LeftMN, the new package for Cucking Stool, is a new blog run, by its own description, by four urban white guys. Without smart urban guys like this, bumpkins could never do get any DFLers elected.
Proof of the pudding? In Which numbers are the right numbers, a post about the retirement of Representative Kory Kath, Tony Petrangelo ( formerly of Minn-Donkey "Analysis You Just Can't Get Anywhere") writes:
What you can see when looking at those numbers is that the only time Democrats do well in the district is when that Democrat is named Kory Kath.
Left out of Petrangelo's equation? Tim Walz's wins in 2008 and 2010 in House District 26A. And something else.
But Petranglelo has a formula that transcends the facts, and that formula allows him to write "the only time Democrats do well in the district is when that Democrat is named Kory Kath."
After all, being able to make analysis with confidence is far more important:
This means that its [sic] hard to know if a district is voting the way it is because of its partisan lean, or because of candidate quality. Or even both. And because the quality of candidates will be different in every legislative race in the state, you can’t compare those districts to one another based on past legislator performance, because you don’t know if the votes were for the candidate or the party.
To be clear, you still have these issues with candidate quality in statewide and nationwide races, but the difference is that every person in the state is given the chance to vote on those candidate options.
That means that to the degree candidate quality is skewing the numbers, that skew should effect all districts about equally. This is why Cook PVI uses Presidential numbers to measure the partisan nature of congressional seats instead of the results of the actual congressional elections.
In a partisan metric such as PVI, you want to control for candidate quality as a variable and using numbers from the legislative races themselves doesn’t do this, instead, it amplifies the problem.
To answer NorthernMNer’s question then, you want to use numbers from races that everyone in the state had a chance to vote on.
Even under this formula, Petroangelo isn't looking at a 2006 statewide race in which a DFL candidate trounced her Republican opponent in the counties that make up the district. The last time Bluestem checked, Amy Klobuchar wasn't named Kory Kath.
So Walz and Klobuchar are winning Democrats in Kath's district who aren't named Kath, but because Petroangelo is so enamored of his formula, and Walz's election isn't part of his cherished metric, he'll not even use Walz's name, going so far as to claim no other Democrat wins in the district. Not even Klobuchar, who ran a statewide race.
That's awesome writing and analysis. Without smart urban guys like this, rural Minnesotans would be totally lost and never able to elect Democrats.
Photo: Tony Petrangelo, so much more brillant than you.
Amy Klobuchar is a great example of why statewide numbers are better.
She won the district, but by a smaller margin than statewide. You can't make these types of comparison's with local numbers.
Thanks for reading!
Posted by: Tony Petrangelo | May 22, 2012 at 11:30 AM
Tony: I guess Tim Walz must have run a statewide race, too. Or not.
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | May 22, 2012 at 01:32 PM