The @Award and Twitter’s API

The @Award and Twitter’s API

It was fun while it lasted, but our Florida Legislature Tweet Tracker is coming to an end.

With one week left in the regular session of Florida’s legislature, Ozean was notified that Twitter has made changes to its API that have drastically restricted third-party applications’ access to tweets and other data on the platform. In response, we are no longer able to collect the data needed for the ranking algorithm.

As of this morning, we are unable to continue to collect data from Twitter. As a result, we are finalizing the @Award today and will no longer be able to track tweets from Florida legislators.

We knew that entering this project, we risked being at the whims of Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter in October 2022.  We are sadden to see our fears realized. 

While we are disappointed that we can no longer track tweets from Florida legislators, we are grateful for the opportunity to have done so for the 2023 regular session.

We hope that Twitter will reconsider its decision to restrict third-party access to its data.

In the meantime, we will finalize and issue a final report in the coming weeks.

Florida 2022 Election for Governor: Geographic Divide

Florida 2022 Election for Governor: Geographic Divide

The results by precinct results have been released for Florida.  Precincts are the smallest unit of analysis that we have election results, and I find them interesting.

So what does the data tell us?

In this post, we will only explore the results for Governor’s race in 2022.

Messy Data

Even then, the data gets messy – there are 168 precincts that have no votes cast in them, most of them have no registered voters in them.  A few have 1 or 2 voters.   Who knows?  We will exclude them as outliers.

Then there are the even weirder precincts.  There are another 109 precincts with less then 10 total votes cast.    Again, who knows?  We will also exclude these from our analysis as also outliers.

Data Description

There are a total of 6007 precincts in Florida.  We have excluded 277 precincts with less than 10 total votes cast.

We are exploring 5,730 precincts in Florida.

Election Results – Data Check

A quick double-check against – official results.  The state shows Ron DeSantis winning with 59.4% of the vote and Crist with 40% of the vote.  The LPF candidate (Roos) received .2% of the vote, and a NPA (Gimenez) received .4%.

Comparing our precinct-level data file, it is almost an exact match.

Count precincts DeSantis Crist Roos Gimenez
6007 4,614,209 3,106,313 19,299 31,577
59.4% 40.0% 0.2% 0.4%

Somehow Governor Ron DeSantis is down one vote, but we continue on.

When we exclude the previously mentioned precincts,  DeSantis loses 249 votes, Crist loses 148, Roos loses none, and Giminez loses 6.   In the 277 excluded precincts, we lose 403 total votes or less than .006 of the vote.  Immaterial.   

 

Final Data Set

The final dataset we are exploring is 5,730 precincts.  Those precincts cast 7,770,995 votes.

DOWNLOAD THE FILE

In this dataset, DeSantis won 69% of the precincts, Crist won 30.1%, in less than 1 % of the precincts, there was a dead tie.

 

FUN FACTS:

The largest precinct with a tie?  ALA056.  (Alachua 56 – Covenant Presbyterian Church).  In the books with a 66% turnout, 1,093 votes for DeSantis, 1,093 votes for Crist..

 

The county with the most precincts ending in a tie?  Palm Beach County – 5. 

Winners

 

winner count rep_percent dem_percent average_delta
dem 1752 34% 65% 31%
rep 3963 67% 33% 34%
tie 15 50% 50% 0%
Grand Total 5730 57% 43% 33%

DeSantis won 69% of the precincts or 3,963 precincts.

Crist won 31% of the precincts or 1,752 precincts.

On average, the spread between DeSantis and Crist was 33%.

In precincts won by DeSantis, the average spread was 33% (67%-33%).  In precincts won by Crist, the average spread was 31% (65%-34%).

Divided Florida

17% of Florida’s precincts have a delta of less than 10%.   Those precincts have a registration of 2,518,332 voters and 1,271,336 votes cast.  A 51% turnout.

82% of Florida’s precincts have a delta of more than 10%.  These precincts have a registration of 11,970,376 and 6,499,659 votes cast.  A 53% turnout.

Interestingly, the highest turnout by precinct is found in precincts that had a delta of between 30% and 50% – 57% of those voters turned out.   (I am fairly certain there is a research paper exploring that data point.)

delta count count_per rep_percent dem_percent Average TO
0%-9.99% 984 17% 50% 49% 51%
10%-19.99% 955 17% 52% 47% 52%
20%-29.99% 918 16% 55% 44% 54%
30%-39.99% 852 15% 60% 39% 57%
40%-49.99% 713 12% 64% 35% 57%
50%-59.99% 500 9% 62% 37% 52%
60%-69.99% 381 7% 61% 38% 51%
70%-79.99% 262 5% 54% 46% 49%
80%-89.99% 149 3% 53% 46% 49%
90%+ 16 0% 56% 43% 51%
Grand Total 5730 100% 57% 43% 53%

Competitive Precincts

It was my intent to map the precincts that have a delta of less than 10%.  

Dr. McDonald of the University of Florida and the US Election project has the closest thing we have to a complete shapefile for the entire state of Florida. 

There is a glitch (at least in doing a quick analysis) in that some counties report data using a precinct name that differs from the shapefiles (DADE, BROWARD, PALM BEACH, OSCEOLA are the large ones.)   I started to remap them, and got Dade and Broward done, but Palm Beach may have renamed their precincts all together…so a couple of holes that I just don’t have the time to go into and match. 

However, we can look at most of I-4 (excluding Osceola & Lake).   

 

Conclusions

What can anyone draw from this cursory review?  

Just that few precincts in Florida are truly competitive.   

There is a debate in political science on whether this sorting is happening on purpose – with politics driving “the big sort.”

Bill Bishop wrote The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded American is Tearing Us Apart in 2008 “Armed with original and startling demographic data, he showed how Americans have been sorting themselves over the past three decades into homogeneous communities — not at the regional level, or the red-state/blue-state level, but at the micro level of city and neighborhood.” (thebigsort.com)

Of course, Morris Fiorina, has a different take.  “The Big Sort” That Wasn’t: A Skeptical Reexaminationwhich is summarized in The Myth of the “Big Sort” states that “claims about geographical sorting have always struck us as somewhat questionable.”

Fiorina, one of my favortie contrarions, critques Bishop for his reliance presidential election returns saying they are often inconsistent for other offices.  Fiorina uses county level data to refute Bishop.  

Fiorina sums up his critque by saying ” There is no evidence that a geographic partisan “big sort” like that described by Bishop is ongoing, and even if it were, its effects would be far less important than Bishop and those who support his thesis fear.”

Yeah, about that…

17% of the precincts in Florida are within 10 points in a Governor’s race.  17%!

Maybe time to re-fresh the research…and while we are at – let’s explore that bump in turnout between 30%-50%.  

 

Blog Challenge: How can Republicans overcome self funding celebrities or popular businesspersons and become the party of the majority again?

Blog Challenge: How can Republicans overcome self funding celebrities or popular businesspersons and become the party of the majority again?

This is a question that needs to be broken apart.

How can Republicans overcome self funding celebrities or popular businesspersons?

Why would we?

A celebrity or popular business person begins with one or two the most valuable things in politics – name ID & money.

If a celebrity brings multi-millions in name ID then that is money a campaign can spend on other things other than establishing a bio.

For example, I don’t know Tim Tebow outside his press, but if he wanted to run for a Congressional seat in NW Florida, he would start with a massive advantage. He would start on third base and sometimes depending on context that is enough. Would he be a good candidate? No idea.

If a self-funding popular business person brings millions to the table that is valuable time a campaign can spend on other things. Early money is one of the largest early strategic advantages a campaign can have.

I think what you are really asking is how can we overcome running terrible self-funding celebrities or terrible popular businesspersons, right? The answer is stop supporting them.

How can Republicans become the party of the majority again?

In some places the Republicans are a majority and in some places even a super-majority, but I think you are asking about national / presidential politics.

A multi-part answer:

  • Better candidates: As we have seen, and will likely see today, name ID combined with terrible candidate quality isn’t a great combination.
  • Govern: The American people want their government to look slightly better than a middle school cafeteria food fight (well most of us do). A Congress that can govern would go a long way.
  • STOP the stupid shit: Stop enabling the antisemitic, racist, 4chan crowds.
  • Suburban Women : right now this seems to be the vote most in flux. They are picking of the less of two scary versions and you never want to mess with moms.
  • Embrace the Democrats mistakes. As they have shown, there will be many.

Conclusion

Celebrity or self – funded candidates aren’t necessarily a terrible thing, and they can offer tremendous advantages. Let’s just stop picking and promoting terrible ones.

Blog Challenge:  Regulators and Authority

Blog Challenge: Regulators and Authority

The question asked is “What will it take for federal regulators to actually exercise their authority? (e.g. DoJ & Antitrust, SEC & insider trading, EPA & fracking/pipelines)?”

Ahhhh, regulators.  One the most boring, yet critical functions of government. 

Government Regulation

Conservatives have a default answer for most federal regulators – fire them all or weaken them to the point of irrelevance.  They often say ‘no’ or ‘maybe’ ad-nauseum slowing us down, and they seemingly have zero interest in the time value of money.   Frankly, some of this reputation is 100% earned.  I once walked into a meeting with a client to meet with a regulator/government staff, and my client was greeted with a “Man, we haven’t bankrupted you yet?  Ha Ha.”  It wasn’t funny.

But I don’t think me railing against government bureaucracy is the point of your question.   So, to explore your question, lets agree that the federal regulators that you speak of are fine upstanding government servants carrying out their charge to the best of their abilities. 

Our agency has done work in the clean energy space and land development space and this comprises most of our experience.  I will say for the record, most of upper staff members in these spaces are smart as heck and understand the bureaucratic process.  I am almost always appreciative of their expertise in their fields.

BUT…..the appointment officials of regulatory bodies often leave a lot to be desired for because of the concept of “regulatory capture.”

One must never forget, at its heart, the appointed officials were appointed because they at the time of their appointment aligned with the current administration.    These are political bodies.   Three phrases: Pipelines, Joe Machin, FERC Chairman.

And it is the politics that leads to regulatory capture. 

Florida: An Example of Regulatory Capture

Let me give you an example in Florida – The Florida Public Service Commission (PSC).   This body is to regulate utilities in the State of Florida.  They are to be the safeguard, patrolling if Florida’s monopoly utility industry is justified in their actions & requests.  These people are routinely making multi-million if not billion-dollar decisions, and in my opinion are 100% captured by the utility industry. 

Here is my evidence: 

  • In the recent past, any commissioner that stood up to Florida Power & Light has been unceremoniously thrown off the commission.
  • Florida’s monopoly utilities dominate/control the Legislature (in lobbyists hired, private hideaways and donations, donations (b), drafting of bills,  and other assorted ruthless, shady tactics that have some calling for a federal probe), and the Florida’s legislature controls the nominating process for new PSC Commissioners. 
  • Florida’s monopoly utilities dominate the communities they operate in by steering philanthropic donations to key groups, sponsoring everything from business conventions to little league teams.
  • The PSC is to have a citizen’s advocate or the office of public counsel.    The legislature promptly removed the lawyer who kind of, tepidly fought against utility rate increases – at least making them work for it.   Yeah, he was replaced by a lobbyist from the utility industry.
  • And finally, this system of Legislative nomination, executive branch appointment, and PSC regulation allows everyone to shirk any responsibility.  Especially, with elected officials getting to blame the faceless bureaucrats at the PSC avoiding any electoral blame.    

The Results:

ALL APPROVED UNANIMOUSLY!

The PSC, whose five members have never before voted on an FPL rate case, spent no time publicly discussing the major issues….”

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article255293281.html#storylink=cpy

And they aren’t done:

Put in the simplest of terms – the entire game is rigged.

Why does this regulatory capture exist?  Because the incentives are there and extremely high.   The monopoly utilities are going to act like monopolies by using all their power and money to reward supporters, punish defectors, buy the love of people who are indifferent, and influence the process.  The financial gains are too high (remember BILLIONS) for them to do anything else.  Monopolies and massive industries (pharma, energy, banking, etc) are going to do everything they can legally (and in gray areas) to win. 

As you see in Florida, we have a complete failure of Florida’s regulatory ‘system’ due to nearly complete regulatory capture.

Frankly, the PSC is so unresponsive to Florida’s ratepayers and Florida’s citizens this is why I wrote an op-ed calling for the way we organize this body – changing from an appointed position to an elected position.  It is unlikely to happen or even get off the ground.

Political Science hasn’t spent a lot of time researching this phenomenon and there are no simple answers. 

It is unlikely regulatory capture is ever eliminated; more likely we need to work to minimize it.   

Some have called for deregulation (my personal default), others have called for making these regulators answer to the public, but I would think that in this case, the lowest hanging fruit is the creating/making the watchdog or “Office of Public Counsel” more independent and interdisciplinary – almost like an Inspector General office.

You may also be able to tell, I am completely cynical about the odds of any positive change happening.  With most of these systems, the incentives are all aligned against the “exercise of their authority.”  

It could be argued that Florida’s monopoly utility industry had the absolute worst years with scandal after scandal.  They are likely to get most if not all, they are asking for from Florida’s ‘regulatory body.’

Sadly, it will take some massive, unfortunate event to create any appetite to trigger any real reform.  

SSRN-id4050156Download

Blog Challenge: How do you change someone’s mind in politics?

Blog Challenge: How do you change someone’s mind in politics?

This one is basically asking me to distill a seemingly lifetime of work into a blog post.    Let’s say upfront that I am going to speaking in sweeping generalities.  Human behavior is complicated, nuanced, messy, and at times unpredictable. 

Attitudes or Behavior

I find it important to mention there is a difference between changing someone’s mind and changing someone’s behavior. When talking persuasion, it is incredible how often they are conflated.   Often in the short-term transactional power politics, changing behavior is the goal; coercion is often the means. 

But for this blog challenge, we will assume we are talking about opinions. 

In most cases, I believe – and this may be blasphemy for most in the political world – we can’t change minds.   Only the target can change their own mind; as political practitioners we are trying to influence the process.   

Zone of Acceptance

It matters where someone starts on any topic, belief or attitude or how strongly held their opinion is.

If a person starts off with strongly held opinions, you’re going to have a hard time changing their opinion.  Franky, it may be impossible.   With strongly held opinions, it requires a trusting and personal relationship, and to have a trusting and personal relationship requires time and effort.  Without that, true opinion change is rare.    There is some interesting work (ignore that one scandal though) being done in the field of deep canvassing, and again that takes a lot of time and effort.

If a person has a weakly held opinions about a subject, they often acquiesce to the leaders of the group’s signals.  This is why the school of fish metaphor works.   If the opinion is not of great importance to the person, the groups we identify with and the cues from trusted leaders matter – a lot.

If a person has no opinion on the matter, they will pay attention to recency and somewhat still to trusted leaders.  If it is a new subject preferably get there first with a trusted leader.  But with no opinions, trust is likely less of a factor than frequency and recency.  Propaganda works.

Direct Assaults

One way not to persuade people is to challenge them directly.  This often leads to a boomerang effect that when the subject is directly challenged, they spend more time coming up with better arguments to refute. 

Same with calling people “idiots, knuckle-draggers, racists, dummies, etc.”  We are all guilty of it, and it is really counter-productive to persuasion. 

More often, rather than a direct, full frontal assault, we are better off trying to increase motivation and shaping the path / environment.

Trust

 As you read, you notice the importance of trust – especially in partisan politics. 

Without trust, there is no persuasion.  How many times has a news story been believed or discredited solely on the trust of the source?    

We observe it all the time in polling. We believe the polls we ‘trust’ and discount the polls that are ‘partisan hacks.’ 

Our agency has been conducting on going research into how energy policies are received by conservatives. It is clear that source plays a huge deal. If the policies are advocated by the “Global Green Commies”, it won’t get far. In fact, it won’t get heard at all.

Conclusion

Almost everything about this subject can be taught by parents of teen-agers. 

First, the difference between changing minds or behavior.  Does a parent care if a kid has a deeply held belief in the importance of a clean room or does that parent just want the damn room cleaned – even if it is under the threat of massive grounding? 

If the teenager, for whatever reasons, has deeply held beliefs that his room is his space and keeping a clean room is stupid, calling him a troglodyte leading to slammed doors is unlikely to change his mind or his behavior. In fact, this little ingrate will likely sit in his room and write a list of the top 10 reasons why a clean room is leading to the deterioration of America. In this case, you may want to enlist the person he is crushing on to share with him that a clean room is super attractive and indicates a responsible person.  If that doesn’t work, threaten to take away the car keys or turn off the wifi until the room is clean.    

If the teenager, for whatever reason, has loosely held beliefs about a clean room, enlist the help of their friends, coaches, YouTube influencers, etc.   Best to make a clean room the norm and have those cues received from multiple sources, only to see it all reversed when he walks into his friends’ messy rooms. He will likely flip flip back and forth depending on the accumulation of cues seen most recently.

But the absolute best way to convince a teenager the importance of a clean room is to get there before they become teenagers. Early, repeated, consistent signals that a clean room is normal, important, and that the behavior is expected.   Spend time with them, associate a clean room with other positive experiences.    Develop a relationship around a clean room.

But even then, with all these strategies, it still maybe freaking impossible to get a hard-headed teenager to change their opinions or behavior.     

Once the opinion / behavior is set and coercion is no longer available because they moved out and pay for their own car & wifi, the teenager/young adult will have to change their own mind when they decide the time is right, if ever. 

Blog Challenge:  Religion in America

Blog Challenge: Religion in America

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

I am basking in the USMNT win and advancement, and leave it to my brother to dive right in with the following question / comment: I’d like for you to explore how we went from a country founded on the specific separation of church and state to a country where one party is openly trying to force the entire country to be Christian and made it front and center of their platform.

What we CaNt StArT WiTh An EaSiEr ToPiC LiKe RaCiSm?

The short answer: The rise of Christian nationalism.

This ideology has a lot in common with the evangelical movement, but they are different. Christian Nationalist believe that the United States was founded as a Christian Nation and they should be working to “restore” or “take back” our nation through government action, if needed.

The rise of Christian Nationalism across the world seems to have taken off with the COVID pandemic, the rise of self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist Marjorie Taylor Green, and assorted alt-right wing talk show hosts like the Nick Fuentes. Pew Research has conducted some polling on the topic asking people to describe Christian Nationalists. Here are some examples:

“Fanatics distorting Christian values for self-serving opportunities to further their perceived righteousness.”

Born-again/evangelical Protestant, age 50-64

“Excessive pride in White Christian identity, often trying to impose their own religious beliefs on the rest of the nation and attempting to transform the U.S. into a Christian theocracy.”

Jewish, age 18-29

“Christian nationalism means to me applying the principles of Christianity into American society without being compelled to believe in Jesus as the savior of the world.”

Born-again/evangelical Protestant, age 18-29

If you want a close look into this, look no further than Mike Flynn and the Hallow. Frontline took an in-depth look ““Michael Flynn’s Holy War.” If you have an hour and want to learn more, the video is below. It is eye-opening.

Like most things that start on the fringe and get traction, you can observe Rep politicians and right wing media picking up phrases, laundering it for mass consumption. Look no further than Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ re-election campaign and the release of “God Made a Fighter.”

What is bringing all this about?

Religion in America

Pew Research is the main place I go when I look for quality research on Religion in America. They have been studying it for years.

If recent trends in religious switching continue, Christians could make up less than half of the U.S. population within a few decades

Pew research: Modeling the Future of Religion in America

There is not much worse than a loss of status of a once majority group. They do not go quietly. They fight back, often violently.

At some point I feel, some in religion saw their efforts in churches to persuade people begin to fail they turned to legislating and lobbying.

They recast history as American being ‘founded as a Christian nation’ rather than a nation founded by some Christians who made a point of establishing a government that could protect us against factions.

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion,…………
Liberty is to faction what air is to fire.

federalist No. 10

So, How did we get here?

  1. Loss of Status of Religion and religious leaders.
  2. Move to extremism assisted by the Internet.
  3. Political “Leaders” sending signals and flirting that Christian Nationalism is “okay.”
  4. Political organization.

Personally, I have always found that trying to live up to my own faith difficult and fraught with failure. I’d recommend more people worry about themselves and their walks and less with legislating. Being a good example is more persuasive than forcing people to do something, right?

I am not sure liberty, christian nationalism, and legislating can co-exist. But between you and me, often, the debate on “freedom” isn’t really about freedom rather it’s about who has the freedom to make the rules.