We all know which group we can blame for Prop 8. … It's the same group that hosed blacks down and placed Japanese Americans in internment camps.
You might want to update your files. President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. Whatever accountability may be appropriate for persons involved in carrying out that order can only reasonably be assigned to persons who were at least 21 years old at that time. Therefore, the youngest of them would be 88 years old today. I’m guessing that age group constitutes only 2 or 3 percent of the overall population.
Similarly, the people who instigated the use of water hoses during the Civil Rights Movement were not youngsters when those assaults took place. The most notorious incident occurred on May 3, 1963 when Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety, Bull Connor, ordered the city’s fire hoses to be turned upon schoolchildren. If Mr. Connor were alive today, he’d be almost 112 years old.
One thing history tells us about older folks is that they can be quite brutal when it comes to people that are different.
Kids in grade school can be quite brutal too when it comes to people they perceive as different.
Religion is much more a prominent factor with older voters than it is younger voters.
I get the same impression. So which of those parameters motivates them more – their age or their religious affiliation?
… not all of one group voted one way or the other?
All the data I have used have shown support and opposition at every age level.
I think one of the limitations we face when considering how to characterize voters is the manner in which the Census Bureau records information about our population. The data is typically based upon certain specific parameters, such as age, race, income, etc. Having that demographic information already formulated tends to encourage pundits (and statisticians) to employ those same parameters in devising their profiles to describe voter behavior.
religiosity has far more to do with voting trends than age.
Well that creates a perplexing dilemma – because the Census Bureau doesn’t record information about religiosity.
Using
data developed and published by the Public Policy Institute of California, I formulated ratios for each of the demographic characteristics they used in evaluating the Prop 8 vote from last November. I arranged those ratios sequentially according to their value and then imposed a basic standard statistical analysis, considering the collection of values as a statistical population. Below are the values (rounded to one decimal) and the demographic (abbreviation) each represents. Refer to the original source data for additional descriptive information.
5.7 Evangelicals
3.3 Republicans
2.2 High School or less
1.9 Protestants
1.7 Income <$40k
1.5 Catholics
1.4 Non-Evangelicals
1.4 Married
1.3 Some College
1.3 Age 55 & Older
1.3 Non-White
1.1 Independents
1.1 Income $40k-$80k
1.1 Election Results
1.0 Age 35-54
1.0 White
0.8 College Grad
0.8 Income > $80k
0.8 Age 18-34
0.6 Never Married
0.5 Democrats
0.3 Non-Religious
Note that I included the actual results of the election as one of the data values. That ratio is determined by dividing the percentage of yes votes (52) by the percentage of no votes (48 ) [Ratio = 52/48 = 1.1]. Each of the other ratios is determined in the same way.
The mean (average) of these 22 values is slightly less than 1.5, with a standard deviation slightly greater than 1.1. Using those results, the category “Evangelicals” represents a statistical outlier. In other words, that value is so different from all the other values that it cannot be explained within a mathematical measurement consisting of 4 standard deviations from the mean [2 above the mean & 2 below the mean] (Note: mean + 2 standard deviations = slightly less than 3.7).
If we remove the [Evangelicals] outlier and run the analysis again on the remaining 21 values, the revised mean is approximately 1.1 (nearly the same as the actual election results), but in this analysis the value “Republicans” becomes an outlier [mean + 2 standard deviations = slightly greater than 2.5].
What this illustrates is that voters who are included within the demographics of Evangelical Christians or Republican political affiliation are MUCH more likely than ANY of the other demographic descriptions to support Prop 8 [oppose gay marriage in California].
I constructed a pie chart to compare the relative relationship of each of the demographics and illustrate how a voter’s inclusion in each of the descriptions corresponds to the likelihood that they voted yes on Prop 8. The larger the slice of the pie, the more likely affiliation with that particular characteristic resulted in a yes vote.
Note that a typical voter may be included in a number of the different demographics. For example, one single voter may be a Republican evangelical Christian with a High School education who earns less than $40k per year and is married
and over the age of 55.
Though the ratio decreases in the younger portion of the population, age is obviously not the definitive factor. Note that the demographic most likely to reject Prop 8 (support gay marriage in California) are the “Non-Religious.”
It seems peculiar to me that some of us seem intent to ignore the obvious role of religiosity in this struggle.
If these idiots ever tried living as an openly gay man in a homophobic town for a year or so, they'd learn something about intimidation.
