I studied statistics (long ago) in college. I never used those skills very much in an official capacity, but did seem to develop a knack for spotting oddities/anomalies in statistically-oriented reports, graphs, and such. A diary Friday (sorry, I've been through too many the past few days to locate which one - if it was yours, please speak up) linked to the following:
http://www.cnn.com/...
and it didn't take 60 seconds for me to start asking questions. I'm hoping that in this diary we can develop a better understanding of the reasons for the oddities I see.
Hop the orange rainbow below and see if there's any insight you might be able to add.
I'm looking at graphs 5, 6, and 7, the ones concerning the vote breakdown by income.
I realize my statements below are rather broad and simplistic characterizations, but I believe they are roughly accurate (as far as they go), at least vis-a-vis the other candidates, and I'm at least shooting for a bit of brevity here:
Clinton's image is of a 'corporatist', one who voted with the GOP on Iraq, the wife (and then-advisor, remember) of the man who shoved NAFTA through.
Edwards? A 'populist', a lawyer who's stated life purpose is fighting poverty, and who refuses donations from 'lobbyists'.
Obama spent much time and energy in the housing projects of Chicago, and claims to be the candidate of (somewhat nebulous, at this time) 'change'.
I'm not really looking at who WON each of the categories involved. What I find confusing is the percentage of the total vote each received in each category. Please don't let your eyes glaze over just yet. This isn't as complex as this poorly-written paragraph sounds. If you've read this far, you're already past the hard part.
Based on my stereotypes above, logic would seem to indicate that Clinton, the 'corporatist', would receive more of the more affluent vote, while the man whose life is dedicated to fighting poverty, and the man who spent much time in Chicago projects, would tend to receive more of the less affluent vote. Yet, the opposite was true, across the board - not matter how the income pie was sliced (and, IMO, the three breakdowns provided do a good job of slicing that pie in all the relevant ways).
The Obama numbers I can, to a degree, at least, let slide; he's been accused of "attacking progressives", and his drew by far the most votes from the GOP and Independents. Further, there's not a truly dramatic difference between his numbers within categories; in particular, in the $50K+/$50K- breakdown, his numbers are 36% and 34% respectively. His support appears to be broadly-based.
However, in the same category, Clinton's respective numbers were 23%/32%; Edwards' were 25%/19%.
Why would the two candidates (Edwards especially; I find his numbers the hardest to fathom) allegedly more devoted to issues of poverty be the recipient of larger vote percentages from the wealthy? Especially, why did Edwards