Yeah, I'm sure that the the AVERAGE intelligence isn't that different, considering that both poor, under-educated NAMs and urban graduate-educated yuppies both vote Democrat (low IQs and high IQs average to to a middle IQ). The Republicans, when you think about it, tend to get the middle ground. Among white people, the smartest group is the Jews, who still trend at over 70% Democrat. The white Catholics and Protestants are just below them, and are more Republican.

"More white" is pretty badly misleading; white southerners are very white.

The best splits I've seen are: the poor are Democrats, the non-poor are mixed (assuming ~25% poor); white and Christians tend Republican, not white or not Christian tend Democrat; the urban, collegiate, and professional well off tend Democrat, while non-urban, business, and skilled labor well off tend Republican. Lots of overlap. (This is sort of a composite of "Blue State / Red State...." and Ruy Texeira.)

I also think that people directly on the market tend Republican whereas those with institutional connections (universities, bureaucracies, large corporations, government agencies, or unions) tend Democratic.

I think that Republicans have had an advantage because entrepreneurs and small businessmen are more inventive, enterprising, and ruthless than academics and bureaucrats.

"More white" is pretty badly misleading; white southerners are very white.

most white people who read this weblog are whiter people; the stuff white people like crowd (whether they agree with the politics or not, they probably share cultural tastes).

ruthless than academics and bureaucrats.

these groups are plenty ruthless in their own domains. but, academics, and to some extent bureaucrats, engage in within group ruthlessness. in contrast, entrepreneurs often engage a consuming public with whom they are also ruthless with.

The "stuff white people like" meme is a takeoff on yuppiedom. It's very meta. The "white people" are the elite group of multiculturalist liberals who have vacations in Bali and Nepal, etc., and buy ethnic folk art. It's funny in its own terms, but "white people" in that phrase means "yuppies".

"Whiter people" is cool as a joke, but even there, a fair proportion of yuppies nowadays are East and South Asian, Latin American, or Middle Eastern in origin.

We just need to segregate our jokes from our analysis, I guess.

Seriously though, that makes me wonder. Do southern whites have a significantly lower proportion of European ancestry than ones in, say, Idaho?

TGGP - I can give you my southern white ancestry - it's all European, overwhelmingly the British Isles, and of the British, overwhelmingly southern England.

Or, I can give you my husband's southern white ancestry, which is almost equally split between Irish (not Ulster Scots) and French Huguenots.

In both my and my husband's ancestry there is also a significant Quaker influence.

What is missing in the South may be a German influence that might be seen in Idaho... plus the later settlement of that area led to a more mixed settlement.

But... the white South is definitely not less European than Idaho.

Since Idaho is also influenced by the Mormon religion, I have to ask about the heritage of the Mormons when they were in Illinois.