Friday, November 20, 2009

Ventriloquism

Hey, look at that!  I got Goldy to speak for me on 2009 voter turnout…

In actuality, we’d been talking about the general election and the (mis)perception of low turnout in King County for quite some time.  Goldy had previously written a couple of “election factoids” (here and here) as a followup to his earlier rants (here and here) about the Washington Secretary of State’s crusade against the state’s current “postmark” deadline for casting ballots.

For reasons that are no longer completely clear to me, those conversations inspired me to undertake the analysis he discusses today—voter turnout in this month’s big-city mayoral elections.  The spreadsheet and its data analysis are my work, but Goldy draws his own conclusions (and turns his own phrases) about what can be seen in those numbers.

I will point out that it wasn’t always easy to find the information presented in my spreadsheet.  For some cities, I had to go to the precinct-level canvass report to locate the total number of ballots cast (including blanks undervotes), and/or the voter registration data.  That entailed summing up the values from each precinct to derive an otherwise-unreported city count.  Thankfully, none of the cities in which such machinations were necessary have anywhere close to the ~1000 precincts here in Seattle.  Whew!!

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Lest we forget

Today is, of course, Veterans Day.  Today, we honor those who served in the armed forces of our nation, in wartime and in peacetime.

I remembered, as I do every year, that November 11 is Veterans Day.  I remembered as well that it was originally called Armistice Day, as a commemoration of the agreement to end hostilities in the Great War (that is, World War I).  At the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

What I forgot this morning is that today is a no-work holiday for me.

My first clue might have been that only one other person stood at my bus stop when the 7:51 run turned the corner to pick us up.  But that’s happened before.  And perhaps I might have thought something was different when relatively few passengers boarded at later stops, but that too has happened before.  At the downtown stop where I changed to a different bus, and going up the hill to my workplace, I again failed to note that anything was different about the day.

Even when I walked past the entrance to my building’s underground parking garage and saw that its gate was closed, I did little other than wonder whether there might be construction or flooding or some other problem down there.

It suddenly all made sense when I got to the building’s front entrance ... and found that the door was locked. 

I knew that the University of Washington and related organizations trade a federal holiday for the day after Thanksgiving, and it had somehow gotten into my mind that the traded holiday was Veterans Day.  In a flash, as I pulled at a door that wouldn’t open, I remembered that our traded holiday is instead Columbus Day!

Sheepishly, I retraced my bus trip.  So I’m back at home now, prepared to enjoy a relaxing day off.  I missed the blessed opportunity to sleep in, but I won’t miss a delectable midweek lunch at nearby Paseo Caribbean.  Mmmmmmmmm…

While we’re not forgetting, let’s hail the 120th anniversary of Washington’s admission to the Union as the 42nd state.  On November 11, 1889.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Liveblogging Game 6, 2009

I tried doing a World Series liveblog of last year’s Game 5, but that turned out to be rather unsatisfying when the game was suspended due to rain in Philadelphia.  Looks like the weather’s much better in New York, so perhaps we’ll get a full game out of this one.

Also, I really, really hope that this won’t be my last chance to talk about the 2009 postseason.  IOW, that the Phils win tonight and take it to a Game 7 for all the marbles.

For the record, I’m going to pop in one of those Phillies logos after every refresh of the liveblog.  That won’t be every half-inning, at least I don’t think so.

[5:08pm, middle 1st, 0-0] Top of the first was uneventful, save for the fact that Victorino is playing.  McCarver correctly noted that his injured right index finger—hit by an A.J. Burnett pitch in Game 5—will hurt him much less batting righthanded against Pettitte than it would (will?) hitting from the left side.

[5:11pm, end of 1st, 0-0] Three up, three down for Pedro.  Boy, it would be great if he were to beat the hated Yankees for another red-wearing team.

[5:17pm, top 2nd, 0-0] It’s odd how players go hot and cold.  Ryan Howard carried the club in the NLDS and NLCS, even winning the MVP in the latter.  Here in the Series, though, he can’t do a thing.  Yeah, lots of lefties on the mound, but he’s looked pretty bad against everybody.  Not much happening yet, even though neither pitcher has shown me great stuff.  Pettitte is throwing a whole lot of breaking balls.

[5:27pm, bottom 2nd, 0-0] Uh oh, a 4-pitch walk to ARod.  And now that we’re back in the American League park with that %#*& designated hitter, Matsui is back in the lineup.  Gotta say, I don’t like what I’m seeing from Pedro so far ... some awfully good swings from Matsui.  They’ll send ARod on the 3-2 pitch, so here’s the first important pitch of the game ... and of course it’s fouled off.

[5:34pm, bottom 2nd, 2-0 Yankees] Well, to be honest, I’m not surprised that Matsui took one deep.  He was really locked in on what he was being thrown.  What Pedro has to do now is get it back together and stop the bleeding right away.  Ah, whiffing Posada and getting the heater up toward 90 MPH ... that’s the way to do it.  After the Cano liner, let’s retire Swisher and end the inning, OK?

[5:45pm, top 3rd, 2-0 Yanks] Whoa!  A triple for Ruiz?  He’s not a totally lumbering catcher, but it again shows the weakness of the OF arms of the Yanks.  Great that he got to third, though, as the Rollins fly (hit it on the ground, dammit, Jimmy!) scores him.  Tempers the damage from the previous inning, but I’m still quite concerned about whether Pedro can go very far tonight.  Happ and Myers better be on their toes, because Manuel has to have Pedro on a very short leash.  This is do-or-die!

[5:54pm, bottom 3rd, 2-1 Yanks] What was Victorino seeing on Jeter’s liner?  The last thing you want to do is give these guys an extra out.  It’s called a hit, of course, but that was definitely a misplay on the part of our CF.  With the meat of the order coming up, and with Damon fouling off every strike, the tension just keeps ratcheting up and up and up.  Pedro, I fear, won’t be out there much longer.

[6:01pm, bottom 3rd, 2-1 Yanks] Well, here it is.  Damon walks, Teixeira HBP, and now it’s ARod with the bases loaded.  Pitching up in the zone seems to be just about the only thing that’s working so far.  Huzzah!!!  Called third strike for the second out (which would have been the third out if Victorino hadn’t misjudged Jeter).  Now we’re back to Godzilla, who owns Pedro thus far.  Well, damn, a single on the 0-2 pitch and two more Matsui ribbies.

[6:08pm, bottom 3rd, 4-1 Yanks] I dunno, I might have pulled Pedro after the hit.  But he does seem to be OK against everybody else in the lineup, so maybe it’s OK.  And the Posada flyball justifies Charlie’s faith in his starter.  But I can’t see how Pedro will still be on the hill to face Matsui the next time his spot comes around.

[6:15pm, top 4th, 4-1 Yanks] Well, well, Damon pulls a calf muscle and is pulled.  I wouldn’t ordinarily do this with someone hurting himself, but—good!  He’s a damn Yankee and he’s a damn pest and he’s been damn fine this Series, so I’m pleased to see him gone.  I hope it’s serious enough that he won’t be able to play Game 7 if the Phils rally and win tonight.  And I hope it hurts.  A lot.

[6:21pm, top 4th, 4-1 Yanks] Hmmm, Pettitte seems to be losing the touch just a bit.  Back-to-back walks to Werth (great eye on him) and Ibanez.  Now Feliz with a chance to do some damage ... but he doesn’t come through on the 3-2 pitch.  Oh well, get ‘im next time.  So now I ask myself whether Pedro comes out for the bottom of the inning, and I answer that I think he will; after all, Matsui isn’t due up for a while.

[6:27pm, bottom 4th, 4-1 Yanks] Hah, I’ve channeled Charlie Manuel correctly.  OK, now let’s see Pedro come through for us, OK?

[6:33pm, end of 4th, 4-1 Yanks] There ya go, Pedro!  See, that wasn’t tough, now, was it?  Now let’s get some runs back on those guys.

[6:42pm, middle of 5th, 4-1 Yanks] Jimmy, I take back what I said earlier about hitting it on the ground.  I didn’t mean that you should hit into double plays.

In keeping with the “tradition” I established last year, I’ll take this below the fold now that the game is official.

NJ-Gov & VA-Gov ... business as usual

What’s been the underlying theme of the national press coverage of the 2009 election?  I’m sure you’ve seen it or heard it.

NPR: GOP Victories Offer A Warning To Democrats
New York Times: Republicans Seek Impetus From Victories in N.J. and Va.
Washington Post: Contests serve as warning to Democrats: It’s not 2008 anymore
Associated Press (via Seattle Times): GOP sweep: Big governor victories in Virginia, N.J.

And Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele crows, based on the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial results, that the GOP is “transcendent”.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

The outcomes of yesterday’s pair of gubernatorial elections, disappointing as they were, were absolutely typical behavior for the electorates of the Garden State and the Old Dominion.  Yesterday’s results were, in short, business as usual.

Why do I say this?  Well, consider the following table:

Election Years	President	VA Governor	NJ Governor
1976 / 1977	Jimmy Carter	John N. Dalton	Brendan Byrne
1980 / 1981	Ronald Reagan	Chuck Robb	Thomas Kean
1984 / 1985	Ronald Reagan	Gerald L. Baliles	Thomas Kean
1988 / 1989	George H.W. Bush	Douglas Wilder	James Florio
1992 / 1993	Bill Clinton	George Allen	Christine Todd Whitman
1996 / 1997	Bill Clinton	Jim Gilmore	Christine Todd Whitman
2000 / 2001	George W. Bush	Mark Warner	Jim McGreevey
2004 / 2005	George W. Bush	Tim Kaine	Jon Corzine
2008 / 2009	Barack Obama	Bob McDonnell	Chris Christie

The table displays the results of the last nine presidential elections, as well as the outcomes of the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections a year later.  Each cell’s background color indicates the political party of the victor in that election, using the now-standard blue for Democrats and red for Republicans.  Do you see the pattern?

In every single one of the last nine elections, a year after the presidential election Virginia has elected a Governor of the “other” party.  If the President is a Republican, the new Governor is a Democrat.  And vice versa.  Every time since 1977.

By comparison, New Jersey is a piker.  They’ve been doing exactly the same thing, but merely in the last six election cycles.  They’ve followed this pattern only since 1989.

Thus, yesterday’s electoral results in New Jersey and Virginia simply followed hoary tradition in those two states.  A consistent pattern retained its consistency.  Certainly, there were additional factors that made the elections interesting, that influenced the margins in the two contests.  But the outcomes were fully in keeping with the way politics works in the two states.

Will you ever see any such analysis on your television?  Will you ever hear any such analysis on the radio?  Will you ever read such analysis in the newspaper (if you do, in fact, still read a newspaper)?

Not bloody likely.

Monday, November 02, 2009

Hanging on for dear life

Hey, we Phillies phans are still breathing!  You wouldn’t have thought it would turn out to be quite so tough after the good guys had taken an 8-2 lead, but it wouldn’t be the Phils if they’d just cruised in from there.  Now the Series stands at 3-2, but we’re heading back up to the Bronx on Wednesday (and, one hopes, Thursday).

So, what kind of chance is there for the World Champs to defend their title?  We’ve already discussed the problem of being down 3-1.  Adding last year’s happy result to the data I presented last October, we find that only five (12.2%) of the 41 clubs that found themselves in that predicament were able to dig themselves all the way out.  The good news, such as it is, is that three of those teams did it the way the Phils would have to—taking Game 5 at home, then winning two games in their opponent’s ballpark.

The situation is now 3-2, and it doesn’t matter all that much how it got to be this way.  Does WLLLW (the way this Series has gone thus far) really differ from LWWLL or LLWLW or any of the other seven paths to the current state of the Series?  So let’s take a look at what’s happened in previous 3-2 World Series. 

We’re now in the midst of the 105th World Series.  It started in 1903, but no Series was played in 1904 or 1994.  In four of them—1903 and 1919-1921—the victor had to win five games rather than the standard four.  We’ll ignore those oddballs, but retain the three in which tie games were called due to darkness (1907, 1912, and 1922).  Thus, our dataset consists of exactly 100 completed World Series.

Of those, 57 Series have gone at least six games.  Every one of those, of course, stood at 3-2 through five games.  We’ll look at those Series from the perspective of the trailing club, since that is unfortunately the case for the Phils right now.  We’ll consider whether the Series eventually ended after six games or went to the full seven, whether the trailing club came back to win the Series, and whether the final game(s) were played at home or on the road.

Obviously, if the Series ends after six games, it’s because the team trailing after five lost the next game.  That’s happened 22 times, 38.6% of all 3-2 World Series.  The first year it occurred was 1906 (White Sox over Cubs), and the most recent one was 2003 (Marlins over Yankees); until this year, every Series since that one has ended after four or five games.  The majority of those six-game Series, 13 of them (59.1%), ended in the winner’s home park.  The Yankees have been involved in nine of those six-game World Series, winning the Series 4-2 in 1923, 1936, 1951, 1953, 1977, 1978, and 1996, losing in six games in 1981 and the aforementioned 2003.  The Phils, now playing in only their seventh World Series, won it all in six games in 1980 and lost a six-game Series in 1993.

The good news for the Phillies is that the trailing team has won Game 6 over 60% of the time.  The bad news for the Phillies is that almost 2/3 of those Series-tying Game 6 victories, 23 of the 35 (65.7%), took place at the trailing team’s ballpark.  Taking the entire set of 57 Games 6, the trailing club has gone 23-9 (.719) at home and 12-13 (.480) on the road.

If we assume that the Phillies can take Game 6 in Yankee Stadium—based on prior World Series history, it’s more likely than I’d anticipated when I started looking at these data—then Game 7 is essentially a coinflip, irrespective of location.  In the 23 Series where the trailing team evened things at home, they won again 12 times but lost to the visitors in 11 Series.  That’s a .522 winning percentage.  When the trailing team takes Game 6 on the road, their Game 7 record is 6-6.

So winning Games 6 and 7 on the road to win the World Series can be done.  The 1926 and 1934 Cardinals, 1952 and 1958 Yankees, 1968 Tigers, and 1979 Pirates are the proof.  But…

It’s been 30 years since the We Are Fam-i-ly Bucs accomplished this prodigious feat.  Nobody has ever done it in Yankee Stadium, where the Bronx Bombers strut like arrogant SOBs in front of their even more arrogant fans.  Even if I were an optimist, I’d hold out little hope for such a miraculous reversal.  How sweet it would be, though, if somehow, some way, it turned out that way.

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Many thanks to Sean Forman’s wondrous Baseball-Reference.com site for offering up the basic data from which I drew these data.