Sandbox

From ChanceWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Civil rights and Simpson's paradox

Mary Parker sent this link to the Isolated Statisticians list:

Were Republicans really the party of civil rights in the 1960s?
by Harry J. Enten, Guardian, 28 August 2013

The 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream speech" have been commemorated in much recent news coverage. In light of some Republican claims that their record on civil rights compares favorably to Democrats, the Guardian takes a statistical look at the voting record on the landmark Civil RIghts Act of 1964.

They present 3 tables, which are reproduced below. The first breaks out the vote by party in the House of Representatives and the Senate, indicating that the bill had greater support among Republicans.

1964 Civil Rights Act Senate Version Ayes
Democrats Republicans
House 153 of 244 (63%) 136 of 171 (80%)
Senate 46 of 67 (69%) 27 of 33 (82%)

The second table takes into account the history of the Civil War, separating out the 11 states that formed the Confederacy (note the remaining 39 states are classified as "Union", but of course not all of these current states existed in the 1860s).

1964 Civil Rights Act Senate Version Ayes
Union Confederacy
House 281 of 313 (90%) 8 of 102 (8%)
Senate 72 of 78 (92%) 1 of 22 (5%)