Having been traveling last week, I missed reading the Daily Post. In catching up, I read the discussion about women and their political leanings, involving Daily Post columnist Louis Cannon, and professor Stephen Voss — an exchange that seems to be based on statistics.
Those columns relate to a couple of disparate episodes during my trip – which call the stats into question. But first, a little context.
Nearly a half-century ago, I was an undergrad political science student. One of the required classes in that major was statistics. My number-one takeaway from that class was the admonition by Mark Twain that “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Way back in 1999, I illustrated the problem of relying on stats when I wrote a law publication critique of two law professors debating the impact of the Supreme Court’s Miranda decision.
Using the same stats, those esteemed professors reached opposite conclusions — but missed the real point. I wrote, “Advocates for both sides of this philosophical debate now claim there is statistical proof of their respective positions, however an examination of one such statistical study illustrates why philosophical differences can rarely be resolved by numbers.”
Statistics drawn from polling are even more dubious. As proof, look no further that two recent national elections.
In 2022, pre-election polling predicted that Republicans would win a significant majority of the United State House of Representatives. That didn’t happen. Then there was the 2016 presidential election in which all the polling indicated Hillary Clinton would easily defeat Donald Trump. That election night was a “Dewey Defeats Truman” redux.
According to the stats Cannon and Voss refer to in their respective columns, most women are Democrats. That may, or may not, be accurate — but look closely at the basis for the conclusion. You will notice those stats are based on how respondents “identify” themselves in “surveys”. It was “surveys” that predicted Dewey would defeat Truman, and Clinton would defeat Trump.
Which brings us to the episodes during my recent trip.
The first was a snippet of a conversation I overheard coming from a table of several women in a tourist area restaurant. I’m not sure what exactly they were discussing when one said (in a raised voice), “Who cares if you can get an abortion, if you can’t afford gas in your car to get there…” which got my attention. Then another said, “I’m past the age when I’ll need an abortion, but I still need groceries and gas to get to work!”
The second episode occurred in a rural convenience store. At the checkout counter the clerk told me the price of the item I’d purchased — and I questioned the surprisingly high cost. The clerk, a middle-aged white woman, replied, “Welcome to Joe’s world” — whereupon the following dialogue ensued among myself, the clerk, and two other customers in line:
Me: “Is Joe the owner of this store?”
Clerk: “No. President Joe.”
Me: “Yea, things are getting damned expensive.”
Other customer #1 (a young Hispanic woman with tats, piercings, blue tinted hair): “You should try supporting yourself as a 19-year-old.”
Other customer #2 (a middle-aged black woman), “It’s no easier being a 39-year-old single mother.”
Me (asking the two women in line): “Do you think it’s Joe’s fault?”
Customer #1: “I don’t know.”
Customer #2: “Things were cheaper when Trump was president.”
Customer #1: “Yea, that’s true.”
Compare the focus of the women in the restaurant and convenience store on every-day pocket book reality, with the “surveys” of “political ideology”, “leanings” , and how women “identify” that Voss refers to.
As an intelligent, well-educated, professional woman once admitted to me, “Ideology doesn’t feed my kids when their hungry.”
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.