A friend of mine has told me on numerous occasions that since 1960 the Yankees have not won a World Series while a Republican was President. Upon hearing this my Republican friends (both Yankee and Red Sox fans) turn incredulous and say that this is ridiculous. So I decided to investigate. To be clear this is in no way shows causality, but just checks the numbers.
The data was easily attainable so it really came down to plotting.
The plot above shows every Yankee win (and loss) since 1960 and the party of the President at the time. It is clear to see that all nine Yankees World Series wins came while a Democrat inhabited the White House. The fluctuation plot below shows Yankee wins both before and after 1960 and the complete lack of a block for Republican/Post-1960 simply makes the case.
There are similar plots for the American League after the jump.
Jared Lander is the Chief Data Scientist of Lander Analytics a New York data science firm, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, Organizer of the New York Open Statistical Programming meetup and the New York and Washington DC R Conferences and author of R for Everyone.
