The shoddiness of The Grey Lady

The most racist places in America, according to Google

The paper introduces a novel but makes-tons-of-sense-when-you-think-about-it method for measuring the incidence of racist attitudes: Google search data.

No, it doesn't.

And how do they know the races of the people doing the searches?

Blacks are far more likely than whites to make regular use of variants of "nigger," and the areas on the map this fellow thinks searches prove to be racist are both areas where the black population is high and areas with a history of racial oppression, segregation, and violence.

Only the latter makes this idiotic travesty of social science the least plausible.

Why make reference to this old thing, now?

Because there is a fresh attack on Trump in the news that calls attention to the alleged fact that his support is concentrated in the very areas this ludicrous piece of pseudo-scholarship labels racist.

Proving what, do you suppose?

Gee whiz.

Is it coincidence that the fellow who wrote the original study was hired by the NYT for its editorial page and the NYT now originates this attack?

Phooey.

All the same, leave it to the Times to know perfectly well how to make this hatchet job, not just on Trump but on his voters, sound like respectable reporting.

That Mr. Trump’s support is strong in similar areas does not prove that most or even many of his supporters are motivated by racial animus. 

But it is consistent with the possibility that at least some are. 

The same areas where racial animus is highest in the Google data also tend to have older and less educated people, and Mr. Trump tends to fare better among those groups — though the effect of Google data remains just as strong after controlling for these other factors.

These areas also include many of the places where Democrats have lost the most ground over the last half-century, and where Hillary Clinton tended to fare best among white voters in her contest against Mr. Obama in the 2008 Democratic primaries.

In many of these areas, a large number of traditionally Democratic voters have long supported Republicans in presidential elections. 

Even now, Democrats have more registered voters than Republicans do in states like West Virginia and Kentucky, which have been easily carried by Republicans in every presidential contest of this century. 

As recently as a few years ago, Democrats still had a big advantage in partisan self-identification in the same states.

But during the Obama era, many of these voters have abandoned the Democrats. 

Many Democrats may now even identify as Republicans, or as independents who lean Republican, when asked by pollsters — a choice that means they’re included in a national Republican primary survey, whether they remain registered as Democrats or not.

Mr. Trump appears to hold his greatest strength among people like these — registered Democrats who identify as Republican leaners — with 43 percent of their support, according to the Civis data. 

Similarly, many of Mr. Trump’s best states are those with a long tradition of Democrats who vote Republican in presidential elections, like West Virginia.