Nick Cox wrote:
[...]
> For example, to pick an application out of the air, many elections can
> be condensed to
> three fractions of the total vote
>
> Very slightly left-wing party
> Right-wing party
> A sum of nice people going nowhere much plus greens plus isolationists
> plus nasties
>
> as is roughly true of British politics. But data for such variables tend
> to concentrate in a
> rather small part of the triangle. There are alternatives, such as
> showing only part of the triangle,
> but they are difficult to program for elegantly. Or rather, I would
> rather try the alternatives.
You'll not be in any way surprised to learn that this has been done
for British politics by Danny Dorling and colleagues, and continues to
be (see here, for example:
http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=a280979). They do not, however,
use Stata to generate their triangular data. Indeed, the BBC's
general-election coverage in 2005 introduced an electoral triangle
(the 'three-party' battleground') to complement their traditional
two-party swingometer. I'm not sure they'll do that again next time
round.
Further afield, Gary King and his colleagues did use Stata (via their
-clarify- routine, since abandoned) to illuminate the value of
electoral triangles (or 'ternary plots' as they called them) by
building upon a previous study of the 1988 Mexican presidential
election. Using survey data, they ran 100 multinomial-logit
simulations (why not 1000?) to estimate the effect of perceived
strength of the PRI party on the probabilities of each of the three
main candidates winning that election. They don't go into much detail,
but the results they do show are quite absorbing (King et al, 2000:
357-8).
--
Clive Nicholas
[Please DO NOT mail me personally here, but at
<[email protected]>. Thanks!]
King G, Tomz M, and Wittenberg J (2000) "Making the Most of
Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation,''
American Journal of Political Science 44(2): 347-361.
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