Blog Post: In 2008, Rich States Vote Democratic, Poor States Vote Republican — Again
Rich State, Poor State, Red State, Blue State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do
(with Andrew Gelman, David Park, Joseph Bafumi, and Jeronimo Cortina)
Published September 2008 by Princeton University Press
On the night of the 2000 presidential election, Americans sat riveted in front of their televisions as polling results divided the nation’s map into red and blue states. Since then the color divide has become a symbol of a culture war that thrives on stereotypes–pickup-driving red-state Republicans and elitist, latte-sipping blue-state Democrats. Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State debunks these and other political myths.
Rich state, poor state, red state, blue state: What’s the matter with Connecticut?
(with Andrew Gelman, Joseph Bafumi, and David Park)
Published in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science, November 2007
Abstract: For decades, the Democrats have been viewed as the party of the poor, with the Republicans representing the rich. Recent presidential elections, however, have shown a reverse pattern, with Democrats performing well in the richer blue states in the northeast and coasts, and Republicans dominating in the red states in the middle of the country and the south. Through multilevel modeling of individuallevel survey data and county- and state-level demographic and electoral data, we reconcile these patterns.
Furthermore, we find that income matters more in red America than in blue America. In poor states, rich people are much more likely than poor people to vote for the Republican presidential candidate, but in rich states (such as Connecticut), income has a very low correlation with vote preference.
Key methods used in this research are: (1) plots of repeated cross-sectional analyses, (2) varying-intercept, varying-slope multilevel models, and (3) a graph that simultaneously shows within-group and between-group patterns in a multilevel model. These statistical tools help us understand patterns of variation within and between states in a way that would not be possible from classical regressions or by looking at tables of coefficient estimates.
