billy bragg

Above are the predictions for next week’s UK parliamentary election by fivethirtyeight.com, in collaboration with The Guardian. The Guardian doesn’t expect a radical shift from these numbers and the big question is whether the Conservatives will get a majority of seats.

The methodology behind the predictions is being challenged by psephologists adhering to the uniform swing hypothesis, in what Nate Silver calls a nerdfight. The uniform swing hypothesis states that if a party finishes x points behind their standing in the previous election, their share of the vote will decline by x points in each constituency.

“The uniform swing has its proponents, and it has the virtue of being fairly easy to calculate. But, most recent elections in the United Kingdom have not been all that dramatic, with fairly minor shifts in the vote between Labour and Conservatives. The last time that there was something resembling a ‘wave’ election — in 1997 when Labour, under Tony Blair, leaped forward from 34 percent of the vote to 43 — the uniform swing would have underestimated their gains by about 25 seats, and underestimated Conservatives’ losses by 40. And that election did not feature — as this one does — a third party like the Liberal Democrats who were polling right in line with, and often ahead of, the other two.” [*]

Nate does a good job of responding to a critique of his methodology and explaining how uniform swing is still a hypothesis. I like the granularity of the fivethirtyeight.com methodology and agree with Silver’s assertion that not all constituencies will respond uniformly to the political zeitgeist. I’ve explored second choices and the use of social network analysis in order to get a better sense of where the political zeitgeist is and I’m wondering how this could add more fine-tuning to prediction models.

Song:: Billy Bragg-‘Waiting for a Great Leap Forward’

Twitterversion:: New fivethirtyeight / Guardian election seat predictions for UK elections & “nerdfight” over uniform swing. @Prof_K

I think this tweet by Impolitical sums up my sentiments::

More spot-on observations on Toronto Sun Covers Review. Check it out. There’s some good comedy on that blog.

Twitterversion:: @impolitical sums up my ‘sediments’ re: TO Sun #fail {image: @DanGoodchild}. I now long 4 mediocrity of the SF Chronic. @Prof_K

Song:: Billy Bragg-‘It Says Here’

After being on the road for a week, I finally had the chance to catch up on news and such, including the US Supreme Court appointment controversy of Sonia Sotomayor.  The Meet the Press {NBC} soundbite that caused the maelstrom was this Sotomayor quote from 8 years ago::

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

This quote was from a 2001 UC Berkeley-Boalt Hall lecture, which was published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal.  This soundbite ignited lively debate, as well as charges of racism and reverse-racism, serving to frame Sotomayor::

David Gregory, host of Meet the Press, opted to provide a little more context this week, but he still failed to provide the widest context for her 2001 remarks.  MediaMatters highlighted the parts Gregory omitted in bold::

“Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

[…]

Each day on the bench I learn something new about the judicial process and about being a professional Latina woman in a world that sometimes looks at me with suspicion. I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that I reevaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me requires. I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.”

Gregory added more context, but his spin still doesn’t give the full picture.  I “get it” why Gregory chose to focus on the text he did, as it was controversial and generated buzz.  {Don’t get me started on press coverage of the BC election, particularly the supposed “beer tax” [non-]issue.}  I grow tired of journalists or this new breed of quasi-journalist, the commentator {read:: infotainment}, engage in ratings-grabbing soundbitery from both ends of the ideological spectrum.

I feel that Barack himself has thwarted to a certain extent being “soundbit” into a pigeonhole.  

• Is this because of a specific relationship that has evolved with the media -or- is this particular to his rhetorical skills that embrace complexity?  

In contrast, the US has had 16 years of “bubbas” who made it a point to boil things down to a lowest-common-denominator vernacular.  In other Sotomayor news, I saw this sociogram {below} of her present and past relationships.  I haven’t verified this mapping, but I wonder if the Senate Republicans will try to go after her in the confirmation hearings based upon this type of “evidence,” which can always be used to trip people up.  Given that Republicans are already backing off on the racism angle, I’m wondering how much of this racism angle will even be used.  Why bother, when you can frame her as “dumb”?

Twitterversion::  Sotomayor soundbite framed as racism-wider context less damning. More journalism fail? Obama defies soundbites-why? WWSD? Whatwillsenatedo?

Song::  It Says Here (LP Version) – Billy Bragg