Thursday, October 28, 2004

Politics: fun with statistics

I ran across some statistics on state-by-state suicide rates compiled by this guy, so I was wondering if there was any difference in states that strongly supported Bush versus strongly supported Kerry. I used Oct 27 data from electoral-vote.com. The suicide data is from 2001, and from a handout given in our Suicide lecture.

Interestingly enough, the rate of suicide among states that

Strongly Support Bush = 13.1/100,000 (s.d. = 2.4);
Strongly Support Kerry = 8.7/100,000 (s.d. = 2.1).
(National Average = 10.8/100,000)

So people in Bush states are 51% more likely to commit suicide!

The states that strongly support Bush (>10% margin) are:
Utah 37%, Wyoming 36%, Oklahoma 33%, Nebraska 29%, Idaho 29%, Alaska 27%, Texas 23%, South Dakota 22%, Montana 21%, North Dakota 20%, Kansas 19%, South Carolina 18%, Kentucky 17%, Georgia 17%, Indiana 16%, Louisiana 15%, Tennessee 12%, Alabama 12%, North Carolina 10%

The states that strongly support Kerry (>10% margin) are:
D.C. 67%, New York 21%, Rhode Island 20%, Massachusetts 14%, Vermont 13%, Maine 11%, Maryland 10%

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

yes, but did you compare that to the percentage of the population that are dentists? :-)

Pepper said...

Following Garrett's interesting analysis of the suicide rates in the deep red and deep blue states, I began to wonder about other health conditions that might contribute to increased mortality. In today's society, there's no more worrying health epidemic than obesity.

Applying the same statistical analysis that Garrett used for suicide and applying it to obesity rates in the adult population (according to the Trust for America's Health's 2004 state obesity report), we get:

Strongly Support Bush = 23.7 % of the adult population (s.d. 2.2)
Strongly Support Kerry = 19.7% of the adult population (s.d. 1.7)
I guess living in a red state is just bad for your health.

Anonymous said...

If Bush wins, total suicides in my state may increase by at least one. If not, the number of passports will increase by at least one, U.S. population will decrease by at least one, and some country with a lot less fucking idiots will see a population increase of at least one. Who's with me?