The Politics of the Presidential Brackets
By now anybody who pays attenton to such things knows that President Obama has publicly filled out his NCAA men’s tournament brackets. Like millions of others, he played it close to the chest, sticking mainly with favorites and choosing North Carolina to go all the way.
So leave it to a statistics nerd (sorry, Andrew) like Nate Silver over at 538 to run the numbers (in this case, a logistic regression model) and to conclude that (1) Obama did indeed give the nod to favorites, just as a casual scan of his entries indicates, (b) but he also tended to favor teams from “swing states” in the 2008 election (North Carolina being a prime example). Just a couple of months into his term, and already he’s currying favor for 2012!
No doubt congressional invesitgations will now be initiated of such blatant partisan bias at the highest levels of an administration pledged to nonpartisanship.
Comments
Outlier alert? Didn’t he pick the Utes over UofA? Granted, both are Western states and UofA is McCain country (sort of; probably more sheriff Joe country) but there’s no more Republican state (i.e., opposite of Obama swing state) than Utah. Remember, Lee, I lived there. Comparatively, then, Obama should have picked UofA over the Utes. I don’t remember seeing his choice between BYU and Tamu?
Posted by: Kent Bolton | March 19, 2009 01:07 PM
Lee:
I just watched the ESPN clip. I had not noticed from the highlights I watched last night how much Obama slammed the Pac 10! Sadly but rightly, in my view, as the Pac 10 was horrible this year. I’m forever mystified by UCLA—it’s an emotional thing from growing up in LA. I watched UCLA probably 5-6 6 times this season and when they’re playing defense well (and when they are it’s really impressive to watch) they look fantastic. Trouble is, they rarely play defense well and rarely sustain it over more than 5 minutes. BTW, what’s your view on UofA in recent years? Pretty stunning, it seems to me, that UofA played so much more poorly than ASU.
Posted by: Kent Bolton | March 19, 2009 01:15 PM
I think that Nate is just having fun here, but I’m inclined to disagree with the conclusion. He’s basically trying to explain the non-seeding favored picks, of which there are only 9.
-2 of these are 9 seeds beating 8 seeds. Seems to me that picking two of the 9s to win is just playing the averages, since it’s the most common upset.
-2 of them are picking UCs to get knocked off early. Going against Berkeley, whatever its ranking, is generally a good call in the dance these days. And EVERYBODY has been piling on UCLA lately (my bracket has them winning a couple times), so its no surprise he is too. I would guess that is the 11/6 upset with the best odds in Vegas.
-One is Temple over ASU. That could be evidence.
-Purdue/Washington could also be evidence.
-FSU/Xavier: both swing
-Syracuse over OK. Seems like the best evidence to me, what with the special election in NY 20th.
Honestly, hardly qualifies as evidence that Obama played much politics.
Posted by: Matt Jarvis | March 19, 2009 07:44 PM