Michael Tew sent me a link to Brad DeLong’s fair and balanced discussion of Republicans:
I suspect that some 6% disapprove of interracial marriage but won’t tell the Gallup interviewer because they want to save their face–that 20% of Americans today disapprove of interracial marriage. That means that 40% of Republicans disapprove of interracial marriage, and thus that perhaps 60% of Republican primary voters really do not think as the rest of us Americans do.
Neither Tew nor I could make any sense of this paragraph. When DeLong says “[t]hat means that 40% of Republicans disapprove of interracial marriage,” I’m pretty sure he’s just making that number up.
Now to be clear, when I say DeLong makes up numbers out of the clear blue sky, I don’t mean he randomly picks them. No, I realize there is some type of computation involved. But since his inputs into the computation are his personal guesses, that hardly renders them accurate. Thus, I could say, “I suspect that some 10% of the time, Krugman and DeLong are each fair to austerians. Thus, on a day when they both write about austerians, there is only a 1% probability that they will both be fair.” Did I just make that number up out of the clear blue sky? I agree it’s a semantic issue.
Anyway, the actual Gallup poll–which formed the basis for DeLong’s post–shows that 77% of Republicans approved of interracial marriage, meaning 23% did not. I still do not see how DeLong turned 23% into 40%, but his personal judgment is probably better than the polling.
UPDATE: Okay, I’ve at least figured out the first step in DeLong’s calculation. The Gallup poll shows that in the population as a whole, 86% approve of interracial marriage. So DeLong is saying 6% of the American people just lied, thus only 80% actually approve, meaning 20% disapprove. But I’m still at a loss as to how he turns that into 40% of Republicans, and 60% of Republican primary voters. Maybe he’s basing it off the proportions on the reported results? Is he taking into account the fact that Republicans are proud of their racism (and thus wouldn’t lie to the pollster) more than the average respondent? Don’t know, but anyway, just thought I’d point out that DeLong is taking a poll saying 23% of Republicans disapprove of interracial marriage and–without citing that actual number anywhere in his post–is telling people “that means 40% of Republicans” disapprove of interracial marriage.