A new report by Livability.com calls St. Louis the Number 1 city for liberals. And while as a St. Louis resident and a liberal myself, I like hearing that and would love to believe it, it’s probably not true. [Sigh.] How many times do I have to say this: A Number 1 ranking for St. Louis –in almost any category—is usually the result of statistical malpractice.

The new ranking would be a refreshing change from the much more negative rankings St. Louis typically gets: Similar reports have ranked St. Louis as Number 1 in per capita murders. But that’s an undeserved reputation as well.

Here’s why. The people who do these rankings often don’t understand the political/administrative structure of the St. Louis area. For consistency, they usually create their rankings based on statistics within city limits of the various areas they’re reporting on. Their oft-quoted statistics appear to be correct for what they measure. [Per capita gun violence and murder is very high in “St. Louis.” And “St. Louis” has elected its current Democratic mayor four times, and voted overwhelmingly for President Obama twice.] Unfortunately, the “St. Louis” that they are measuring yields results that are distorted.

What people don’t understand is that those per capita numbers apply only to the City of St. Louis – an area of just 66 square miles. The reporting areas for other cities are much larger: Kansas City—319 square miles; Memphis—315 square miles; Chicago—234 square miles.

Why is St. Louis City so small? Because St. Louis City seceded from St. Louis County in 1876, in “The Great Divorce.” To make the comparison with other areas equitable, you would have to include adjacent St. Louis County, which covers 532 square miles. So, at least for St. Louis, comparing cities’ liberalness or murder rates based on characteristics within city limits is apples-to-oranges.

Basing the liberalism ranking on the larger St. Louis area would likely result in a lower ranking. [In the study, St. Louis ranked above Berkeley, CA!] St. Louis County is not nearly as “liberal” as the City of St. Louis, based on who County residents elect and re-elect to Congress and to the state legislature—mostly Republicans. Admittedly, St. Louis County often can be counted on help Democrats running statewide.. But St. Louis County is not a sure thing as an oasis for liberals, There’s a big, conservative guns-and-religion streak in the more exurban areas of the County. I live in St. Louis County, and I’m bracing myself for the sight of a boatload of Trump signs in the next few weeks before the election. You won’t see that in Berkeley.

Similarly, the per capita murder rate would probably compute lower if it were measured using the wider geographical area. For most of these rankings, the larger, more comparable St. Louis City/County area would probably yield results that are much more reflective of the actual situation in what people think of as “St. Louis.”

The only thing that St. Louis actually ranks #1 for is having its rankings repeatedly exaggerated by skewed statistics.

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Last night, Rachel Maddow reported that a just-released national poll by liberal-leaning PPP gives Hilllary Clinton the edge against Donald Trump. At first glance, for a Hillary supporter like me, that was comforting news. Unfortunately, in addition to asking likely voters for their Presidential preference, the pollsters also asked a bunch of inane questions.

Salon reports that…

The liberal-leaning pollsters also asked African-American voters to compare their preference for a Trump presidency to a list of awful things such as bedbugs, junk mail, carnies, bubonic plague and middle airplane seat.

“I can now report, this year’s Republican presidential nominee is less popular than middle seats on airplanes,” Maddow announced,

Maddow made that pronouncement with the snarky, yuck-yuck glee that can turn her hour of pirme- time into something more like a late-night comedy show than the serious, fact-based program that, at its best, it can be.

Maddow’s attitude was unfortunate. But the true culprit here is the poll itself. Somebody at the otherwise well-respected PPP [Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com gives it a B+], thought it would be cute to ask a bunch of sophomoric questions.

All I can say is that including those questions, and reporting the corresponding answers as a way of trying to be hip, taints the seriousness of PPP,  throws doubt into their methodology, and ultimately makes me feel less confident in the value of their results.

Here’s the clip:

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Do you think that the country is headed in the right direction? When asked that question in public-opinion polls, Invariably, a majority of  respondents answer “NO.” The question is bad enough in itself, but the transgression is compounded by the fact that it is often presented on the heels of questions like, “Do you think that the President is currently doing a good job?”

When the second question has been asked about President Obama, pundits have been quick to point out that an overwhelming majority of the people think that the country is moving in the wrong direction. This holds true now, even when the president’s popularity and job approval are nudging towards 50%.

In a recent Occasional Planet poll* the overwhelming plurality of respondents said the country is not moving in the right direction.

Figure ‘A’

Comments from respondents included thoughts like:

• “It has recovered from the financial crises but has much work to do to help the middle class and the poor. These two groups are good for the nation because they spend their paychecks in the US.”
• “No – we have anti education, anti-science Reich wing evangelical lunatics taking over this nation”
• “Our country is neither right nor wrong. We are humans, we make mistakes and fail many times. Just because we fail and things may look bad at times doesn’t mean that we are in the wrong direction. We push on and correct ourselves.”

In order to get a better sense of what is a more reliable answer about whether the country is moving in the right direction, we need to drill down on two levels. First, we need learn more from the respondents who said that the country is moving in the wrong direction. Is the country moving too far to the right, or to the left, or someplace else? Second, we need to see the breakdown to the answers by political party. The answers to the questions are revealed, at least in part, in Figures ‘B’ and ‘C’.

Figure ‘B’

The big vertical red bar in the middle is percentage of Republicans (73%) who think that the country is headed in the wrong direction. Next to it is the relatively low (31%) of Democrats who think that we’re headed in the wrong direction. And perhaps predictably, right between the Republicans and Democrats are the Independents who have a more moderate view (57%) of the direction in which we’re moving.

Figure ‘C’

The results here are not surprising. Republicans (the group on the left side of the chart) think that the country is moving too far to the left., Democrats (the group in the middle), predictably think that the country is moving too far to the right. And Independents, the group to the right, tend to think by a margin of 34% to 23% that the country is moving too far to the left.

What conclusions can we draw?

1. It is fairly irresponsible of the media to report that if a plurality or majority of Americans think that the country is moving in the wrong direction that it is an indictment of any sitting president. Republicans, Democrats and Independents all said that the country is not moving in the right direction.
2. Each group wants the country to move in the direction that they favor. Thus, a substantial number of President Obama’s supporters may also say that they do not think that the country is moving in the right direction because they want a more progressive agenda.
3. Where this all plays out in terms of relating public opinion to a policy direction that would be advisable seems to rest in the hands of Independents. As we continue this series, we will focus more on the thoughts of Independents.

*Occasional Planet interviewed 550 Americans on January 14-15, 2016, using the services of the online-site Survey Monkey. The sample size is reliable +/- 4.5%, 95% of the time. It is demographically balanced by gender, ethnicity, age, income and geographic region.

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