Nationally more people consider Jon Stewart a real journalist(3%) than Erica Rodefer (<<1%), local reporter for the Tennessean..

its by more than a 100:1 margin.

ergo, the public think jon stewart is a real journalist!

have you been out of the country? i would rather have a piece of swiss cheese as our ambassador to the UN than Bolton.

Do you know what the average viewing time is of each watcher? That info must be published.

You can probably estimate the average viewing time per page view pretty accurately.

Mutliply cable viewers by their average time, multiply the page views by that average time. I think it would produce an 'apples to apples' comparison and completely avoid the problem of the 'dedicated reader' skewing the results.

I honestly dont see any relation at all. The terror alert seem randomly skewed on the bottom... can someone explain it?

my own theory is somewhat related...
i think that what we are really seeing is an inverse correllation between state party strength and governor effectiveness. Really strong states with political machines, like here in Illinois, pick crappy gubernatorial candidates, because the people arent really deciding in a primary. Primaries are decided by party bossesl influence, and that is how candidates are picked. These bosses do a crappy job at picking good candidates.

This patronage system is uniquely democratic; a holdover from the political machine days of yesteryear. Where there is no bossing of the primaries, dems do really well. When the bosses pick, they dont pick popular leaders.

by contrast few Republican primaries are bossed regardless of the redness of the state.

My premise may be wrong about a differential in primary bossing, any know if such a differential exists in reality?

i guess, i just dont think Kerry has much effect at all on the governors' popularity. I think this is only correllation and not at all causation. Does it really sound plausible that people evaluate their own governor based on the 2008 dem candidate? I doubt it. Especially since Kerry didnt visit blue states at all, and those governors are sucking wind. I think the correllation is interesting, because it points to something that is being done in name of the democratic party at the local level that isn't being done at a national level. If you look at the deep red governors, they are not 'republican-lites'. They aren't DLC triangulators. They aren't sophicate social liberals a la Kerry either. They're just 'normal' 'folks'.

Why are blue state governors doing so poorly? beats the hell out of me.

but that would mean if you were unpopular governor, you would love Kerry coming and spilling political kryptonite?

Pretty much the worse the dem party is in the partisan index, the better our governors do. The better we are in the partisan index, the worse our governors do.

Republicans show NO assymtreical pattern. kinda interesting...maybe we need some red-state populists to run for president instead of blue staters....

here's the data...feel free to skip if stats are greek...

popd is the democratic governors approve-disapprove difference, indd is that state's partisan index

popr is the republican governors approve-disapprove difference, indr is that state's partisan index (inverted so it makes sense)

. regress popd indd

      Source |       SS       df       MS              Number of obs =      20
-------------+------------------------------           F(  1,    18) =   17.53
       Model |  4015.07967     1  4015.07967           Prob > F      =  0.0006
    Residual |  4121.92033    18  228.995574           R-squared     =  0.4934
-------------+------------------------------           Adj R-squared =  0.4653
       Total |        8137    19  428.263158           Root MSE      =  15.133

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        popd |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
        indd |  -1.033363   .2467853    -4.19   0.001     -1.55184   -.5148862
       _cons |   4.901092   3.440204     1.42   0.171    -2.326508    12.12869
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

. regress popr indr

      Source |       SS       df       MS              Number of obs =      30
-------------+------------------------------           F(  1,    28) =    0.59
       Model |  426.715482     1  426.715482           Prob > F      =  0.4490
    Residual |  20264.2512    28  723.723257           R-squared     =  0.0206
-------------+------------------------------           Adj R-squared = -0.0144
       Total |  20690.9667    29  713.481609           Root MSE      =  26.902

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        popr |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
        indr |  -.2060333   .2683208    -0.77   0.449    -.7556636    .3435971
       _cons |   6.797134   5.168749     1.32   0.199    -3.790569    17.38484
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

. ttest popd=indd

Paired t test

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Variable |     Obs        Mean    Std. Err.   Std. Dev.   [95% Conf. Interval]
---------+--------------------------------------------------------------------
    popd |      20         7.5    4.627435    20.69452   -2.185333    17.18533
    indd |      20      -2.515    3.145592    14.06752     -9.0988    4.068801
---------+--------------------------------------------------------------------
    diff |      20      10.015    7.194279    32.17379   -5.042798     25.0728
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                   Ho: mean(popd - indd) = mean(diff) = 0

  Ha: mean(diff) < 0         Ha: mean(diff) != 0        Ha: mean(diff) > 0
       t =   1.3921                t =   1.3921              t =   1.3921
   P < t =   0.9100          P > |t| =   0.1800          P > t =   0.0900

. ttest indr=popr

Paired t test

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Variable |     Obs        Mean    Std. Err.   Std. Dev.   [95% Conf. Interval]
---------+--------------------------------------------------------------------
    indr |      30           6    3.399165    18.61799   -.9520726    12.95207
    popr |      30    8.033333    4.876753    26.71108   -1.940747    18.00741
---------+--------------------------------------------------------------------
    diff |      30   -2.033333    5.529547    30.28658   -13.34253    9.275861
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                   Ho: mean(indr - popr) = mean(diff) = 0

  Ha: mean(diff) < 0         Ha: mean(diff) != 0        Ha: mean(diff) > 0
       t =  -0.3677                t =  -0.3677              t =  -0.3677
   P < t =   0.3579          P > |t| =   0.7158          P > t =   0.6421

I concluded that the worse john Kerry did the better our local gov is doing. By contrast George Bushes performance had no relation on how the local Repub governor was doing. a somewhat surprising result.

The problem with rising gas prices isnt the absolute level, as much as the rate of change in prices. A worker in Sweden knows how much they will have to pay in gas, and adjusts consumption, location decisions, and wage demands. When gas prices rise drastically, people still own big cars, live far from work, make the same amount they made yesterday.

The additional burden is then regressively applied to the economy.

The idea that 'small government' is a good in and of itself is a stake through the heart of the progressive movement. We need government to bring justice to those on the short end of the capitalist stick. That's it. There's no way to bring people out of poverty and oppression without aggressive government-led redistribution. If we win the libertarian vote, we will lose whatever reason there is to be in the democratic party.

I do see a silver-lining, but not with the libertarian camp. Once Bush destroys the small government rift in the Republican party, we can start debating different types of 'big government.' Someday, America's terrorism paranoia will fade. Not today or by 2008 probably, but sometime (2012 with Obama riding in on the wave?). When that happens, we can cut the 'imperial misadeventure' budget, and give it people that need it. They will then vote Democratic, because they like the redistributing they receive. We form the progressive coalition, people who need help and people who are decent enough to give it.

Chris,
or i guess i mean regress the partisan index from each district on their loyalty. I bet its a really good correlation. You could then see who the outliers were. From that you would have a better measure of the most loyal/disloyal dems. For instance if a rep from a district that was +20 for Kerry on the part index, was disloyal twice that could a more egregious act of disloyalty than Lincoln Davis (TN) 5 abandonements. You would also know who is doing the most commendable job of being loyal relative to electoral pressures of the home district.

I'm gonna be doing a bunch of statistical work on my thesis next week, so i could do it, if you want me to, jsut drop me an

cut rate adoptions! get them while they're still on sale! ends this friday!

i guess the competitive pressures on babies aren't quite the same as blue jeans.

How bout instead of a tax credit, you have a price ceiling? It would have great appeal to the prolife movement. and would solve all of the problems.

having children be adopted turns 'unwanted children' into wanted ones. its the perfect 'industry' for a price ceiling. Its not like supply is going to plummet because of the price ceiling, because women dont get paid for their babies anyway.

but let's take the tinfoil off. The GOP is pro-life, because of the rabid pro-life movement, and the 10% of the electorate that votes single-issue on abortion. The pro-life movement's strength at the grassroots level has nothing to do with adoption fees.

Adoptions fees would be a great opening for democrats to talk about 'values'.

While the pro-life movement at the grassroots level would love lowering adoption fees, big churches obviously would hate it. They could tie the Republicans to oppose such a ceiling, who would already be presumptively against a 'price control'. A really interesting political football.

McCain would be a dangerous alternative candidate.

There are alot of people in this country that don't toe the party line and probably aren't to into either the left or right blogosphere.

They haven't been able to "latch onto" a candidate in the last x elections...McCain might invigorate a typically marginalized but still politically aware group.

I don't think he would be a third "party" candidate, but just a third candidate. I mean let's pretend it Bil Frist vs. someone else that is blah. It could break the race wide open...

There is a "battle of the sexes" aspect to third party voting. (for those unfamiliar with this game theory model, dont worry it has nothing to do sexism, its just a coordination dilemna).

If people see McCain, who would be centrist most likely, as a favorite early, one party's voters may shift towards him for strategic reasons. In this scenario, if either parties candidate looks particularly weak, that party could abandon ship, and McCain could win in a lanslide.

Whereas Nader's challenge from the left only stabilized the Democratic party's position as a strategic voting option, a challenge from the center would be potentially very destabilizing.

Would a new party form? Porbably not. But we might be able to throw out the maps above. If voting for own party's candidate starts looking like a "wasted vote" watch out.

Yeah....that's a completely different situation.

What issue that the Greens support is supported by any significant constituency within the Republican party?

Nader started to almost try to take Republican voters away in 2004, when he ran somewhat on the Patriot Act. He was 4 years too late, and took up an issue with little saliency.

You can't have radical realignment by taking voters from only one of the two parties. DUH. Third parties  (which then quickly become one of the dominant two) can only result from unstable political foundations. No such instability exists right now.

Green party organizers that focues on running candidates are naive. If they want to organize around anything, it should be on issues and causes.