Sep 17 2007

How voters decide: A book review with lessons for campaigns

cross posted from Daily Kos

This diary is based on my reading of the book How Voters Decide:Information Processing during Election Campaigns by Richard R. Lau and David P. Redlawsk.  But it’s not a traditional review: I will get that part out of the way quickly.  Nor is it a summary: My skills are not up to summarizing 250 pages of fairly dense text into a diary that anyone would want to read.

Rather, I attempt to take the lessons they teach about how voters decide and how they process information and translate them from scholarly political science into practical tools. 

In an attempt to keep the diary to a reasonable length, I have not tried to make it too organized, but kept it almost as a list of what might be extra-long bullet points.  I hope it is, nonetheless, comprehensible.

It’s below the fold

First, a brief review.  If you are a political scientist interested in voting theory, you should read this book.  But such people likely already *have* read the book.  More generally, the book is aimed at political scientists, but interested and persistent lay-people will also find much of interest.  It’s a very good book.

There are a few caveats: The prose will not remind anyone of Mark Twain.  This is a political science text, and it reads like one.  The English is grammatical, but it takes some work getting through it.  The graphics are poorly done: Occasionally they are misleading, more often, they are simply not well thought out and do not convey information as clearly as they might.

With those caveats, I can enthusiastically recommend this book to audiences that would appreciate it.  The authors note that traditional models of voting are static, and concentrate on trying to predict who will vote for which type of candidate.  They take attributes of people and attempt to use those attributes to predict position on some political spectrum. 

Lau and Redlawsk do not denigrate such efforts, but they are after something else: Not *what* decision voters will make, but *how* they make those decisions.  How do people get information about candidates and use that information to make a decision.  Tellingly, their analysis does not, mostly, involve any real elections.  They are not trying to explain why people voted for (say) Gore or Bush, but how people take information and use it to make decisions.  To get at this, they invented a new and ingenious methodology, in which information about candidates scrolls on a screen, and people have to pick which information to access.  Given that, in real life, almost no one can learn everything about all the candidates (especially in primaries) this method seems to be a realistic portrayal of campaigns. 

A second major innovation is the authors’ definition of ‘correct voting’.  Rather than impose their own ideological views on voters, they define a ‘correct’ vote as the one a voter would make if he or she had access to all the information, and virtually unlimited time to make the decision. 

How can the findings of this book be used by campaigners?

Lau and Redlawsk define four basic methods of making a voting decision:
1.  *Rational Choice* involves a cold, calculating look at the positions of each candidate, how well they match up with the voter’s own views, what the likely outcomes of electing the person would be, and so on.  Rational choice demands a lot of effort, and, often, rational choice voters evaluate candidates based on their own self-interest.

2.  *Early socialization* voters have made a choice about voting earlier in their lives, and nearly always stick to that decision.  In the general election, these voters will almost always vote for the same party, often without much consideration, and their partisanship often colors any attempt at objective evaluation of the candidates.

3.  *Fast and frugal* voters are a generalization of ‘single-issue’ voters.  These people vote on one or a few issues, with no interest in the candidates’ positions on other issues.

4. *Bounded rationality* voters gather a very few bits of information about each candidate, and then use that information to confirm views about the candidates in each party.

From a campaigner’s point of view, we must immediately separate primaries from general elections.  I’ll discuss general elections first.

People in two of these four groups are almost unreachable in general elections.  People in group 2 have made up their minds years ago, and people in group 4 are after a few bits of information.  To get a person in group 2 to change party is nearly impossible; to get a person in group 4 to do so, we must present information showing either that our candidate is not a typical Democrat or that the Republican candidate is not a typical Republican.  Alternatively, we can engage in a longer-term effort to show Republicans in Group 4 that their views of the two parties are incorrect (e.g., a person who views the Republican party as fiscally responsible may be susceptible to data showing that the largest deficits have been in Republican administrations). 

In both the primary and general election, people in group 3 are after information about a few issues.  The problem, then, is telling which people in group 3 may be view our candidate’s positions favorably, or the opponent’s views unfavorably.  Fortunately, many single issue or few-issue voters may belong to organizations associated with those views.  Clearly, people who vote on one or a few issues feel strongly about those issues, and these strong feelings are unlikely to surface only at election time.  We can identify these people by memberships in organizations.

We can then turn to people in group 1.  These people have a tremendous amount of information to process, and, like all people, they have limited means with which to do so. Not only are we all limited in terms of how much time we can devote to finding out candidate’s positions, we have limited ability to hold those positions in both short and long-term memory.  Even in the general election, when there are usually only two serious candidates, each may take a position on 50 issues, and each position may be complex.  Perhaps a position takes one page of text to adequately express.  We then have 100 pages of text to evaluate. This is very hard.  How do we do it?  We rely on transferring information from short term memory to long term memory.  We also rely on a number of heuristics.  More about these later.

Given these four types of decision strategy, it is critical for campaigners to identify who employs which type of strategy. One method for doing so has already been touched on: We can find group 3 people by membership in organizations.  It may also be possible to find group 1 people this way: We Kossacks, for example, are likely to be highly partisan, but we are also members of group 1.  We are very interested in politics.  (As an aside: People in group 1 can be, and often are, highly partisan.  They differ from people in group 2 in that they, nevertheless, gather a lot of information).  I cannot see ways to easily identify people in group 2 or group 4.

People with different characteristics have different preferences as to *amount* of information to process.  In particular, more educated, more politically sophisticated, and younger people prefer and process more information than those who are less educated, less sophisticated, and older.  This could play a role in pitching our message to different audiences.  In addition, different campaigns lead to different decision strategies.  When there are more candidates in the race, and when they are less ideologically distinct, people are able to process less information about them.  This is important to keep in mind when planning primary vs. general election campaigns. 

Evaluation of candidates is based on two general types of information processing: On-line and memory-based.  On-line refers to a sort of running tally of good points vs. bad points about a candidate, without remembering exactly what those good and bad points were.  Memory based refers to actually remembering things about the candidates.  People in groups 1 and 2 rely on memory, while those in groups 3 and 4 can rely on on-line processes.  But both are very important, even when the other is controlled for.  And both are more important in primaries than in general elections, when political party is the most important factor.

As noted above, political heuristics are often used to simplify the process of making a choice. A heuristic is a sort of cognitive shortcut, or a rule of thumb.  The general study of heuristics was pioneered by Kahnemann and Tversky.  In elections, Lau and Redlawsk consider several types of heuristic: Group endorsements, partisan schemata, person stereotypes, and candidate viability.  Group endorsements refers to the ratings made by various groups (e.g. the ACLU) of the various people.  Partisan schemata is the use of stereotypical images of the Democratic and Republican party (and also of minor parties), person stereotypes are those based on image of the candidates as people (e.g. ‘he seems likable’) and viability is a judgment of whether the person ‘could win’.  Everyone, the authors found, uses these heuristics to lesser or greater degree, and heuristic use is not strongly related to voter characteristics or to campaign characteristics.

In summary, this book provides a lot of information that will be of use to people who run campaigns, if they are willing to dig a little.

Sep 17 2007

The fascist tendencies of DHS

I saw a diary over at Dkos that highlights the ordeals of Nalini Ghuman, a Welsh musician and musicologist whose nigthmare experience with the Department of Homeland Security has been detailed in the New York Times this morning in this article

Ms. Ghuman, a Welsh citizen, had done her PhD studies at UC Berkely and was working at Mills College in the Bay on a visa, but was detained last August at the airport in San Francisco upon returning from a brief visit from Britain. I’ll provide some snips below.

This story reeks of fascism and we cannot allow this shit to stand. We must fight the government and the DHS for this behavior.

Ms. Ghuman said that officers tore up her H-1B visa, which was valid through May 2008, defaced her British passport, and seemed suspicious of everything from her music cassettes to the fact that she had listed Welsh as a language she speaks. A redacted government report about the episode obtained by her lawyer under the Freedom of Information Act erroneously described her as ‘Hispanic.’

Held incommunicado in a room in the airport, she was groped during a body search, she said, and was warned that if she moved, she would be considered to be attacking her armed female searcher. After questioning her for hours, the officers told her that she had been ruled inadmissible, she said, and threatened to transfer her to a detention center in Santa Clara, Calif., unless she left on a flight to London that night.

She was not allowed to contact the British Consulate. She was not given any reason for her detention.

‘They told me I was nobody, I was nowhere and I had no rights,’ she said. ‘For the first time, I understood what the deprivation of liberty means.’

As Ms. Ghuman tells it, the officers said they did not know why she was being excluded. They suggested that perhaps a jilted lover or envious colleague might have written a poison pen letter about her to immigration authorities, she said, or that Mills College might have terminated her employment without telling her. The notions are unfounded, she said.

One officer eventually told her that her exclusion was probably a mistake, and advised her to reapply for a visa in London after a 10-day wait. But it took more than eight weeks for her file to be transferred to the United States Embassy in London, in part because of routine anthrax screening at the State Department.

Now, over a year later, the ‘mistake’ has still not been resolved. There is more information about Ms. Ghuman’s case at the website of the American Musicology Society. There are guidelines there for writing letters of support if interested.


The jackboots, y’all… the jackboots.

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
~Franz Kafka

Sep 17 2007

European Union Court rules against Microsoft

According to Reuters today, as reported on France 24, The European Commission ruling that Microsoft used its market power to crush competitors was upheld.

The EU’s second highest court dismissed all the substantive issues of MS’s appeal of the 2004 ruling that went against Microsoft.  Procedurally, at this point Microsoft may only further appeal on points of law rather than of fact according to the story provided.  Microsoft was ruled to have harmed consumers rights to choice by unjustifiably tying new applications to its software.

The ruling was the first ever broadcast live by the 13 Judge, Grand Chamber of the Court of First Instance, located in Luxembourg.

Microsoft has not demonstrated the existence of objective
justification for the bundling, and … the remedy imposed by
the Commission is proportionate,” the court statement said.

More Below

This is a victory against one of the largest corporations in the world, and it is a victory for the idea that free software providers can compete against the giants who dominate the industry-if the power of the government is allowed to prevent the exercise of monompoly practices.  Free Software Foundation, a maker of free, and open software, is considered to be one of the big winners in the ruling according to the Reuters story, and Microsofts General Counsel has promised to obey the law.  But really the winner here is more than just a particular company, or a particular set of code writers and users, this is a case where at least a battle in the war to free the internets has been successfully contested.

I’m not a software writer, and no kind of an expert on the tubes in general, but it seems to me that the fight about what constitutes fair practices is one of the great issues of the rise of the internet, along with what should be allowed under copyright rules that are struggling to keep pace with technology, and licensing regulations that are being gamed by the corporations.

Microsoft shares traded in Frankfurt were down 2 percent at
20.40 euros at 1021 GMT, underperforming the European technology
index which was down 0.4 percent. About 15,000 shares had
changed hands, roughly the 30-day average daily trading volume.

My guess is that there will be many corporations that lose some of their value if they are forced to do business by rules, and while it may hurt shareholders, it should greatly benefit the general population.  Hopefully we will get some residual good from the European decision.

Sep 17 2007

Wargasms


So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”

Wesley Clark in an interview with Amy Goodman

From before the stolen election of 2000 and the preposterous judicial fiat that made the crime of the new century legal, peace was always the enemy and war the motive force.

Then, after 911, although more elections were stolen, it wasn’t really necessary as bribe-addicted, power-hungry, beady-eyed politicians of the “two-party system” made Stalin proud and morphed the illusion of choice into the reality of one-party rule – the War Party.


And now there is nothing to do but sit back in horror and watch events unfold. There is no stopping them because there is no opposition outside of the powerless. Peace marches and sit-ins and disrupting committee meetings are all quaintly noble, and prove our freedom, but in the end, the “peace movement” is just more sound and fury signifying nothing. Not that hearts and minds aren’t in the right place, but that hearts and minds are nothing but pulp to the warmongers, possessed as they are of bloodlust, vainglory and worship of man’s inhumanity to man.

War is bloodsport to the powerful and the death of millions of innocents is success, progress and the solution, the final solution to gain “full spectrum dominance” which, of course, leads to peace and prosperity.

Most can’t be bothered about peace because only the deranged few, like myself, don’t believe, as Bush and the poodle-parrots of the One Party, One Media, One Nation Under the Almighty Dollar bleat; it’s a dangerous world.

It’s not a dangerous world, but it is a dangerous time as the crazies in the basement, in control of the asylum, flex their wet-dreams of sadistic power over life and death.

George W. Bush once said famously that Jesus was his favorite philosopher. That was before the coup d’etat and the false flag attack and the orgy of death and destruction the bloodsuckers gorged themselves upon in the name of “self-defense.”

Of course, it’s not self-defense when you are the aggressor. “Terrorism” if it’s real is actually the self-defense of those whom we colonize, as empires do. Our “self-defense” is actually the justification we use to annihilate those human beings opposed to their subjugation at our hands.

Some of us have been wrong about the timing of events, but not the course of events. Some of us have been wrong about the tactical process, but not about the strategy of the destructionists. Indeed, the strategy of the Christo-fascist-neocon-zionist-zombie brigade has been out there for all the world to see for years and years. I suppose it’s like their belief the Iraqis would greet the invaders as liberators and put flowers in rifle barrels and spread their legs for us dreamy Americans whose capital is Tinsel Town and whose motto is ‘can’t we all get along?’

The neocons, and collateral bloodlines, simply think the truth of their philosophy is self-evident – so there is no need to hide their light under a bushel. Benevolent dictatorship is required in a “dangerous world” where our Pax-Americana footprint steps upon peoples all over the planet, robbing them of resources, rights and dignity. “They” (if you believe the official story) never came here, until we were over there for decades and decades of rape, pillage and oppression – direct or by proxy.

Hitler could dance a jig and loved dogs. Mussolini loved his mother. And Stalin loved kids and going to the movies.

George W. Bush is just a regular guy, like you and me. Gosh dang don’t you know.


The villain always has a reason for his crimes.

The countdown to nuclear war is underway. It is the final act of the insane. There is nothing to be done. We’re all “good Germans” now.

George Bush has lost every war he has started and he will lose the next one. “By their fruits you shall know them”, said a wise one. Rancid, rotten and infested with lies is the fruit of the enemy of the people. Yet it seems the people are drunk with the nectar of this fruit. In America it is business as usual, life goes on and it goes without saying, “we’re the good guys.”

And that’s why, I think, most Americans are stupefied. Our identity, engraved with images of revolutionary heroes fighting for the aspirations of humanity, doesn’t track with current facts on the ground. So we are paralyzed, unable to believe our own eyes. We’re America, we’re the good guys. We’re not like those bad guys. We’re America.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

My prayer is for a miracle, though I don’t expect one. There is no military solution in Iraq and there is no political solution in America. It’s all a charade. A show. Bread and circuses.

But, this is America and Tinsel Town is our capital.


Sep 17 2007

Free Advice! Come Get Your Free Blogging Advice!

Yes, more meta. I love hate meta too, but sometimes I can’t help myself.

You folks (the head honchos hereabouts) have done a good job so far in setting the stage at this blog. I have a good feeling about this place. I note with amusement that old arguments appear to have been hyper-accelerated and in relatively no time and you are facing many of the same issues that have plagued dKos, Booman, MLW and others over the years. All in the first month. Must be some kinda record.

As someone who has observed the irony of average Joe bloggers complaining about how things are handled and then making the EXACT SAME decisions themselves when they become blog proprietors, I would like to offer three pieces of advice to the powers that be and one piece of advice for the rest of us.

And it’s all for free! Why? Because I love hearing the sound of my own voice you guys.

Free Advice the First – Banning is Way Out:

Avoid hitting that ‘ban forever’ button wherever possible. It will bite you in the ass. It may feel like the right decision at the time, but from what I’ve seen, it rarely is. I think you guys know this, but I read this morning about three banning so far. Not sure how true it is but regardless of the veracity – Don’t Ban. I say this as a former banning proponent who has seen the error of his ways.

Free Advice the Second – Ignore Your Friends and Your Enemies:

You will get tons of free advice (heh) from those who do / don’t have your best interests in mind. Ignore it all. Follow your heart and your head. As an example, you have made a decision to have Armando as a key member of this group. Of course this decision will generate a ton of emotion over the life of this blog. You will doubtless hear from many who want to you ‘teach him how to behave’ or ‘institute civility rules’ or even ‘remove him from the front page’. Don’t do it. You’ve done a good job so far in keeping away from the civility police, keep it up and you’ll be fine.

But one day you’ll be faced with a decision you haven’t had the luxury of thinking about ahead of time. And you’ll get plenty of free advice on how to handle it. Ignore it, seek your own council, and make the right decision. Do not under any circumstances allow others who blog here to make these decisions for you, either directly or indirectly though undue influence. If you do, it will doom your blog. Sounds dramatic I know, but I believe it to be true.

Free Advice the Third – Ignore the Attention Seekers:

This is a real tough one. To illustrate it, I’m going to use the example of your blog’s first GBCW diary from this morning. I won’t link, as I’m not trying to call anyone out. In this diary, the person stated this wasn’t the blog for them, there wasn’t enough talk about topic XYZ, and it’s not personal but it is time to move on. When encouraged in the comments, the diarist did make specific complaints about such-and-such an action regarding you-know-who, but really it wasn’t personal.

I call BS – in a nice non-personal way. Of course it’s personal. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with things being personal. But as blog proprietor(s), you will benefit the most in the long run if you ignore these personal pleas. I know it sounds callous, but engaging is exactly what the Attention Seeker wants. I know. I’ve done it myself.

Because once you engage, you begin the process of accommodation. And once you accommodate, you run the risk of getting into the problems discussed under Free Advice the Second. So don’t engage within the diary itself, but feel free to explain repeatedly what your goals and dreams are for the blog in your Front Page essays. Eventually, your message will get through.

Free Advice for the Rest of Us – Stop Giving Free Advice:

I’ve seen this one play out over and over again. We all want to be friends with the folks we meet online. We all think we know what’s best for our friends. So we (in genuine and honest good faith of course) have tons of ideas of what’s really best for our friend the blog proprietor. So we shoot off an email or perhaps get on the blower to give some great free advice.

We need to put a collective cork in it.

One of the most discouraging things I learned about the whole Armando saga over at the Big Orange was how much influence peddling there was going on behind the scenes. It was a major turn off to this old High School Nerd, and reflected poorly on everyone involved.

So the only free advice you should give should be the type you would happily share with the world. If you must preface your advice with ‘Don’t Tell Anyone I’m Saying This’, shaddup already.

Your friendly blog proprietor will thank you in the end.

Cheers.

Sep 17 2007

So, Sir, Have You Had Anything To Drink Tonight?

I’ve been contemplating writing an essay about our drinking culture in the United States for some time now, just not knowing what specifically I wanted to address. What is most important to me? What would other members deem worth debate? What about our drinking culture, history, laws and flaws do we need to address?

As a substance abuse counselor working mostly with DUI offenders, a subject has come up on many occasion in group and in my individuals appointments with clients: Police Check Points.

Still there? Follow me to the juicey parts…..

The statistics for drunk driving deaths with a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.08 or over for 1982 in Illinois–where I reside–was 53%. In 2005, it decreased to 35%. This is a good thing! Why the decrease? What changed?

Sobriety Check Points

First of all, what is a sobriety check point?

Sobriety checkpoint: law enforcement evaluates drivers for signs of alcohol or drug impairment at certain points on the roadway. Vehicles are stopped in a specific sequence, such as every other vehicle or every fourth, fifth or sixth vehicle. Sobriety checkpoints must display warning signs to motorists. Police must have a reason to believe the driver stopped at a checkpoint has been drinking before a breath test can be conducted.
info supplied by Mothers Against Drunk Drivers

The CDC (Center For Disease Control) has resources claiming a decrease of 22% of fatal crashes due to the use of sobriety check points.

This issue is huge for individuals who have lost loved ones to a drunk drivers. The emotional toll it takes on a family is gut-wrenching.

My cousin died in a single motorcycle accident in 1987. He was 25 years old and he was very drunk.
Luckily, he did not kill anyone else, but watching my aunt and uncle decide which organs to donate is not something I will soon forget. To be honest, I don’t think they realized how bad the situation was, as I’m sure that if they knew he was drinking that heavily, they would’ve told him to check into a sobriety recovery home, like Odyssey Sober Living – if you’re interested in ODYSSEY SOBER LIVING, you can find their website here. It was still heartbreaking, but I just wish that he’d spoken up about his problem sooner so that we could help him. I don’t want anyone else to have to live through what we have.

Even having experienced this, I, as a progressive have a difficult time reconciling check points and my individual rights when there is another tool available–Saturation Patrol. This is defined by law enforcement watching and observing for moving violations, aggressive driving, and the such–you know, what the police are suppose to do anyway.

I understand that some of my clients are bent on focusing their lot in treatment to be an outside evil, like the police and court system, but it is hard for me to come to terms with this procedure.

Alcohol causes distorted thinking; distortions in judgement, perception, emotional control, alertness, concentration, coodination and good reaction time. AND because of this distorted thinking, people many times believe they are “just fine” to drive, when in fact, they are very impaired. Think of how many times as individuals we have driven drunk, but just didn’t get stopped? How many of these times do you think we should’ve been stopped because we were a danger to ourselves and to others? I wonder whether some people wish that they had a DUI police check from an anonymous tip to stop them from driving any further. I doubt that many people had this thought cross their mind but checks like these could help to save a life. It could even be yours.
How many times did you thank God when you pulled into the driveway?

As progressives, how do we reconcile this? Let’s debate.

Keep in mind: I do understand this can be a very emotional subject for some and the majority of people in America polled want these checkpoints. So, breathe before you type. Debate please; don’t attack.

Sep 17 2007

Autumn Equinox ~ A Time to Remember