Yea, I know that those red and blue maps paint a two tone picture of a complex world, that red states have lots of blues living in them, that the demographics are infinitely more complex than two colors can represent.
However, often a simple explanation is the best one so perhaps this is what bush’s partiality to progressive indexing is all about.
I took the median income by state and divided it by the cost of living to come up with the “monetary standard of living” by state. Can you guess which state has the best standard of living? Which has the worst? The results are in my article at
http://vdare.com/sailer/050508_f…0508_family.htm
The reality is that income only moderately correlates with Kerry’s share of the vote by state, and when adjusted for cost of living, there’s basically no correlation at all.
What actually correlates extraordinarily strongly is what I call “Affordable Family Formation.” Bush did well in states where there is lots of land for suburban development, low housing prices, people get married fairly young and stay married, and have more children. For example, Bush carried the top 25 states in terms of average years that a white woman between 18 and 44 is married, and 25 of the 26 states in highest white fertility.
Best wishes,
Steve Sailer
http://www.iSteve.com