{"id":3245,"date":"2015-03-24T08:37:24","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T13:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/?p=3245"},"modified":"2015-03-24T08:44:49","modified_gmt":"2015-03-24T13:44:49","slug":"graph-of-the-week-why-cruz-will-lose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/2015\/03\/24\/graph-of-the-week-why-cruz-will-lose\/","title":{"rendered":"Graph of the Week &#8211; Why Cruz Will Lose"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_3246\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3246\" style=\"width: 189px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/lets-be-serious-about-ted-cruz-from-the-start-hes-too-extreme-and-too-disliked-to-win\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3246 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2015\/03\/enten-datalab-cruz-1-189x300.png\" alt=\"enten-datalab-cruz-1\" width=\"189\" height=\"300\" border=\"0\" srcset=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2015\/03\/enten-datalab-cruz-1-189x300.png 189w, https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2015\/03\/enten-datalab-cruz-1-646x1024.png 646w, https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2015\/03\/enten-datalab-cruz-1.png 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 189px) 100vw, 189px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3246\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Click to view full article<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Senator Ted Cruz was first out the gate on the GOP side to declare himself <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ted_Cruz_presidential_campaign,_2016\" target=\"_blank\">running for President<\/a>\u00a0in 2016, when he formally announced at the ironically-named Liberty University\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/elections\/ted-cruz-announce-presidential-bid-monday-n328051\" target=\"_blank\">yesterday<\/a>.\u00a0The quants over at <a href=\"http:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/lets-be-serious-about-ted-cruz-from-the-start-hes-too-extreme-and-too-disliked-to-win\/\" target=\"_blank\">FiveThirtyEight<\/a> immediately told us why he will lose, by synthesizing data from three different sources which attempt to measure where a given public figure falls on the conservative spectrum:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Cruz is more conservative than every recent nominee, every other candidate who mounted a serious bid in 2012 and every plausible candidate running or potentially running in 2016. Let\u2019s look at three ideological measures:<\/strong> <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/voteview.com\/dwnomin_joint_house_and_senate.htm\" target=\"_blank\">DW-Nominate common-space scores<\/a> (which are based on a candidate\u2019s voting record in Congress), <a href=\"http:\/\/data.stanford.edu\/dime\" target=\"_blank\">fundraising ratings<\/a> (based on who donates to a candidate), and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ontheissues.org\/default.htm\" target=\"_blank\">OnTheIssues.org scores<\/a> (based on public statements made by the candidate). As my colleague Nate Silver has <a href=\"http:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/datalab\/jeb-bush-president-republican-primary-2016\/\" target=\"_blank\">previously noted<\/a>, these measures aren\u2019t perfect, but together, they give you a fairly good idea of where a candidate stands.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Go check out the <a href=\"http:\/\/fivethirtyeight.com\/features\/lets-be-serious-about-ted-cruz-from-the-start-hes-too-extreme-and-too-disliked-to-win\/\" target=\"_blank\">full article<\/a>, it\u00a0stands as\u00a0an excellent example of how to carefully measure and confirm (or disconfirm) commonly-held political intuitions like &#8220;Cruz is the most conservative political candidate I&#8217;ve seen in ages&#8221; or &#8220;Paul is a pants-on-fire hypocrite&#8221; using historical data.<\/p>\n<p>It appears likely that Cruz will drag the entire GOP primary process well to the right, thereby widening the chasm between that party&#8217;s rhetoric and what moderate swing voters are hoping to hear. I can almost hear the champagne corks popping over at the DNC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senator Ted Cruz was first out the gate on the GOP side to declare himself running for President\u00a0in 2016, when&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,18,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-damned-lies-and-statistics","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}