I said in my skewering of the Romney campaign’s lack of understanding of Venn Diagrams and how they work that we should be equally harsh against any and all bad math and interpretations thereof during this election season. And, lo and behold, Maddow and Moore give us a great example of the murky area of causation and correlation.
While I don’t know much about Florida or Florida voting laws, I’m betting that
a) the trend would be similar whether or not the new laws were in place, and
b) a similar trend is happening in many states.
Incumbents don’t get new voters registered. Florida is getting older. Republicans have done a great job at ginning up the base. This is to say nothing of the importance of contested primaries for U.S. president, Senate, House, etc.
The data warrants deeper digging. I’m not ready to reject the null hypothesis just yet.
emergent math 