Probably correlates to the percentage of women in the workforce, or the percentage of working mothers, or simply single mothers.

damnit, just tell us, I hate guessing games! :)

I would guess ethnicity, and the "obscure" is being used ironically.

OK, I hazard a guess. Looking at the census data vs. election county map I noticed the counties with the highest percentage of population under 18 tended to vote for Bush.

I'd be very impressed if this was a correlation by county instead of by state.

Probably those states with more married couples who didnt like the idea of gay marriages??

I meant heterosexual married couples.

some educated guesses:

percentage of homeowners.

percentage of women with fewer than 5 lifetime sexual partners.

percentage of men with more than 5 lifetime sexual partners.

percentage of women who grew up without a father for a certain length of time prior to age 18.

percentage of fulltime workforce mothers with children younger than 4. (this spans a wide economic spectrum).

percentage of households that watch the 700 club.

Relationship to a veteran or a military guy.

Relationship to a veteran or a military guy.

the military has lots of blacks. they vote democratic. things like this are essential, since blacks vote dem ~90%.

How bout,

Relationship to a veteran officer or a military officer, or themselves was an/is an officer

Come on Razib, tell us, I hate suspense. :)

Steve's posted before about how the white fertility rate correlates with the white Republican vote, but something that correlates 0.86 with the Republican vote for the *entire* population? This will be interesting.

Clue: it doesn't have anything to do with Iraq or the economic cycle.

I'll bet that it does have something to do with religion, however. Possibly the population of evangelicals in a state.

Does Alaska really have that many evangelicals?

The rate on how often a person actually goes to church.

Could it be they talk politics during sermons?

Population density: or so it appears from one of the red-blue county maps that has a vertical axis reflecting population. Tightly-packed urban folks expect and like a high level of government services.

The more religious a person is, the more he would cherish the sanctity of marriage.

They may not be talking of politics in churches but the idea of gay marriages is unacceptable to the religious.

So I dont think its not being just religious, its more of the issue of the gay marriage.

If not that, I give up, you can have your hair dye. :)

Remember he said obscure, so its gotta be something like viewers of porn.

While I have no doubt that Red-Staters view their fair share of porn, I don't think they consume that much more of it enough to justify a .86 fit

I'll say it's related to the percentage of the population with hunting licenses.

My guess:

Amount of media information gained by "alternative" methods (e.g., Internet, talk radio) vs. "traditional" methods (e.g., 6:00 news, daily newspaper).

I'll say it's related to the percentage of the population with hunting licenses.

Both Vermont and N.H. have a very well entrenched and populous hunting culture. In fact, Dean had to be pro-2nd amendment since many Vermonters capture their food through hunting.

Ive always found that a bit strange. Vermont, one of the most left-wing states in the country, has some of the (if not the) most lax gun laws.

[I'll say it's related to the percentage of the population with hunting licenses.]

"Both Vermont and N.H. have a very well entrenched and populous hunting culture. In fact, Dean had to be pro-2nd amendment since many Vermonters capture their food through hunting."

Two very small states. I don't imagine they could make much of a difference.

How's about this possibility - recreational vehicle ownership by persons under retirement age.

I would wager that it's either:

1) income homogeneity

or

2) educational homogeneity

Clarification...

there is some quantitative variable that correlates r=0.86 with vote share for Bush among States? So r^2=0.74 -- 74% of variation in Bush voting may be attributed to this variable?

Extent of science education?

Actually, that's probably not covered in most censuses/polls. How about: what floor you live on? Whether you have a PO Box? How many lines is your mailing address?

How about population density; i.e, states with greatest percentage of the population living outside urban areas, in either suburbs, exurbs, small-towns, or rural countryside?

"Both Vermont and N.H. have a very well entrenched and populous hunting culture."

I'd guess that Maine does as well.

cell phone use

GFA,

Both Vermont and N.H. have a rural class that is very poor and depend on hunting for a food source. You don't hear much about them as gun-totting illiterates don't help the image of a quaint, cozy but enlightened New England township

Both Vermont and N.H. have a rural class that is very poor and depend on hunting for a food source.

What??? In the 21st century?

How could it possibly be cheaper to kill an animal than to buy a 99 cent hamburger?

How could it possibly be cheaper to kill an animal than to buy a 99 cent hamburger?

That 99 cents could buy a bullet to land a deer. Economics really

"cell phone use"

2000 election, maybe, but they're so common nowadays I'd doubt usage rates mean much

OK, Laptop use

I'm betting on number of children. I think he's talked about it before, and he's mentioned it in this context.

Which correlates with population density--fertility falls when you move to the city, where kids are an expense, not a source of labor.

Which correlates with religiosity--religious people have more kids.

SciFi Geek, it cannot be offspring-- that's not 'obscure' enough! It has to something like NRA membership or pet ownership.

How about a new GNXP feature:

What's Steve up to now? (Part XXVIII)

I'm betting on number of children. I think he's talked about it before, and he's mentioned it in this context.

latinos and to a lesser extent blacks are quite fertile. many of the responses above make sense: for white people. but blacks and to a lesser extent latinos are by profession more religious than whites (on average). of course, they form less than 20% of the electorate, but as i said, blacks are a big portion of the democratic vote.

I would say population density.

So yeah when do we find out?

I'll say truck ownership. No clue really.

Keep in mind that Vermont and New Hampshire have very white and low crime populations. People there do not have to fear gun-toters. Liberals in urban areas are unwilling to admit it out loud but to them "gun control" means "take guns away from blacks".

As for Steve Sailer's correlation on the election: It has to be something he could get data on. So, for example, Jackie's "percentage of men with more than 5 lifetime sexual partners" is probably not it since I think Steve would have a hard time getting that info by state or by county.

How about population density? Or income? Or percentage of adult population in marriages? Or dual parent/single parent households for households with kids? Or some other information that is collected by the US Census Bureau?

Keep in mind that Vermont and New Hampshire have very white and low crime populations. People there do not have to fear gun-toters. Liberals in urban areas are unwilling to admit it out loud but to them "gun control" means "take guns away from blacks".

True but if you are trying to recruit out-of-state liberals to be tourists or work at colleges, you don't want them knowing about the white hunters.

The correlation is between Bush's share of the vote by state, ranging from 9% in D.C. (which I'm calling a state since it has electoral votes) and 71% in Utah and the mystery factor.

I suspect it would also correlate well at the county level, but I don't know where I could find the mystery factor at the county level, although it's not impossible that it exists on line somewhere.

Lots of other good suggestions here and I can't promise that some of them don't correlate at better than 0.86. You can use the Correl function in Excel to do simple correlations if you want to try them out.

Income disparity by state?

Ah ha! Utah has lots of families with one wage earner - that is, there is a stay-at-home mom. Doubt there are many such moms in DC.

BTW, the low pop density states usually have lower living costs (especially for housing) so the one-income, large family strategy is easier to pull off. The only ones in DC who can do the same are probably very well off.

Thing is, I still see the very wealthy upper east sider in NYC voting Kerry - even if mom doesn't work outside the home. But we are talking state aggregates.

Geez, I never saw so many dumber-than-a-box-of-rocks theorizers in my entire life! Right out there in front of you, too: the relative listenership to (99.4% corelation to truth and accuracy): RUSH LIMBAUGH.

"Thing is, I still see the very wealthy upper east sider in NYC voting Kerry - even if mom doesn't work outside the home."

Not necessarily -- the UES has more of your old-money types, who even if they disagree with Republican conservatism on social issues (as many likely do) will nonetheless vote their pocketbooks. In other words, economics are more important than social issues to them. Now, on the Upper West Side, the priorities are reversed. High-income voters support liberal democrats even though doing so is not in their economic self-interest. Social issues are paramount on the UWS.

Percentage of people employed in the public sector as opposed to the private sector.

I am beginning to think that razib would never cough out the answer, is this a way to get us subscribed to american conservative? ;)

% single mothers?

square footage of yard/backyard?

That public sector thing mentioned above (excluding military) sounds pretty good.

The common thread with this and the married, one income and population density issues is that one group, say in Utah, relies very llittle on the government for services, employment, etc. while those in say Mass., use lots of government services, work in state-supported Universities - including the Ivys with their massive Federal grants.

BTW, P has a good point about the Upper East Side Old $, but will they ever admit to voting for Bush? I think most of the Manhattan Bush votes, other than those of tough-guy police and firemen, were really made by nonEnglish speaking illegals who forgot how they were instructed how to fill out their ballots.

Both Vermont and N.H. have a rural class that is very poor and depend on hunting for a food source. You don't hear much about them as gun-totting illiterates don't help the image of a quaint, cozy but enlightened New England township

Ever lived in Vermont or NH, Scottm? Doesn't sound like the VT and NH I have lived.

Building permits/population

Or some other statistic of economic growth.

My two cents

Building permits/population

Or some other statistic of economic growth.

My two cents

Don't forget one more factor that affects voting patterns: population density.

Districts with higher population density tend to vote Democrat, districts with lower population density tend to vote Republican.

Any thoughts?

Ever lived in Vermont or NH, Scottm? Doesn't sound like the VT and NH I have lived.


No, but I worked with two guys for three years who spent their first 22 and 25 years there.

He did say obscure, as jinnderella points out.

Rush Limbaugh just wouldn't be surprising enough. Most likely it'll be some obscure consumer item that happens to correlate with an important part of red-state life.

Having spent all my life in the Deep Blue, I can't guess.

The blogosphere really needs a lefty Steve Sailer-someone else who can play with numbers and understand science while writing about politics. His point about innumeracy a while back is very valid...

The blogosphere really needs a lefty Steve Sailer-someone else who can play with numbers and understand science while writing about politics.

Steve's - and GNXP's - comparative advantage is that they apprehend the reality of human biodiversity. A key principle of the left today is h-bd denial, particularly IQ denial.

The only comparable foundational lie on the right is probably the lie of religion. But that's been debunked many times over and is hardly a shocking thing to blog about.

So while there are plenty of numerate lefties around, and their deductive *logic* is probably sound given their incorrect axioms...at the end of the day, their incorrect axioms mean their deductions are not in accord with reality.

In other words, a lefty Steve Sailer is something of a contradiction in terms. He'd have to find a big, foundational myth on the right that was believed by a lot of people but taboo to question, and puncture it repeatedly in dozens of different ways. A lefty GNXP would have to offer more technical analyses of the same big foundational myth.

I can't think of any possibility for a lefty version, b/c I can't think of any such big, foundational, unquestionable lie on the right. And no, WMDs do not count...their absence is something that many people freely discuss. Perhaps the whole issue of overrepresentation of ethnic groups in the media might count, but that's really a bipartisan thing.

There is a saying: an opinion is only worth something if you can publicly voice the opposite opinion. It is impossible to publicly voice the opinion opposite to the contention that IQ & genetic differences are of no importance in formulating policy. It *is* possible to publicly voice the opinion that religion is bunk, that WMD don't exist, etc.

Maybe 100 years ago Thomas Huxley was a "lefty Steve Sailer". But today there is no such niche available.

Race/ethnicity or % foreign-born/immigrants would be my guess.

As for the saying quoted by gc "There is a saying: an opinion is only worth something if you can publicly voice the opposite opinion. It is impossible to publicly voice the opinion opposite to the contention that IQ & genetic differences are of no importance in formulating policy. It *is* possible to publicly voice the opinion that religion is bunk, that WMD don't exist, etc." I think the other way around - if you cannot publically voice dissent it's testament of that verboten idea's power. Taboos exist for a reason.

I'm just hoping that afterwards Steve will lead us through his method of finding this mystery factor, assuming it was something other than a hunch.

The only comparable foundational lie on the right is probably the lie of religion.

It is not only a righ-wing foundational lie. Some lefties (Catholics esp) integrate that lie with h-bd for greater ferocity in belief.

If it were by county rather than by state, I'd say Jewish % of the population.

Good way to eyeball this would be to look for a factor that is WAY low in D.C. even with respect to heavily urbanized states. If Steve had cited R-squared, the Mystery Factor could also be way high, but his wording seemed to specify a high positive correlation.

"Good way to eyeball this would be to look for a factor that is WAY low in D.C. even with respect to heavily urbanized states."

Handgun ownership (of the legal kind!) is almost nonexistent in D.C. due to very restrictive gun laws. None of the states have laws that are quite so rigid, not even New York.
I doubt this is what Steve had in mind, however, as it isn't really "obscure."

Bush vote vs. inverse price of pizza?

"Percentage of labour force that drives itself to work alone" looked promising (r=0.613). Really just a proxy for the much-discussed inverse pop-density relationship with the Bush vote, though; I'm assuming he found something separate from this.

Household with vehicles (same deal): r=0.697...

Colby, where are you getting this data?

Anyone have good state-by-state or county-by-county data on economic inequality?

I've been using the FactFinder at the Bureau of the Census page and pasting into Excel on the fly... moved on from there to a more general search though...

I think Mr. Income Inequality, there, might be fifteen minutes ahead of me though. Dammit.

re: "lefty Steve Sailer"

It depends on what part of Steve you want to retain while you make him a lefty.

GC is correct that the mainstream right does not seem to embrace any large factually incorrect theses (at least none that are taboo). This is in part because the mainstream right doesn't embrace many factual theses at all; that's predominately the tactic of the left. Perhaps the deference to conservative wisdom is the big mistake by the right that is looking to be explored.

On the other hand, you could easily imagine Steve with a left-leaning political philosophy but attacking the same lies. Lies are lies -- left or right.

Funny how many of these posts right after each other. What's next, a GNXP chatroom?

the problem with couching HBD in left-right terms is that the part of the right that is most open to the topic (doesn't reject it a priori as verbotten) are the paleoconservatives, and they are pretty marginazlied in the mainstream. conservatism-as-disposition seems to rule out a generalized theory-of-society to knock down, but operationally american rightists do have a strong consensus on a few particular issues, and the recent trend has been to generalize them in a universalist fashion. so, capitalism + religious/social conservatism = recipe for success. as steve has pointed out american conservatives have been waiting for scandinavian to collapse for decades (this is the "left" steve sailer in action). similarly, i have pointed out for a while now that black americans espouse a conservative religious worldview, while (by contrast), 1/4 of jewish americans are atheists, and yet jewish americans are closer to the bourgeois ideal (more black americans are afflicted by social pathologies than jewish americans who practice avante guarde lifestyles).

anyway, though i agree that conservatives are not as instinctively cued to jump on racism to score points because they are so often in the opposite position, when the opening occurs (ie; you can marginalize someone even "kookier" than you) most on the right will do so. i think part of this is the david horowitzization of the american conservative movement as tactical tools imported from the left start to become the norm on the right.

I would like to point out that I pointed out income/educational homogeneity more than 15 mins before Colby Cosh, if that turns out to be right!! :)

That factor seems to bundle together a lot of things - not only is it a proxy for ethnic homogeneity, it also includes population density. Areas where blacks are heavily concentrated are usually urban and hence also show high income inhomogeneity.

What would throw this off would be the existence of large rural low income minority communities. But they are few on the ground, IMO, as minorities in the US tend to congregate in urban areas (possible exception = native americans).

re: left/right

well, razib is right that evolutionary theory (which is really what GNXP/Sailer are all about, to 1st order) is threatening to both left & right. To 1st order, though, those who are most open to the idea *are* on the right.

For example, every once in a while a brain research story gets posted on Free Republic, and there are a number of low mutters to the effect that "well, this'll show em". They are all said in a very deniable fashion, but it's clear that belief in the Bell Curve has not been stamped out but mainly driven underground among much of the right. example:

Well, well, well: eventually the truth will out and even the NY Times publishes it when it bites them in the butt. How many years have those whiners and obfuscators on 43rd Street turned themselves inside-out attempting to show that genes had NOTHING to do with intelligence and if we could only just find the right kind of environment we could make everyone into Newtons or Einsteins.

The biggest purveyor of this psuedo-science crapola has always been that lying, hypocritical communist apologist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard. SJG: call your office.

Note that I'm not using this as advocacy for the idea of h-bd itself (freerepublic is hardly a factual forum), but rather as evidence for the idea that h-bd related ideas are more likely to get a friendly hearing from rightists. If this exact same article was posted on DU, you would quickly get mutterings - or, more likely, PC Myers-ish screams - about how IQ was bogus, brain research was bogus, Paul Thompson was a racist, etc.

also - while i can see where he's coming from, i would beg to differ with rikurzhen re this statement: "the mainstream right doesn't embrace many factual theses at all; that's predominately the tactic of the left".

I think that the stereotype is that the lefty is thinking with his heart and has his head in the clouds dreaming of utopias, while the righty thinks with his head and is determinedly practical - sometimes overly so.

The converse spin is that the lefty is the rational social engineer who doesn't realize that mucking with certain evolved traditions can screw things up (e.g. open marriage = very bad idea, not because of hell but b/c of jealousy/etc.) The righty on the other hand goes by what works - namely tradition - even if there's no reason for it.

I personally think of myself as the former kind of nontraditionalist righty, while most on the h-bd believing left probably think of h-bd as a necessary factor that needs to be incorporated into social engineering. I can see an overlap between these two views, and such lefties certainly aren't the enemy. I maintain, however, that they are thinner on the ground than their counterparts on the right.

One other thing: the neocon takeover/horowitzation of the american right has admittedly made this difference hard to pick out among the *spokesmen* of the right. Heck, GW himself actually believes all the PC bromides that his father just mouthed. But as an underlying tendency it exists.

Last point...aside from h-bd, the other obvious big lie that the left (used to) subscribe to was the idea that communism would produce a better life for people. Even after agreeing that some degree of regulation is necessary for capitalism to function properly, I think on this score as well the right must be credited for better apprehending reality than the left.

anyway, though i agree that conservatives are not as instinctively cued to jump on racism to score points because they are so often in the opposite position, when the opening occurs (ie; you can marginalize someone even "kookier" than you) most on the right will do so.

Yes, there is plenty of that, even here at GNXP.

i think part of this is the david horowitzization of the american conservative movement as tactical tools imported from the left start to become the norm on the right.

Good point.

Let me restate my thesis without trying to couch it in strained terms...

The stereotype I was thinking of was:
* the mainstream right justifies by reference to common sense, tradition, religious dogma, etc.
* the mainstream left justifies by reference to "4 out of 5 experts" with a heavy helping of utopian interpretation of the data

which leaves the mainstream left much more susceptible than the right to getting their falsifiable beliefs proven wrong

a few observations:

* propositional political constructs tend to be traditionally more well elaborated on the Left. if you think there is some attainable ideal you will start formulate policies to get to your utopia.

* the Right tends to favor the "status quo" and so you don't get these Theories about how things-should-be. you don't get complex public policy positions & planks to attain idealized state X, rather, you wish to maintain life as it is.

* so the problem is not that the Left and the Right disagree about facts, in that the Left is into facts, it is that the Left is into ideas-especially Big Universal Theories. this results in a lot of gaffes and blunders because most Theories are usually wrong on the specifics even if they grasp on to elements of reality.

* the non-elite Left (that is, those who aren't professional activists or thinkers) tends to internalize some of the Truths of the elite Left. but, my personal experience in day-to-day experience is that they are open non-PC ideas on all sorts of issues, though their first instinct is to respond with the standard Truths.

* i think the standard elite Right is somewhat like the non-elite Left, they will pay lip service to many of the Truths propounded by the elite Left, but are open dissents from the Truths of the Left.

* the non-elite Right is especially open to ideas that might be considered "heterodox" among the elite(s), though perhaps "common sense" in the trenches.

* of late i think that there has been a move on the elite Right toward Big Ideas and Theoretical Constructs. this is making many elite Right open to using the same tools & tactics as the Left. for example, this rich lowry column basically argues by implication that black religious conservatism can not be bigoted. jonah golbergh's broadside against steve sailer are not surprising, or the attempt by david frum to connect paleos to racialism. but, attempts by conservatives to suggest that the Left will attack blacks now because they oppose gay marriage or the idea that the Left is viciously anti-semitic indicate that the modern mainstream elite Right has basically learned a lot of lessons from the Left.

* foundationally people on the necon Right like charles krauthhammer accept the idea of the Propositional Nation. the term itself indicates the affinities of krauthhamer & co. (often called "neoconservatism"). neocon world-changing messianism, and the idea that democratic republicanism is a cocktail that is easy to repackage & export, seems rather antithetical to conventional conservatism. some other types of conservatives have argued they are just trotskyites, etc. but the reality is that they are very influential and impossible to ignore, you can semantic

read them out of conservatism, but the fact remains that they are an integral (and often dominant) faction on the Right.

so it's all pretty complicated i think....

Razib, are you using the term "elite right" to define a broader group which includes the "neocon right", but is not entirely neocon? Would someone like former President Bush be an example of non-neocon elite right? How much of the elite right power base do you think is neocon?

How much of the elite right power base do you think is neocon?

well, i think National Review is a good metric for the state-of-the-right. i don't read it that much, but my impression is that 1/3 of the writers can be considered "neocons," an imprecise term anyway. i would say that perhaps only a small minority of National Review writers are totally free of neoconish tendencies (universalist aspirations, adherence to propositional nationality, etc.).

so it's all pretty complicated i think....

true... but I think there may be something interesting in all of this

There are only three BASE possibilities:

% of blacks in the population (very high in DC, very low in Utah).

% of public employees per state and it's variant, % of public spending (which is very suspect, unless you use only state budgets)

% of highly observant religious people

Since Vermont and NH tend to be very white, that doesn't fly in that form.

Same with #2

DC is not very religious, nor is Vermont that I know. Utah is wall to wall Mormons.

ash
['No number checking involved.']

On the state level, population density correlates -0.67 with Bush's share of the vote. That's pretty good.

Steve, The population density result is pretty expected. The middle is less densely populated than the West Coast or New England. I bet the result would be even stronger if you had county-level data.

Does it have anything to do with cost of living?

Marriage participation rates, or what demographers call "ever-marrieds" and "never-marrieds".

Lefty bloggers like to point out that the state of Mass. has the lowest divorce rate in the union (true) but that doesn't explain what their "ever-married and never-married" rates are. I have a suspicion that Mass. has a low marriage-participation rate. Quality over quantity, which is not a bad thing.

oh yeah, percentage of vets among male pop'n.--but that's not very obscure.

Jay - I was going to say divorce rate, higher correlating to redder, but I haven't checked it. I'd also guess that rather than marriage participation rate, it has something to do with children: either proportion of women who are married with children vs childless single, or average number of children per woman, or something like that.

My other guess would have something to do with income inequality; I'd like to run that myself on a county-by-county basis, but I'm not familiar enough with the subject to know where to find a county-by-county breakdown of income distribution or income inequality. If it is income inequality, it'll be higher income inequality correlates to higher Democrat vote.

There is a saying: an opinion is only worth something if you can publicly voice the opposite opinion.

I think the other way around - if you cannot publically voice dissent it's testament of that verboten idea's power. Taboos exist for a reason.

I think neither approaches the requirements of a rule. It's case-by-case; legalizing murder isn't up for debate because it's just a bad idea. Ethnic media influence isn't up for debate because it's a bad career move.

Holocaust revisionism is a topic that's not only verboten, it's illegal in many (if not most) western democracies. This, like many such issues, depends on one's p.o.v. for interpetation. Some will say that it's verboten and illegal because it exists only to incite hatred. Others will say it's verboten and illegal only because it can't be suppressed otherwise.

Note that I'm a holocaust agnostic, I think it's disputed territory and will remain so until free speech applies to it. Note also that I'm not trying to start a holocaust discussion.

Percent of population employed in agriculture, forestry and mining might be significant.

60% of Bush's electoral votes were from old slave states, and 24% were from rocky mountain states.

Oh, I just took a second look at GC's quote (the first line) - he's right. He's right either way, because voicing an opinion that cannot be opposed (regardless of why) is worthless. There really is no value in pontificating how opposed one is to murder, for example.

My guess is some measurement of consumer debt. Improvident people in hock up to their ears will not mind a $418 bil Bush deficit.

Lawyers per capita?

Regarding marriage:

Massachusetts is a low divorce rate state. Oregon is a high divorce rate state. Both are blue.

graham, that is a really bizarre way to disprove a statistical assertion. here are the top 10 divorce states from 1994:

Kentucky
Arizona
Florida
New Mexico
Idaho
Alabama
Indiana
Wyoming
Tennessee
Oklahoma
Arkansas
Nevada

washington at #12 is the most divorce prone blue state. no one is talking Universal Truths here.

Does anyone know what tbe black divorce rate is? They mostly do not get married to have kids to begin with (about 70% illegitimate babies). So those blacks who do get married to reproduce are statistical outliers.

Similarly, are cohabitation rates among whites in the Blue states so high that divorce is avoided by never getting married in the first place?

I am willing to bet Steve's "obscure factor" has something to do with ethnicity. Perhaps % of Scotch/Irish descendants? However, I don't know how he would find such a figure...

However, I don't know how he would find such a figure...

the census has lots of data like this from the "long form" that they have collected.

Similarly, are cohabitation rates among whites in the Blue states so high that divorce is avoided by never getting married in the first place?

short answer is yes.

christian conservative pollster george barana-Born Again Christians Just As Likely to Divorce As Are Non-Christians. relevant passages:

George Barna noted that one reason why the divorce statistic among non-Born again adults is not higher is that a larger proportion of that group cohabits, effectively side-stepping marriage – and divorce – altogether. “Among born again adults, 80% have been married, compared to just 69% among the non-born again segment. If the non-born again population were to marry at the same rate as the born again group, it is likely that their divorce statistic would be roughly 38% - marginally higher than that among the born again group, but still surprisingly similar in magnitude.”

this is very important:

The survey showed that divorce varied somewhat by a person’s denominational affiliation. Catholics were substantially less likely than Protestants to get divorced (25% versus 39%, respectively). Among the largest Protestant groups, those most likely to get divorced were Pentecostals (44%) while Presbyterians had the fewest divorces (28%).

new england is probably the most catholic part of the nation now overall (unless you section off the border counties in the southwest). interestingly, presbyterians are from the same calvinist tradition as new england's historically dominant congregationalist churches (outside of new england the calvinists churches tended to presybterian, those in new england were called congregationalist, the united church of christ is a merge between the congregationalist church USA and the reformed church).

blacks & divorce:

In 1997 (the latest year for which statistics are available), the number of divorces in Mississippi was more than 2_ times the number in 1960. The most rapid increase occurred between 1965 and 1975, followed by a slight decrease over most of the 1980s. Since 1998, however, divorce has increased significantly. In 1993, for the first time in our history, the number of divorces exceeded the number first-time marriages, and by 1997, that gap had increased to 10% more people leaving marriage than entering it for the first time.

The divorce rate for Blacks is much lower than for Whites.> White divorce has increased nearly 2_ times faster than divorce among Blacks. While Blacks make up 31% of the adult population, they are involved in only 22% of divorces. Whites give up earlier, too: 44% of White divorces occur in the first five years of marriage; for Blacks only 30% of those who divorce quit that early.

this is very off-topic, but i look forward to seeing the 1st hi-profile massachusetts gay divorce!

more on topic, razib, doesn't your divorce rate data somewhat back up the principle, "low marriage participation rate (MRP)= lower divorce rate," because of self-selection?

i cannot get my hands on MPR state by state. perhaps sailer can.

js

more on topic, razib, doesn't your divorce rate data somewhat back up the principle, "low marriage participation rate (MRP)= lower divorce rate," because of self-selection?

i think so.

though i wouldn't bet against catholic whites have both high marriage rates and low divorce rates.

also, i think it is significant that pentecostals have the highest divorce rates.

popularly, they are assumed to be rather

1) low SES
2) weak institutional church structures
3) rather less professionalized clergy

ok, I think I know what the x factor is: the state of being married. Or rather, married with children. Those areas with the highest percentage of voters of this description went for Bush. Did anyone already guess this? These voters would be naturally attracted to the "morals" issue -- family -- as well as the security issue -- terror -- and since the economic issues were off the table, it would make sense that they would go for Bush.

not obscure enough IMO. analysts talk about married women voting republican all the time.

ok, then, howabout 2 car households. That would correlate with the other.

obscure enough :)

Steve's VDare column discusses % of pop with grad. degrees and indicators of income inequality: are these the mystery factors? He notes that CA has inequality and a high % of grad degrees (BTW, many grad degrees are Masters and Docs. in Education - which are practically diploma mill progams for teachers to get automatic pay raises)

Isn't there a lot of income inequality in the Deep South, esp. MS and SC? That would predict the states would vote Kerry.

"He notes that CA has inequality and a high % of grad degrees (BTW, many grad degrees are Masters and Docs. in Education - which are practically diploma mill progams for teachers to get automatic pay raises)"

One California peculiarity is the existence of almost 30 law schools that have state accreditation but not national, American Bar Association accreditation (there also are a number of ABA-accredited ones as well, of course). Most of these state-accredited schools enroll primarily part-time students and have easier admissions standards than the ABA-accredited schools. Graduates can take the California bar exam but not the exams in other states. In any event, the graduates of these state-accredited law schools count as holders of postgraduate degrees, even though the numbers who manage to pass the California bar exam are fairly low. Whether they tend to be politically liberal, I do not know for sure, but somehow that wouldn't surprise me.

Regarding marriage:

Massachusetts is a low divorce rate state. Oregon is a high divorce rate state. Both are blue.

graham, responding to you, you are stupid. you remind me of the woman's studies major in college who proudly refuted my generalization that asian american students tend to concentrate in the sciences & business by her observation that her roommate was asian american & an english major.

razib

The repeat post was due to the "Refresh" option sending a copy of the earlier one.

The initial observation was a first approximation based on a very limited data set. It's an heuristic, somewhat like leveraging a generalization by pointing to the exception and deriving the rule (e.g. Larry Bird is a white basketball player.) We know that it works because you came to the conclusion without the need for me to state it explicitly.

You have jumped to a conclusion without finding the facts, welcome to the club.

Needless to say, your conclusion about my “stupidity” may be true nevertheless.

;^)

i retract the stupidity comment. i assumed you repeating yourself because you thought your observation was brilliant (such things happen).

Regarding suburbanization:

On a five point scale with "large cities" on the top and "rural areas" on the bottom, "the suburbs" constitute nearly half of the voting population (~45%).

Given that the children of the Baby Boomers are entering their child bearing years and housing starts are up, it looks like the Republican Party will consolidate its position as the new majority party (allowing for losses in the upcoming midterm elections).

"The times they are a changin'."

Given that the children of the Baby Boomers are entering their child bearing years and housing starts are up, it looks like the Republican Party will consolidate its position as the new majority party

the boomers will retire, and they outnumber their children. which party can be guaranteed to fight tooth & claw for SS & medicare??? in any case, the boomers have been buying houses for the past 20 years, and they are the biggest generation of all and we didn't have republicans as the majority party the while time. don't count your chickens until they hatch.

Bush sez that SS reform is at the top of his Shopping List when it comes time to spend "political capital". The man has a tendency to follow through on his threats. There are only two ways he can go with this. At one extreme, he could enlarge and expand mandatory public pensions. On the other extreme, he could abolish it altogether. I find the latter direction more likely. Mandatory –private- pensions seem to be the most likely stopping point. People will be free to opt out of SS and into MPP.

This will expand the investor class, a natural Republican constituency.

I expect that there will be a lot of hand waving and foot stomping among Democrats over the next 18 months as they try to pull a "Gingrich goes against HillaryCare" against SS reform. Democrats are due to pick up a few seats in the midterm elections anyway. It is likely that they will interpret this as "success". The much needed structural reform of the Democratic Party will not take place. The Republicans will continue to gain ground overall.

By "majority party" I do not mean "the party with more than 50% of registered voters" I mean "the party that dominates more than 50% of the public offices"

Republicans now have:

The Presidency

A majority of the Senate

A majority of the House.

A majority of the Governor’s Mansions.

A majority of the Houses in the States.


The Republicans will soon have:

The Supreme Court.

By the latter definition, the Republican Party is already the majority party, a trend that got started in the early 80's with Reagan (when Baby Boomers started buying houses.) All that remains is consolidation.

graham, i went to a Cato conference on social security reform. everyone there really favored it. no one there was as optimistic as you are. not even the wonks who specialize in this sort of thing at Cato.

The man has a tendency to follow through on his threats.

so i guess we can look forward to a guest worker program?

so the republicans have all branches of government. you seem to be implying that the republicans are going to be as dominant as the dems were during the FDR era. great. can i order smaller government please? i'm not holding my breath.

p.s. i assume that he "ownership society" is going to be subsidized by gov. programs.

"graham, i went to a Cato conference on social security reform. everyone there really favored it. no one there was as optimistic as you are. not even the wonks who specialize in this sort of thing at Cato."

The fact remains, there are three options: less of the same, no change, or more of the same. Since "no change" is unlikely, that leaves "more" or "less". I pick "less" as the most likely outcome.


"so i guess we can look forward to a guest worker program?"

Quite likely.


"so the republicans have all branches of government. you seem to be implying that the republicans are going to be as dominant as the dems were during the FDR era. great. can i order smaller government please? i'm not holding my breath."

It is only a matter of time before the "governing party" becomes the "party of government"

If there is to be politics at all Professor Nozick, it must be competitive. But the Democrats are on a downhill slide. Their Next Big Idea is to turn back the clock to the Progressive Era (the Thomas Frank solution) – an unlikely strategy given that progressive politics is what people are moving –away- from. Perhaps the Party of Jefferson and Jackson will steal "states rights" back from the Republicans in order to cut their losses and bide time while they build their base. This would be the ultimate act of political ju-jitsu, using the inertia of a larger opponent against himself. I'm not going to hold my breath.

i agree the the democrats have little to offer. what i'm asking for is a choice, not a fainter echo. bush has a relatively conservative congress to work with, he could do a lot. he will do a lot, but my impression is that instead of buttressing his small gov. program the republican congress will have to try and restrain him.

but perhaps you are right, the only way the dems might be able to combat bush's rhetorical social conservatism and pragmatic fiscal profligatism is to reinvent themselves.

The Democrats should pay close attention to what the Labour Party is doing the Great Britain. Politics in the US and the UK flow in similar cycles. Keywords: "stakeholder" "New Labour".

A note that's only relevant to a side discussion:

The states with the highest divorce rates are those states with the highest marriage rates. If you're not married, you're not getting divorced.

In general, red states get married more frequently and are thus overrepresented in divorce rate rankings.

A better measure is divorce/marriage rate and then the ranking is all over the red/blue map, but with a strong tendency towards poverty (MS and WV are particularly bad). (link)

Nascar viewership?

pickup truck owners.
i would guess at least 8 of 10 vote republican

If anyone's still reading this old thread: see, it was children!

What I want to see is Steve factor out population density. You can't have a lot of kids in a city, but you can in the country.

The fact that the correlation is HIGHER means he's onto something more than just population density, or else the relationship is closer to linear, though.