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Fun With Maps, Part II: The Poverty Paradox |
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Last weekend, I posted three maps that suggested a fairly strong correlation between the states that McCain won and the states with the most poverty. From these maps, it seemed clear that poor people have once again voted against their own interests by voting Republican.
But here are two more maps that throw a big wrench into these conclusions. The first shows how the electoral map would have looked had we counted only the votes from people who make under $50,000 a year - an Obama landslide.
The second is if we counted only people who make more than $50,000 - an Obama victory, but by the narrowest of margins.
We seem to have a contradiction here. How is it possible that the poorest states went for McCain at the same time that the poorest voters went for Obama? Help me out, Seminal readers. I’m scratching my head on this one.
Ah, crud. I just tried to write out a well-reasoned explanation of the effect you astutely pointed out, but failed to properly submit the comment.
Anyway, very interesting maps. My point was that two important factors to consider here are the proportion of eligible voters who actually cast ballots as it is affected by income and education level - and similarly the discrepancies in quality of education between the states as affected by average income.