I don’t pretend to know statistics. I am not a true statistics aficionado. But my nephew is a statistician expert. So here is his analysis [in bold] of the data provided in this article:
Ok, let's talk stats.
A) they don't disclose the fit of their data. Just looking at it they would be lucky to get an r^2 of ~.1. In other words only about 10% of the variation in the data could be explained by the variable they are using: 10% of the difference in vaccination can be explained by presidential election results.
B) the second graph has even worse fit to the data. Probably closer to 2-5%. Also the spread of the data points increases along with the dependent variable, giving you that distinctive trumpet shape. Even in good fitting data that is a sign of serious confounding variables.
Basically, they've got nothing that would pass rigorous scientific muster.
My guess is that the analysis was either done by sociology major with one semester of stats, or by somebody who knows better and had all of the robustness checks omitted.
My take from the article is that they were not forthcoming with the source of their data so I could verify that they are not interpreting it to skew their results. They sort of say where the data comes from but they do not provide a link so I don’t have to search and wonder if I am looking at the exact same data. This is very dishonest. But assuming the data source is not being misinterpreted, at the very end of the article they do provide a link to a source for their political data which they say is from “Kaiser”. With a link that takes you to a website called KFF.org” Being a little familiar with Kaiser I thought they meant Kaiser Permanente. But then I thought it doesn’t make sense that “Kaiser” would be so political and one sided about their politics. But if you go to the bottom of that page they state “ KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) is not associated with Kaiser Permanente or Kaiser Industries.” This is also very misleading bordering on lying. So I personally cannot trust anything stated in this article due to what my nephew analyzed about their data and the misleading and lack of links to provide sources of data so their results can be verified.
Not that it means anything if Republicans appear to be less vaccinated than Democrats. But I think the results are quite humorous if you ask me. If true, it shows that Republicans are not as a group as big as lemmings as I thought. And certainly not as big as lemmings as the Democrats that are giving up their body sovereignty and therefore control over their own bodies to our tyrannical government. JMHO
You can call me wrong but "statistics" is a mathematic tool developed by Gamblers to improve their odds
of wining something. I hated the subject and referred to it as "Sadistics".
To a large degree it is subjective, not objective eg some thing that can be measured.
like where a complex mechanical structure failure point is likely to be or when a
PN junction will fail do to overtemperature.
I used to go through all sorts of hoops to "Prove" one of my designs has one chance in a trillion of failure.
It was never asked when it would fail.
So people can play fast and loose, they do, and too many people trust the "experts" that are trying to quantify
future random events, using a guess based on past observations.
But then I'm not a card player.