The Stone City

Words Made to Last

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Significance Redux

Kevin Drum, who should know enough about statistics to know better, has again trotted out the old canard about Democratic Presidents being better for the economy:
As longtime readers know, Democratic administrations routinely deliver better economic performance than Republican administrations. Among other things, they deliver lower inflation, lower unemployment, higher economic growth, better stock market growth, and higher median wage growth. This performance is remarkably robust and consistent...

I thought I had put this thing to bed in 2005:
Several posts lately, notably from Kevin Drum, have purported to show that the American economy prospers more under Democratic Presidents. This conclusion is based on about 50 data points, so we should not expect much significance, but it has been eagerly reported. [...] if Democratic partisans want to use data like these to show that Democratic presidents are somehow better for the economy, they must explain how it is that a Democratic president in the US can help the French and Swedish economies (at least) even more than our own.

Can someone with actual readers please help me slap this thing down?