Millennial Makeover review is online

My review of Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics by Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais is on the authors' webpage! This review was published in December in the newsletter Connections, produced by the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement.

Innumeracy on Sunday Morning

On Meet the Press yesterday, Mr. Gregory gave an analysis of the extent of the "point shift" between President Obama's Massachusetts vote count in 2008 and Scott Brown's in 2010 that makes me wonder if David isn't completely innumerate. Forget for a minute that Obama and Brown were not running against each other. Mr. Gregory said that because Obama won Massachusetts by 26 points in 2008 and Brown won by five point in 2010, that there is a "31-point shift" between then and now in favor of Brown, and the Republicans.

Mr Gregory is wildly comparing things that aren't comparable here. In reality, Brown got about the same number of votes as McCain. If anything, those numbers indicate no shifting at all on the Republican side. Ms. Coakley got 900,000 fewer votes than Obama, about the number by which Obama beat McCain. It's hard to see where those "31 points" have any explanatory power at all. Clearly, there was no "shift"; a whole bunch of people simply didn't vote.