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Which metric is a better predictor of the severity of the fall surge in US states?

1) Margin of Democrat victory in Nov 2020 election
or
2) % infected through Sep 1, 2020

Can you guess which plot is which?


The left plot is based on the % infected through Sep 1, 2020. You can see that there is very little correlation with the % infected since Sep 1.

However, there is a *strong* correlation when using the margin of Biden's victory (right).

Infections % from
https://t.co/WcXlfxv3Ah.


This is the strongest single variable I've seen in being able to explain the severity of this most recent wave in each state.

Not past infections / existing immunity, population density, racial makeup, latitude / weather / humidity, etc.

But political lean.

One can argue that states that lean Democrat are more likely to implement restrictions/mandates.

This is valid, so we test this by using the Government Stringency Index made by @UniofOxford.

We also see a correlation, but it's weaker (R^2=0.36 vs 0.50).

https://t.co/BxBBKwW6ta


To avoid look-ahead bias/confounding variables, here is the same analysis but using 2016 margin of victory as the predictor. Similar results.

This basically says that 2016 election results is a better predictor of the severity of the fall wave than intervention levels in 2020!
this take has a lot of good points, but they're missing the underlying story once again, like most other media outlets: organizing is absolutely crucial. in GA, organizers put in the hard work. in NC, it wasn't to the same extent. organizing is why GA will trend blue long term.


one anecdote that i want everyone on this hellsite to read:
I organized in Durham County, which went bluer than 2016 and voted for Biden by a 62 pt margin.
I heard tales of organizing in Wake County being piss poor. Like, just not putting the necessary work in.

I didn't really comprehend at the time that this was a bad omen. I still thought we were going to win. But Wake County organizers were asking *us* in DurCo to come down and drive ppl to polls on Election Day. Not good.

I'm saying this with a lot of conviction: the central failure of North Carolina Dems in 2020 was organizing. We weren't allowed to do door-to-door canvassing while GOP did so. D2D is a crucial tool in organizing and we essentially gave it up for the GOP to take.

While we were stuck on Zoom and textbanking and phone calls, GOP organizers were going door to door, masked up and distanced, and were able to get a message out. We did not do that, and as such, our turnout was less than we needed.