
The Democrats Are Doomed, or How A ‘Big Tent’ Can Be Too Big - thirdusername
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/2010/03/30/the-democrats-are-doomed-or-how-a-big-tent-can-be-too-big/
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tjic
Quite interesting.

I disagree with the conclusion (more on that in a moment), but (a) this is a
great thing to investigate with the data; (b) as soon as I saw the time-series
data, I immediately wanted to plot it on the 2-axis / 4-quadrant Nolan chart
... and that's exactly what the author did next!

Now, why I'm not convinced that the data actually shows what the author thinks
it shows: there are two possible explanations of the data:

1) that people change their views over time 2) that views are a function of
when you were born

The author accepts point 1 without even thinking about point 2.

Two examples:

1) data shows that the older you are, the more your joints hurt.

2) data shows that the older you are, the more you disapprove of
homosexuality.

I assert that fact #1 is explained by "old age leads to creaky joints", and
fact #2 is explained by "social norms changed between 1930 and 2000, and
people, to a good degree, retain the social norms of their youth".

Instead of concluding that "youth makes you a libertarian and old age makes
you an authoritarian", I suggest that the truth might be that "being born
after the Berlin Wall fell and globalization occurred makes you a libertarian;
coming of age in the hippy era makes you a leftist, and living through the
Great Depression and WWII makes you an authoritarian".

I don't endorse everything in it, but the book _Generations_

( [http://www.amazon.com/Generations-History-Americas-
Future-15...](http://www.amazon.com/Generations-History-Americas-
Future-1584/dp/0688119123/) )

argues something pretty much in this direction.

Given that OKC's data is all from a very short period of time, there's no way
to prove one hypothesis over another. Given a longer time series, though, we
can disambiguate.

~~~
Goosey
Your point is valid in the context of the current examples, but it doesn't
negate his point either. The difference is not only are people aging, but so
are social norms. What is modern-day socially liberal will be socially
conservative in the future.

This comic springs to my mind: [http://www.smbc-
comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1726#c...](http://www.smbc-
comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1726#comic)

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dnaquin
Wow. A company blog that uses the first person plural to describe a political
party. Glad I don't work at OkCupid right about now.

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ggchappell
An interesting and worthwhile article.

Many years ago, I made a similar point to a friend of mine: that the U.S. Rep.
Party attracts a relatively cohesive group of people, while the Dem. Party is
attractive to various people who have little in common. He replied that there
_is_ a strong commonality among Dem. supporters: the idea that government is
an effective and beneficial way to deal with societal problems.

I've thought about this a lot since, and have not really come to any
conclusions. However I will say that it seems possible that, while groups
trending Democratic are not very cohesive when measured on some scales (e.g.,
social & economic permissive/restrictive scales, as in this article), they
_are_ relatively cohesive when measured on other scales.

~~~
thirdusername
There was an iGNiTE talk where someone visualized how the different groups
have voted through time and it seem to also agree with you
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8I5iMa_VV0>.

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roboneal
Article Summary - Republicans have a smaller more focused base (more
effective, especially while in the minority).

Democrats have a broader, multi-issue base that can be picked apart on
specific issues/legislation at the edge/fringes.

