Hate Groups do not Predict Trump % in 2020. It did in 2016

The Southern Poverty Law Center has come out with it's 2020 hate map showing the concentration of hate groups in the US as seen above.  The total number of groups that they follow nationally went down in 2020 to 838 from 940 in 2019.  The high point for hate groups during the Trump years was 2018 with 1,020.  You can see my summary of the numbers here. 

As before, I adjusted the number of hate groups in each state and expressed it as hate groups per million and correlated it with Trump's support in that state for that year.  As in previous years, the District of Columbia led the nation with 26.9 groups per million but he only received 5.4% of the vote in that state so it was excluded from the above graph.  Montana had the highest hate group rate at 5.61 per million.  New Mexico had the lowest at 0.48 per million.  Pennsylvania's raw number of hate groups was unchanged at 36 from 2019.

The above graph shows a weak positive correlation for Hate Group concentration in 2020 and Trump's % of the vote in last year's election accounting for 5.6% of the variability in his vote.  In 2016, hate group concentration accounted for 20.1% of the variability in his vote that year.  This correlation was almost twice as strong in 2016.  The weaker correlation could be due to greater minority mobilization in 2020.

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Chicken's Coming to Roost for Trump?

Chicken's Coming to Roost for Trump?

On Jan 6 I posted my reaction to the shocking events at the U.S. Capitol that day.  I wondered what would happen to Trump's approval ratings as his other antics have had minimal effect on them throughout his presidency.  Now it seems like I have an answer now that there are three days left for him in power.

The graph above shows a sharp drop in the Real Clear Politics (RCP) average in approval rating polls since Jan 6.  Trump's approval rating was 44.2% that day.  Today it is 39.7%, the sharpest decline in his term.  This rating is still 2.7% ahead of the lowest his average approval rating has been back in December 2017.  

Rasmussen (a Republican polling firm) estimates his approval rating to be 48% which is by far the highest of any of the major polling firms.  They limit their sample size to likely voters where the other firms sample from all adult Americans or from registered voters.

  

Nate Silver's website FiveThirtyEight estimates his average approval rating to be 38.7% which is 1% lower than the RCP average.  They weight their polls by the their quality based on sample size and bias in the selection.  They rate some polls such as ABC News/Washington Post as A grade and others such as Economist/Yougov as B.  Rasmussen is rated as C+.  Otherwise the trend in the poll average for FiveThirtyEight mirrors that of the RCP.  

It remains to be seen what will happen in the upcoming impeachment trial of Trump.  Sixty seven Senators will have to vote to convict him to bar him from ever holding office again.  The decline in his approval ratings may give 17 GOP Senators the courage to vote with the 50 Democrats to do so as it gave 10 GOP House members the courage to break with the rest of their party to impeach.  

Nixon's approval rating was 25.1% before he resigned when GOP senators told him the game was up. Democracy Now has a discussion on what happens next for Trump with historian Tim Snyder.  He does face state level investigations for which he cannot be pardoned either by himself or by his successor.  Snyder says he believes the best option for Trump would be to leave the country.

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Hate group activity down in the US but the Same in Pennsylvania

In the midst of the hoopla over Coronavirus, the Southern Poverty Law Center has come out with its annual hate map.  In 2019, they were tracking 940 hate groups which was down from 1,020 in 2018.  Adjusting for the US population, there were 2.86 groups per million in 2019 which was down from 3.12 groups per million in 2018.

For Pennsylvania, the number of hate groups that they are tracking has remained steady at 36 from 2017 to 2019.  The population adjusted adjusted numbers has remained steady at 2.81 groups per million residents which has been consistently less than the national rate.  Among the states and the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania ranks 29 in hate groups per million.

The numbers and rates are summarized in the table below.  The District of Columbia has had the highest rate of hate groups in the US since 2016 with a slight decrease in 2019 to 26.12 groups per million.  Montana had the second highest rate at 5.61 groups/million which was down from 6.59 groups/million.  Only 14 states had an increase in the hate group rate from 2018 to 2019. 

State	Hate Groups 2019	Population 2019	Hate groups per million '19	Hate groups per million '18	Hate groups per million '17	Hate groups per million '16	Hate groups 2016	Hate Groups 2017	Hate groups 2018
US	940	328,239,523	2.86	3.12	2.93	2.84	917	954	1,020
District of Columbia	19	705,749	26.92	38.44	37.47	30.83	21	26	27
Montana	6	1,068,778	5.61	6.59	7.62	9.59	10	8	7
Tennessee	38	6,829,174	5.56	5.32	5.51	5.71	38	37	36
Arkansas	15	3,017,804	4.97	4.65	3.99	5.35	16	12	14
South Dakota	4	884,659	4.52	7.93	8.05	8.09	7	7	7
Louisiana	21	4,648,794	4.52	4.51	2.78	2.99	14	13	21
Virginia	36	8,535,519	4.22	4.58	4.37	4.64	39	37	39
Mississippi	12	2,976,149	4.03	4.35	5.03	6.02	18	15	13
Washington	30	7,614,893	3.94	3.72	3.51	2.88	21	26	28
Idaho	7	1,787,065	3.92	5.70	6.99	7.13	12	12	10
Colorado	22	5,758,736	3.82	3.86	3.75	2.89	16	21	22
Georgia	38	10,617,423	3.58	3.90	3.84	3.10	32	40	41
Oregon	15	4,217,737	3.56	3.58	4.34	2.69	11	18	15
Missouri	21	6,137,428	3.42	3.92	2.94	3.94	24	18	24
Kentucky	15	4,467,673	3.36	2.91	2.47	5.18	23	11	13
Maryland	20	6,045,680	3.31	3.48	3.14	2.99	18	19	21
South Carolina	17	5,148,714	3.30	3.34	2.79	2.42	12	14	17
Alabama	16	4,903,185	3.26	4.71	4.72	5.55	27	23	23
Vermont	2	623,989	3.21	1.60	3.21	1.60	1	2	1
Florida	67	21,477,737	3.12	3.52	3.15	3.06	63	66	75
Nebraska	6	1,934,408	3.10	4.15	4.69	2.62	5	9	8
Delaware	3	973,764	3.08	2.07	2.08	4.20	4	2	2
North Carolina	32	10,488,084	3.05	3.85	3.11	3.06	31	32	40
Indiana	20	6,732,219	2.97	3.59	4.65	3.92	26	31	24
New Hampshire	4	1,359,711	2.94	7.37	6.70	4.50	6	9	10
Nevada	9	3,080,156	2.92	3.30	3.00	1.36	4	9	10
Arizona	21	7,278,717	2.89	2.79	3.14	2.60	18	22	20
Hawaii	4	1,415,872	2.83	3.52	0.70	0.00	0	1	5
Pennsylvania	36	12,801,989	2.81	2.81	2.81	3.13	40	36	36
Alaska	2	731,545	2.73	5.42	5.41	0.00	0	4	4
Michigan	27	9,986,857	2.70	3.10	2.91	2.82	28	29	31
Ohio	31	11,689,100	2.65	3.08	2.66	3.01	35	31	36
North Dakota	2	762,062	2.62	3.95	2.65	1.32	1	2	3
Wisconsin	15	5,822,434	2.58	2.58	1.90	1.56	9	11	15
Oklahoma	10	3,956,971	2.53	2.28	2.54	1.53	6	10	9
New Jersey	21	8,882,190	2.36	2.02	1.89	1.68	15	17	18
New York	44	19,453,561	2.26	2.41	2.42	2.38	47	48	47
Connecticut	8	3,565,287	2.24	1.68	1.67	1.40	5	6	6
West Virginia	4	1,792,147	2.23	2.77	2.20	2.18	4	4	5
California	88	39,512,223	2.23	2.10	1.90	2.01	79	75	83
Massachusetts	15	6,892,503	2.18	2.03	1.46	1.76	12	10	14
Texas	63	28,995,881	2.17	2.54	2.33	1.97	55	66	73
Minnesota	12	5,639,632	2.13	2.14	2.15	1.81	10	12	12
Illinois	26	12,671,821	2.05	2.43	2.66	2.50	32	34	31
Wyoming	1	578,759	1.73	1.73	1.73	3.42	2	1	1
Utah	5	3,205,958	1.56	2.85	0.97	0.98	3	3	9
Maine	2	1,344,212	1.49	3.74	2.25	2.25	3	3	5
Kansas	3	2,913,314	1.03	4.81	1.37	2.41	7	4	14
Iowa	3	3,155,070	0.95	0.95	1.27	1.28	4	4	3
Rhode Island	1	1,059,361	0.94	1.89	2.83	0.95	1	3	2
New Mexico	1	2,096,829	0.48	0.00	0.48	0.96	2	1	0

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