|
Presidential Height Index
Developed a couple of years ago, the PHI claims
that since the introduction of television, the taller of the two
candidates running for president has always won the election.
Proved Wrong Once
The Presidential Height Index doesn't seem to work during the presidential
primary as evidenced by the 6ft5 Bill Bradley's loss to the four-inch
shorter Al Gore in 2000. It does have a surprising success rate
for every presidential election except for the 1976 race when 5ft9
Carter beat out the 6ft2 Ford.
PHI as a predictive method
It's only been wrong once but is PHI really a good predictor of
elections? This
interesting article from the 2000 presidential campaign looked
at PHI and several other prediction methods. 6ft1 Gore beat the
5ft11 Bush by two inches, but lost the Supreme Court's vote and
the oval office. Maybe the other predictive models can shed some
interesting light on this more--»
2004 Campaign
While it doesn't seem to apply to primary campaigns, the Presidential
Height Index is definitely something that political junkies and
pundits alike are considering. This Weekly Standard article
examines the 2004 campaign's crop of contenders. The PHI says that
6ft5 Kerry beats 5ft11 Bush but 5ft9 early front-runner Howard Dean
didn't stand a chance.
Sumthin Screwy in St. Louie (& Elsewhere)
The RNC was caught throwing out democratic voter registration cards
in Las Vegas and Oregon. They did their utmost to disqualify and
harass black voters in Ohio and several other states. Then you add
in all of the "glitches" involved with electronic voting
machines registering Kerry votes for Bush and you can see why the
PHI might still be correct. Democratic skeptics, conspiracy theorists
and Bush bashers worldwide seem to concede that the shorter candidate
won all of the votes that were counted, but there is still some
contention about how many of the votes were actually counted. Many
ballots, especially provisional and absentee ballots were tossed
out and uncounted, leading many to suggest that the exit polls,
which called for a Kerry victory, were in fact a more accurate indication
of the electorate's mandate.
PHI Overshadowed By Regional Divisions
The PHI was wrong when Carter won, his victory chalked up to Religious
Conservatives flexing their political muscles. Exit polls have been
more accurate than the PHI and yet in this election, they seemed
off as well. It's interesting to see pundits explain this away as
the corporate media tries to hype up the 2004 presidential election
as another instance of the Religious Conservatives flexing their
might... While proving the PHI to be inaccurate, this election proved
that the "Kennedy Curse" may be a more valid barometer
of American politics. The Kennedy Curse says that a Northeastern
Liberal will always be beaten by a Southern Conservative with Mondale,
Dukakis and now Kerry as prime examples.
Looking Back
As any stock market analyst will tell you, past performance is no
indicator of future results. It's such an ephemeral thing to try
to quantify, but until someone can figure out what happened when
the PHI was wrong it remains more in the realm of anecdotal evidence
and coincidence rather than scientific fact.
|
 QB is 6ft11 and serves as The Height Site's Webmaster. This article
was developed with material submitted by someone just like
you.
Bookmark This Del.icio.us Page!
|
The comments below were sent in by Height Site
visitors in response to the article above.
As I constantly remind my high school statistics
students, 'correlation does not mean causation'.
Tim Brophy
What do YOU think?
Do you think the Presidential Height Index is visible evidence of
height bias? Could the advent of television and its effect on human
interaction be the real force behind PHI?
If you're ready to weigh in on this issue, just
send us an e-mail
|
