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Fuzzy math

By Jack M. Balkin

In a very interesting column that presumes an Obama victory and calls on Republicans to invest all of their energy (and dollars) in saving senators, David Frum writes,

2. We need a message change that frankly acknowledges that the Democrats are probably going to win the White House -- and that warns of the dangers of one-party, left-wing government. There's a lot of poll evidence that voters prefer divided government. By some estimates, perhaps as many as 8 percent of voters consciously cast strategic votes in favor of division. These are the voters we need to be talking to now.

His argument that Repuablicans should be talking to such voters strikes me as sensible. What is nonsensical, though, is the assertion that "voters prefer divided government." If only eight percent "consciously cast stratetic votes in favor of division," that entails, at least by the old traditional math that I learned many decades ago, that 92% of the voters don't vote strategically to preserve divided government--some of them may vote for an opposite party senator because he/she is good at getting earmarks, but that's quite different from Frum's point. This exemplifies not only a propensity for fuzzy math (do Republicans know any other kind?), but the ability of "median voters," whether in the electorate or the United States Supreme Court, to create governmental incoherence and gridlock. Now maybe it is true that most voters prefer divided government to one controlled by the opposition. But that is a distinctly second-best preference, and if that is his argument, he should note that the overwhelming number of voters in fact have a first preference for unified government (controlled by their own party).

Full post as published by Balkinization on October 25, 2008 (boomark / email).

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