, Max, 2016, 'Perceptions of Electoral Integrity US 2016 (PEI_US_1.0)'\ndoi:10.7910/DVN/YXUV3W, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:1cMrtJfvUs9uBoNewfUKqA==",
y="PEI Index (imputed)",
title="Perceptions of Electoral Integrity: U.S. 2016 POTUS State Ratings",
subtitle="The PEI index is designed to provide an overall summary evaluation of expert perceptions that an election\nmeets international standards and global norms. It is generated at the individual level. Unlike the individual\nindex (PEIIndex) PEIIndexi is imputed and thus fully observed for all experts and states.") +
hrbrmisc::theme_hrbrmstr(grid="Y", subtitle_family="Hind Light", subtitle_size=11) +
theme(axis.text.x=element_text(angle=90, vjust=0.5, hjust=1)) +
theme(axis.title.x=element_text(margin=margin(t=15))) +
theme(legend.position=c(0.8, 0.1)) +
theme(legend.title.align=1) +
theme(legend.title=element_text(size=8)) +
theme(legend.key.size=unit(0.5, "lines")) +
theme(legend.direction="horizontal") +
theme(legend.key.width=unit(3, "lines"))
# global ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
eip_world <- read_csv("~/Data/eip_dataverse_files/PEI country-level data (PEI_4.5) 19-08-2016.csv")
arrange(eip_world, PEIIndexi) %>%
mutate(country=factor(country, levels=country)) -> eip_world
ggplot() +
geom_linerange(data=eip_world, aes(factor(country), ymin=PEIIndexi_lci, ymax=PEIIndexi_hci), size=0.25, color="#2b2b2b00") +
geom_linerange(data=eip_world, aes(factor(country), ymin=PEIIndexi_lci, ymax=PEIIndexi_hci), size=0.25, color="#2b2b2b") +
geom_point(data=eip_world, aes(country, PEIIndexi), size=2, shape=21, fill="steelblue", color="#2b2b2b", stroke=0.5) +
scale_y_continuous(expand=c(0,0.1), limits=c(0,100)) +
labs(x="Vertical lines show upper & lower bounds of the 95% confidence interval\nSource: PEI Dataverse (https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/LYO57K)\nNorris, Pippa; Nai, Alessandro; Grömping, Max, 2016, 'Perceptions of Electoral Integrity (PEI-4.5)\ndoi:10.7910/DVN/LYO57K, Harvard Dataverse, V2",
y="PEI Index (imputed)",
title="Perceptions of Electoral Integrity: 2016 Global Ratings",
subtitle="The PEI index is designed to provide an overall summary evaluation of expert perceptions that an election\nmeets international standards and global norms. It is generated at the individual level. Unlike the individual\nindex (PEIIndex) PEIIndexi is imputed and thus fully observed for all experts and countries") +
hrbrmisc::theme_hrbrmstr(grid="Y", subtitle_family="Hind Light", subtitle_size=11) +
theme(axis.text.x=element_blank()) +
theme(axis.title.x=element_text(margin=margin(t=15)))
The ? Resistance
I need to be up-front about something: I’m somewhat partially at fault for ? being elected. While I did not vote for him, I could not in any good conscience vote for his Democratic rival. I wrote in a ticket that had one Democrat and one Republican on it. The “who” doesn’t matter and my district in Maine went abundantly for ?’s opponent, so there was no real impact of my direct choice but I did actively point out the massive flaws in his opponent. Said flaws were many and I believe we’d be in a different bad place, but not equally as bad of a place now with her. But, that’s in the past and we’ve got a new reality to deal with, now.
This is a (hopefully) brief post about finding a way out of this mess we’re in. It’s far from comprehensive, but there’s honest-to-goodness evil afoot that needs to be met head on.
Brand Damage
You’ll note I’m not using either of their names. Branding is extremely important to both of them, but is the almost singular focus of ?. His name is his hotel brand, company brand and global identifier. Using it continues to add it to the history books and can only help inflate the power of that brand. First and foremost, do not use his name in public posts, articles, papers, etc. “POTUS”, “The President”, “The Commander in Chief”, “?” (chosen to match his skin/hair color, complexion and that comb-over tuft) are all sufficient references since there is date-context with virtually anything we post these days. Don’t help build up his brand. Don’t populate historical repositories with his name. Don’t give him what he wants most of all: attention.
Document and Defend with Data
Speaking of the historical record, we need to be blogging and publishing regularly the actual facts based on data. We also need to save data as there’s signs of a deliberate government purge going on. I’m not sure how successful said purge will be in the long run and I suspect that the long-term effects of data purging and corruption by this administration will have lasting unintended consequences.
Join/support @datarefuge to save data & preserve the historical record.
Install the Wayback Machine plugin and take the 2 seconds per site you visit to click it.
Create blog posts, tweets, news articles and papers that counter bad facts with good/accurate/honest ones. Don’t make stuff up (even a little). Validate your posits before publishing. Write said posts in a respectful tone.
Support the Media
When the POTUS’ Chief Strategist says things like “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while” it’s a deliberate attempt to curtail the Press and eventually there will be more actions to actually suppress Press freedom.
I’m not a liberal (I probably have no convenient definition) and I think the Press gave Obama a free ride during his eight year rule. They are definitely making up for that now, mostly because their very livelihoods are at stake.
The problem with them is that they are continuing to let themselves be manipulated by ?. He’s a master at this manipulation. Creating a story about the size of his hands in a picture delegitimizes you as a purveyor of news, especially when — as you’re watching his hands — he’s separating families, normalizing bigotry and undermining the Constitution. Forget about the hands and even forget about the hotels (for now). There was even a recent story trying to compare email servers (the comparison is very flawed). Stop it.
Encourage reporters to focus on things that actually matter and provide pointers to verifiable data they can use to call out the lack of veracity in ?’s policies. Personal blog posts are fleeting things but an NYT, WSJ (etc) story will live on.
Be Kind
I’ve heard and read some terrible language about rural America from what I can only classify as “liberals” in the week this post was written. Intellectual hubris and actual, visceral disdain for those who don’t think a certain way were two major reasons why ? got elected. The actual reasons he got elected are diverse and very nuanced.
Regardless of political leaning, pick your head up from your glowing rectangles and go out of your way to regularly talk to someone who doesn’t look, dress, think, eat, etc like you. Engage everyone with compassion. Regularly challenge your own beliefs.
There is a wedge that I estimate is about 1/8th of the way into the core of America now. Perpetuating this ideological “us vs them” mindset is only going to fuel the fires that created the conditions we’re in now and drive the wedge in further. The only way out is through compassion.
Remember: all life matters. Your degree, profession, bank balance or faith alignment doesn’t give you the right to believe you are better than anyone else.
FIN (for now)
I’ll probably move most of future opines to a new medium (not uppercase Medium) as you may be getting this drivel when you want recipes or R code (even though there are separate feeds for them).