Politics: More red states versus blue states
Hmm...seems the last thread started a little bit of a war over assumptions about certain subpopulations and voting behavior. Maybe this will help clarify the issue of education and voting:
But what about this election? Lucky for us, this site has taken the time to compile average IQ's of states (taken from the book "IQ and the Wealth of Nations" and the Economist) and which candidate they voted for. In short, all of the top 16 states (and 19 out of the top 24) voted for Kerry. The bottom 26 all voted Bush.
Disclaimer: I haven't had the time to double check the quoted sources, so I'm taking this with a grain of salt until I do.
5 comments:
Um, I'll read my post again, but I don't think it had anything to do with "education and voting." It had to do with your (seemly) condescending attitude towards the suburban population -- made more ironic by your ostensible efforts to warm up to it. I'll check again if you wish, or maybe you could point out what you're talking about . . .
these kinds of comments are why the democrats have failed so many times in recent history. the democrats are like boring lecturers that expect the genius of their material to win over students, and get pissed off when people stop showing up to class and do poorly on their tests. they're like the michigan med administrators that have mandatory attendance and sign up sheets and wonder why half the class falls asleep during those sessions. for better or worse the republicans have motivated americans. some might argue that they bring out the worst in voters, and that might be true. but the fact remains, they bring out something. the version of democrat that americans see are people like alec baldwin who calls them stupid and says he will leave the country if bush wins. the democrats can pat themselves on the back for their worldly knowledge of issues and good education all they want but unless they find a way to get broader support, they will be inert commentators for years to come. alienating voters with stats about education is not exactly the best way to gain support. slick willy got elected twice and is still hugely popular, and i don't think most people would rate him highly for "moral values." there is a way - this just isn't it.
mikey.
Bo, just wanted to point out that I have a few friends who post on here as well every once in a while--this post wasn't my doing.
Mikey, I would expect you of all people to laugh at something like this. Which is all its good for. A laugh.
The IQ data I'm particularly skeptical of. I haven't followed the data trail, but I don't particularly get how you could even obtain this data. I think I could sit down with my own biases and create this list from the top and generate random numbers above and below 100, and nobody would be the wiser.
But the college education data seems like something that, in all seriousness, could be debated on the simple fact that, of course college graduates vote more liberal. Universities are almost by and large exclusively liberal. I don't know of too many conservative college towns. South Bend, maybe. Maybe even College Station. So it seems perfectly correct to say that liberals tend to be more 'educated,' but not necessarily more intelligent.
But again, when Pepper first told me about this data, it was obviously in the context of a joke. And this post should probably be taken the same way. Whether we're funny or not, we certainly think we are. And we're going to keep trying to be.
well usually i would laugh but i've been doing nothing but reading ny times opinion articles all day. a lot of the blame has been put on the coastal elitists and seeing this made me act serious for a second. after seeing your reaction to the election, as well as those of my other close friends, i can't help but feel a need for more moderate leadership. although i'm hopeful for a bi-partisan second term, i too feel frustrated, and that's mostly a result of seeing how seriously you guys took all of this. i actually want the democrats to regroup and refocus and push the country towards the center. i want nothing more than for the democrats to take a part of the evangelical vote as to reduce their stranglehold on the GOP. though i've voted for democrats before, i have never ever been sympathetic to the democratic party, for some reason or another. but i am now, at least in the abstract. forgive me for acting out of character.
btw i wrote a letter to bush and emailed it to the whitehouse question submission thingy. the last time i did anything like that was when i emailed clinton about partial birth abortions.
mikey.
I don't think moderate per se is the answer to the democratic party. The democrats are ALREADY a wishy-washy moderate party. I don't think it's a question of us going to center, because we're already there. It's a question of us emphasizing our own values. In a lot of ways, it was everything (within statistical significance, of course :) ) Nader had been saying the entire election. Democrats weren't focusing on things like worker's rights, on the Democratic brand of fairness, which is rewarding people for hard work. I thought Saletan hit it great: people don't believe in the free market. They believe in the work ethic. We've allowed the Republicans to equate the two. Messages like that are simple and democratic. The democratic party still claims to be the people's party. It's simply time to put up or shut up. Clinton did it. There's no reason it can't be done again. We just have to friggin' do it.
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