November 05, 2004

Statistics Don't Lie


I like reading other's blog posts more than writing my own, which is why I didn't post on Thursday. I'm still reading, but wanted to quickly link to a post by Beldar that I mostly agree with. That way, I don't have to spend a few hours putting something like this together myself.

But I disagree with one of the arguments quoted in the post, and it's makes for an excellent opportunity to express a pet peeve of mine -- both parties makes the same bad arguments all the time. Talk to a liberal and conservatives have all the bad arguments and vice versa etc., etc. Beldar quotes from Michael Dowd's final campaign memo on the GWB campaign site:
[George Bush] received the most votes by any presidential candidate in history — over 58 million, even breaking President Reagan’s 1984 mark of 54.5 million votes. [Updated figures actually show over 59.6 million — Beldar]
So what. Why doesn't it matter? Because if it mattered, then it also matters that George Bush "lost" more jobs than any President in history (or since Hoover, or whatever). The reason why more jobs were lost is because we were losing jobs in a larger pool of jobs to lose. The reason why Bush got more votes than ever is because he won an election in a pool of votes that was larger than ever before.

Statistics don't lie. People just don't understand them.

[Linked to Beltway Traffic Jam.]

Posted by Peter at November 5, 2004 09:00 PM
Comments

Thanks for the link! You're right, of course, about the larger pool of voters. I haven't run the numbers to try to adjust for the larger American population in 2004 versus 1984, to try to make more meaningful comparisons to Reagan's win, but I suppose that could be done.

Posted by: Beldar at November 5, 2004 11:01 PM

Agreed. This is akin to saying, well Bush must be the greatest president of ALL TIME-- he got more votes than even Lincoln did!

Posted by: Glenn at November 6, 2004 01:16 AM

Regarding your comment "Because if it mattered, then it also matters that George Bush "lost" more jobs than any President in history (or since Hoover, or whatever). "

Statistics don't lie, but people do lie with statistics... as did the Kerry campaign on this one. If you want to be pedantic about the jobs that Bush lost, you need to start at the point where his economic policies started taking effect: January 2002, not January 2001. To start with January 2001 is to assume that somehow (19 days before he took office) Bush was using his evil blocking powers to destroy the American economy.

The current totals for job changes since 2002 is about +1.1 million jobs. Not bad, considering it sits on top of a major economic correction. If you go from 2001, Bush is still a bit negative (don't remember the exact number), but he is in easy striking distance of positive territory in this otherwise meaningless statistic. (The real number is Jan 2006 - Jan 2002, in my opinion.)

Posted by: Carrick Talmadge at November 6, 2004 02:57 AM