Inscrutable Voters

Debates about religion fascinate me, and I confess that I have always felt more inclined to the skeptical side. However, I have to respect the sheer cynical self-centeredness of Pascal’s wager. Fortunately, a new and equally pragmatic contention has arisen before my death: Republicans must convert to atheism to win the Asian vote! At least, that is my summation of the reaction to an exit poll from the recent presidential election that revealed strong support for President Obama among Asian Americans. Steve Sailer questioned the validity of this exit poll, but if there is one salient lesson from this election, it would have to be that polls are always right. The concern seems to center on the belief that Republicans swung too far towards the religious right by choosing a Mormon Massachusetts governor. LDS is a strict, conservative denomination, but I implore for imperturbation for two reasons: one, Mormons are a collection of happy-go-lucky genealogy and board-game enthusiasts, and, two, Mormonism might follow the trajectory that I predict for Scientology. When Scientology becomes the largest religion, a sealed envelope will provide L Ron Hubbard’s final testament: “Gotcha! Hope you enjoyed it.” In any case, the facts on the ground hardly matter when the libertarian elite must spin a loss to thwart populists with pitchforks. Who knows? Maybe in fifty years, the Asian vote will grow significant enough to turn this strategy into a comeback.

My first encounter with this strategy was on the site of temperamental science blogger Razib Khan. He did not so much lay out a plan as call everyone retarded for not seeing how obvious it is that Asians moved left as a direct consequence of losing their religion. “It’s not even in the class of a non-obvious prediction. Rather, the description screams at you.” To bolster his argument, he began swearing.

Soon thereafter, author Charles Murray joined in. “Republicans are seen by Asians—as they are by Latinos, blacks, and some large proportion of whites—as the party of Bible-thumping, anti-gay, anti-abortion creationists.” By creationism, he means the absurd, literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, not the process by which liberals and libertarians create new rights out of nothingness. Murray might have a point. Why could not Governor Romney have paused his gay-bashing for a proper discussion of the issue of, say, taxation policy? Come to think of it, some of my best friends are Asians, and they see the Republican Party as the party of fat-cat, universal-healthcare-bashing global-warming deniers.

So, Murray and I seem to be on the same wavelength, but then I came across a curious statement. “Politically, a college education is a wash—in the General Social Survey, almost identical proportions of college graduates identify themselves as liberals and conservatives.” Razib contends that religious beliefs recently precipitated an attitudinal shift, and Murray describes this Asian political persuasion, while postulating that education played no role. Since Murray co-wrote The Bell Curve, perhaps he has noticed the radical improvement of SAT and ACT scores among Asians that could easily rival other cultural shifts, and since he works for a conservative think tank, perhaps he understands that university culture tends to espouse a certain ideology of its own. Though Asians are so much the Other that social scientists still label them “other race,” as the General Social Survey (GSS) does, Asians nevertheless adapt well. Confucius said, “Speak with sincerity and honesty, be humble and respectful, and you will get along even if you live among the barbarians.” Chinese people are the Asian prototype of nice folks who blend with the scenery. They adopt Islamic last names in Muslim nations and Christian first names in the lands of the West. Some Asians fled Communism, as Murray noted, but the Chinese diaspora was considered a bastion of Marxist agitation just a generation ago in pre-independence Singapore. How hard is it to imagine that some Asians adapt to the university ideology? In addition, I have noted previously that high intellect is more associated with liberal values and that the SAT is an IQ test, though not by design.

Murray is mostly correct about political ideology and education. This scale of conservativism is from one to seven with four being “moderate” and one being “extremely liberal.” Only those with graduate degrees are much more liberal than people with other education levels. However, for education to be “a wash” for Republicans, should not party identification receive the attention?

Education is not “a wash,” but it appears to be the opposite of my expectations. The scale extends from zero to six with three being “independent” and zero being “strong Democrat.” Republicans sensibly educate themselves to the level of a bachelor’s degree, before seeking out the upper-middle class and a house in the suburbs. Benighted high school dropouts are more conservative than they are Republican probably because the uglier aspects of conservativism that Murray so detests define their values. Indeed, high school dropouts are the least likely to agree that humans evolved from prior species.

Now to the premise, have Asians changed their political views? Since the GSS had not been using Asian as a race in its primary race survey question, I have graphed each Asian ethnic category. For conservativism, the main trend appears to be a reduction of statistical noise as the sample size increased. Filipino-Americans had the largest sample, followed by Chinese-Americans. Japanese-Americans, with the least, had about half as many respondents as the Filipinos and Chinese. Therefore, perhaps the uptick of Chinese-American Republicanism since 2008 is a real shift to the right. The conservativism trend for this group does echo party affiliation.

The evidence for an Asian political shift in the GSS is either not there or perhaps starting towards the political right, at least for the Chinese. The survey’s most recent results were 2010, but if Khan is right about religious beliefs playing the dominant role of influencing votes or if my hypothesis was right that the academic or intellectual progress was having an effect, I would have expected many years demonstrating a political shift, barring inadequacies of the survey. Surely, the study acknowledges that Asians have advanced in their educational accomplishments.

Yes, it does. The GSS also contains Wordsum, a ten-word vocabulary test that has some correlation with intelligence. Given the very clear evidence of improvement for Asian Americans on both the SAT and the ACT, as well as the improved education levels, one would expect a positive trend for Wordsum, too.

Unfortunately, these scores show no such evidence. Any number of explanations could address the discrepancy, while allowing for one’s personal biases to enter the equation. Those with contempt for Asians could find fault with the college entrance exams or explain away SAT scores as soulless cramming endeavors. Asian defenders can point out that the GSS has a small Asian sample size of about a thousand cumulatively over 38 years rather than the SAT’s tens of thousands each year, that a short vocabulary test does not represent general intelligence as well, or that a high proportion of Asians are not native-English speakers. The scores appear unbelievably low for Asians. For instance, in 2010 the average Indian American had a lower Wordsum score than the average African American. Indian Americans have the highest household annual income of any Asian-American ethnic group at over $90,000, which is more than twice that of the average African-American family.

An ongoing debate in America concerns whether Hispanic people are a race or are mostly members of the white race, having Hispanic ethnicity. Since they are the largest minority, they might account for the bulk of those in the graph delineated as “other race,” whose scores seem flat and at about the level of African Americans. Ron Unz recently asserted that the GSS shows dramatic score improvement for Mexican Americans. Apparently, the blog, Inductivist, first noticed this.

Here we see Ron Unz’s “super-Flynn effect,” through which “ the Mexican-American Wordsum-IQ increased from 84.4 in the 1980s to 95.1 in the 2000s, while the rise for American whites was from 99.2 to 101.3.” Wait! I see that just prior to the super-Flynn effect an even larger super-dimming effect from 1976 to 1982 deflated Mexican-American scores in many fewer years. Likewise, Puerto Ricans’ Wordsum average fell from over five to under three in only two years! Come to think of it, Japanese Wordsum average rose six points from 1990 to 1991, (which I attribute to the release of the Violator album by Depeche Mode). The GSS sample is 4.1% Mexican-American. Mexican Americans are 10.5% of the US population. So, one can imagine that earlier decades of survey samples had small numbers for this group, which would explain the noise in the graph. This teaches the valuable lesson that graphs reveal truths better than carefully selected numbers.

If the Asian sample is not large or representative enough to properly detect shifts of voting behavior, improved intellect, or even a ballpark range of Asian intellectual abilities, I can muster little confidence in any information that I can glean for this group. However, I decided to create more detailed graphs of each Asian ethnic group for political views, Wordsum scores, and educational attainment to look for patterns. Most had none.

Despite the apparent recent trend toward conservative politics, Chinese people do not appear to have clear links between politics, education, and scores. On the political-ideology graph, notice the unwillingness of Chinese people to be extremely anything.

For Indian Americans, I do see a consistent pattern that the most educated and intelligent have recently started becoming more conservative and Republican. Consistency between graphs does not discount issues with sample size, but the recent years for Indian Americans with graduate degrees look smoother, which could reflect an increasing sample thanks to the H1B visa program. Contrast that with the noise in a graph for Japanese people.

Coulter’s Fallacy

Using Wordsum, the GSS can check the purported relationship between liberal political views and intelligence. For political ideology, the relationship presents itself. However, party affiliation appears different.

These graphs do not control for any confounding variables, and race is an obvious potential confounder. However, the associations also appear when the graphs are limited to white people, except for strong party identification in recent years.

Republicans tend to be smarter than Democrats, but liberals tend to be smarter than conservatives. Republican strategists should take note of the obvious strategy to appeal to the stupid vote. Maybe they already have. On the contrary, the party has been focusing on reaching out to minority voters, and the following graphs give some indication of the results:

The graphs are distorted by the designation of “other race” as being worth three points, whereas African Americans are worth two points. (At least it is not three-fifths.)

Minorities should be joining the GOP by the boatload, considering effusive praise like this from author Ann Coulter:

That’s why our blacks are so much better than their blacks. To become a black Republican, you don’t just roll into it. You’re not going with the flow. You have fought against probably your family members, probably your neighbors. You have thought everything out, and that’s why we have very impressive blacks in our party.

According to the GSS, their blacks are actually better than her blacks. Perhaps that is changing for those who are the strongest Republicans, but the sample size for that group is likely to be very, very small.

What Republicans really hunger for is the Hispanic vote, so I present this very important graph about Mexican Americans:

At first, a pattern might not jump out, but if one stares long enough, everything makes sense. Then, if one closes one’s eyes, a photo negative of the graph will appear.

Republicans commit a basic error when envisioning Hispanic Americans or African Americans as “natural conservatives” in that they conflate conservativism and Republicanism. Minorities tend to identify with conservativism much more than the Republican Party.

For some, the vagueness or emptiness of the term conservative might allow for posturing about values or lifestyle. Still others actually embody the vulgar close-minded thinking and parochialism that puts off Murray. It helps to consider how some socially conservative beliefs are natural reactions to some unhealthy societal changes, and values that sustain a family contrast with the blandness of haggling over the budgetary pie for already well-off interests. Confucianism serves as a fine example of an Asian social philosophy that contrasts with the libertarian, Randian individualism. Murray is right to defend science and reason, but the best strategy to win the votes of Asians and others is an intelligent populism.

The Hispanic Asian Flynn Effect

Recently, activist and entrepreneur Ron Unz used results from a short English vocabulary test, called Wordsum, to argue that Mexican Americans have risen in intelligence, shrinking their intellectual disadvantage relative to white Americans by two-thirds. David Sanders (an alias) countered this claim, using one of my previous posts on racial group differences in SAT performance.

Here is how Unz responded:

Although several different arguments were made, the strongest and most detailed focused on an examination of the ethnic distribution of American SAT scores between 1980 and 2010 [sic], performed by another highly quantitive racialist blogger. The article pointed out that there was virtually no net change in the substantial Hispanic/white performance gap on the SAT during those four decades. Since the SAT is a far better proxy for IQ than my Wordsum values, and the number of participants across those years number in the millions, any possibility of a large rise in Hispanic IQ would seem completely disproven. My claims had focused on American-born Mexican-Americans rather than Hispanics in general, but since the former group represented a large and rapidly growing portion of the latter, my argument would seem to have suffered a very serious blow.

However, this is incorrect…. With some effort, I managed to obtain the ethnic distribution of SAT test-takers back to 1975 and then compared these results with the ethnic distribution of 18-year-olds during those years, found in the Census-CPS [Current Population Survey] data.

Just as I had suspected, the changes were dramatic. In 1975, 22% of whites took the SAT, and this had risen to 33% by 2011, a substantial rise of 50%. However, during these same decades, the percentage of Hispanic test-takers had grown from 6% to 32%, an enormous rise of over 400%. Thus, in 1975 white 18-year-olds were nearly four times more likely to take the SAT, but by 2011 the ratios were almost exactly the same…. Since the white/Hispanic gap remained unchanged during this tremendous broadening of the Hispanic testing pool rather than greatly widening, the only possible explanation would seem to be a huge rise in average Hispanic academic performance, just as was reflected in the Wordsum-IQ scores….

Thus, upon closer examination the SAT evidence cited for the alleged lack of Hispanic gains actually becomes very powerful evidence for strong Hispanic gains.

After going through reports from CPS, I have been unable to replicate these numbers precisely. Most of the reports that I found give combined totals of 18- and 19-year-olds, so I divided those in half, which I consider a fair estimation. I also cannot locate a report for 2011. Assuming CPS has released it somewhere, the notion that the participation gap dropped from nine percentage points to one in a single year defies credulity.

For white students, my results are similar to those of Unz. Their participation rose from 21% to 34%, an increase of 61%. If one looks at the full range, rather than just the bookend years, the rise is 19% to 34%, 79% higher. I found that Hispanics rose from 7% to 25%, which is a 257% increase. That is still a huge jump, even if it is not 433%. The rates of change of participation in the graph look similar, but Hispanic students start much lower.

However, discussion of the exact calculations is moot because both sets are based on a falsehood. Take a close look at the graph. Notice anything strange? In 1987, non-Mexican Hispanic students suddenly resolved to take the SAT in much greater numbers. Before one goes searching for a mind-blowing ‘80s Spanish public service announcement, I must reveal (again) that the College Board added a third category of Hispanic in 1987, in addition to Mexican and Puerto Rican, and this new category was “other Hispanic.” A group of people who had previously been something other than Hispanic consequently metamorphosed into Hispanic people with sombreros, I think. Other Hispanic students (or, as I prefer, “Hispanica Miscellanea”) rival Mexican-American students in number. The dramatic quality of the rise in Hispanic participation merely represents an artifact of definitional change. Calculations with a starting year of 1987 give a white student range of 23% to 34% (a 48% increase), an African-American student range of 12% to 29% (a 71% increase), and a Hispanic student range of 14% to 25% (a 79% increase).

Unz was making the point that SAT data support a secular rise in Hispanic cognitive ability, according to the fundamental law of participation level-actual ability direct correlation. This law allows us to assume that Hispanics are becoming smarter if they can take the test in greater numbers while only slightly worsening their score performance relative to white students. My only problem with the law is that the SAT dataset is riddled with countervailing examples, as I previously discussed.

One counterexample is particularly illustrative. In 1998, CPS discovered the existence of a group of people called the Asian Americans. This extraordinary new tribe possesses a pleasing aesthetic, but they can only eat with primitive sticks. After a detailed analysis of Asian SAT performance and participation, I can confidently state the broad conclusion that Asians are different.

As the above graph proves, Asian Americans so enthusiastically partake in the SAT that they achieve participation proportions greater than all of them. It seems that some proportion of Asian SAT takers are foreign students unrecognized by the US Census. I wonder if the Hispanic-American community also includes a group of census-undercounted individuals who nonetheless live here. Asian students are the one racial group whose SAT performance is taking off, and they have achieved this while increasing their test participation 105%, and I already dispelled attempts to use foreign-student involvement to explain away Asian score advancement. For emphasis, I shall present this graph of the Asian-Hispanic score gap in standard deviations, superimposed over the Asian-white score gap, with the colors of the latter set to grey.

In fairness, my essay raised the possibility to white aptitude decline relative to other groups and included in the reasoning a possible decline of white participation. If those who do not identify their race are largely white, as I hypothesized, then white students have decreased their participation from 43% in 2003 to 37% in 2010. However, that would also mean that white students had increased their participation since 1987 by 87%, at their peak, which is a greater increase than that of Hispanics, and the possible rise and fall left no footprint in the graph of the Hispanic-white gap.

Despite the racial disquiet that the SAT invokes, the test might actually be hiding the full extent of the racial gaps. First of all, the College Board altered its scoring algorithm in 1996 with the explicit purpose of narrowing racial gaps. Second, unlike the score range of many IQ tests, the SAT score range is, itself, sufficiently narrow so as to construct a secure floor for the bell curve’s far left and a ceiling that holds down the absolute best. I have perhaps overemphasized in the past the fact that African-American students have a larger gap with white students on the SAT mathematics subtest than on the writing and reading subtests. I cannot rule out that the subtest differences result purely from the massive number of African Americans who occupy the floor of the reading and writing subtests, as I previously graphed. Likewise, I can now reveal additional years of the white and Asian mathematics subtest bell curves that demonstrate substantial increases in perfection or near perfection of what was already outstanding Asian mathematics success.



Therein lies the crux of the issue. If all Unz wanted to prove was that the “Strong IQ Hypothesis” fails to account for the malleability of cognitive results, he could have cited the Asian advancement on the SAT. By bothering to analyze SAT results over time and by describing the progress of Asians, I have already implicitly acknowledged that some things do change and environment matters, at least under some circumstances. Usually, efforts to deny the existence of, minimize the importance of, or supply loose elasticity to IQ share the same impetus as the linguistic pursuit of calling “race” a “social construct.” The canards aspire to overrule by abstraction or technicality evidence for sociological generalizations labelled “stereotypes” or to beg the question regarding biological causality without dirtying one's hands with biological evidence. Recognizing an Asian academic model only reinforces a stereotype, to which even many Asians strain to take offense. That the SAT does not yet demonstrate an unmet potential in Hispanic Americans provides no paradox of proven unmet potential. To even engage the issue is to take for granted a stereotype. All good people are asleep and dreaming.