Following up on that, I thought it would be interesting to look at the results from individual states. The map below shows how often each state made the "right" choice in the 15 elections being considered. (The "right" choices were Jefferson in 1796 and 1800; Jackson in 1824 and 1828; Van Buren in 1836, 1840, and 1848; Fillmore in 1856; Cleveland in 1888 and 1892; the Roosevelts in 1912 and 1932; Kennedy in 1960; Reagan in 1980; and, although it pains me to say it, Clinton in 1992. Not all of these were good presidents, just better than the available alternatives. Millard Fillmore, for example, is universally considered to have been a terrible president; but James Buchanan, against whom he was running in 1856, is universally considered to have been even worse.)
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| See the data here |
A few trends are immediately obvious. The Bible Belt comes out looking pretty good, for example. But for me the most striking result is the abysmal performance of New England. The five states with the worst track record are five of the six New England States! Vermont is dead last (choosing the best candidate only 13% of the time), followed by Maine (23%), and then Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island (all 27%). Connecticut did a bit better (40%), but is still red rather than green. A pattern like that can't be a coincidence. Also note that the Mormon Corridor, despite being conservative/religious like the Bible Belt, is red -- because the early Mormons who settled that region were mostly transplants from New England! Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were both born in Vermont.
I have no real idea what the problem with New Englanders is. I lived in New Hampshire for five years and am quite fond of the region, but apparently democracy just isn't their strong suit. The God who made New Hampshire taunted the lofty land with clueless voters.
UPDATE: I've corrected some minor errors in my data, but nothing of substance has changed. Nebraska is now tied with Rhode Island for the third-worst position, the only non-New England state to do so badly.
5 comments:
To be candid; I'm not deeply interested by the correlation between the 'conventional wisdom' of presidential quality and public voting; partly, because I don't regard the two as genuinely independent variables; and also because I think that (to a greater of lesser extent) both candidates in elections are variations on the same (Tweedle-dum and -dumber). A 'bad' president may indeed better serve the interests of those who choose, fund and support Presidential candidates than a good one; or there may be advantages to them in choosing some undulation of good and bad Presidents. (Nowadays, I think They probably want a divisive President, splitting the nation nearly equally and setting the halves against each other - certainly that is what the US has been *getting* in recent decades!) But, most rational people regard the process of democracy as having degenerated over its history - even since the franchise was extended. Do you see any evidence of such a declining trend?
I believe I've already sent you a link to my old post documenting a decline in presidential quality since the franchise was extended to women in 1920.
Before women's suffrage, presidents judged by history to have been "good" won the popular vote 3.8 times as often as "bad" presidents did. After female suffrage, that figure is only 1.2. (These figures ignore presidents of average or disputed quality.)
@Wm - Yes, I saw that - but I was implicitly wondering about the historical trend 'controlling for' the effect of women's franchise! In principle, democracy might have got 'worse' for reasons statistically-independent of the female franchise, so that it made no difference; or it could all be related to the female franchise - or there might be both factors, either independent or interacting! There aren't really enough data points to tell which (if any) of these... But if you assumed that three data points was enough to confirm a trend, maybe...
Sorry, I missed the word "even" in your first comment and misunderstood you to be asking about the effects of women's suffrage.
I don't know how we could possibly control for the effect of the women's franchise, except by looking at exit polls that give demographic data on the voters. With that information, we could see who would have won if only men had voted. But of course women's suffrage likely had effects that go far beyond the final vote tally in each election; it must have influenced which candidates are nominated, what issues they focus on, etc. At any rate, exit polling didn't start until the 1960s, if I remember correctly. And it's pretty hard to get much precision or statistical significance when you only get one data point every four years.
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