[lbo-talk] Bush and gas prices: trend shifting?

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Oct 10 12:00:45 PDT 2006


On Oct 10, 2006, at 11:57 AM, Miles Jackson wrote:


> I use Doug's Bush approval-gas price association as an example of
> bivariate regression in my methods course. It's an uncanny, strong
> relationship. However, as gas prices fall, the trend doesn't seem
> to be following Doug's regression line. Bush's ratings are back
> down to the low 30s, when the regression model predicts a
> significantly higher approval rating. Residual error, or
> meaningful shift in the trend?

When a model stops working, maybe the numbers are telling us something (though I used Gallup's approval rating, and the latest is 37, not the low 30s, like the Times/CBS poll - for some reason, maybe Gallup's Republican bias vs. the liberal NYT/CBS bias, Gallup's numbers are consistently higher). Something - Foley et al - seems to have shifted against the Reps in the last week or two.

Doug



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