From its database, Equifax determined total credit card debt in each of the 50 largest metropolitan statistical areas and metropolitan divisions from the first quarter of 2009.
In order to conduct the sort of statistical analysis Silver faults Noonan's column for lacking, you'd need a representative database of persons who are politically active and a method of coding their political activity by ideology and intensity.
With that question, the NBA was off to create a digital database through which fans can access over 4.5 quadrillion combinations of stats from 500 different statistical categories.