Virginia tells

As one of the most demographically representative states in the country, and one with an enormous amount of American history packed into it to boot, the gubernatorial results out of Virginia this week are worth examining as a way of better understanding America's contemporary social landscape.

- Cuccinelli, the Republican, won among whites by a margin (56%-36%) nearly identical to the margin Romney did in the 2012 presidential election (59%-39%). McAullife, the Democrat, similarly won among blacks (90%-8% compared to Obama's 93%-6%). No surprises here. At 72% of the Virginia electorate and shrinking, it is difficult for Republicans to win nationally representative elections without winning 2-to-1 among whites. The exit polling data do not report results for other groups due to insufficient sample size, but it's safe to assume McAullife won among the Hispanic/Asian/other residual about as convincingly as Obama did last year.

- Despite all the political polarization etc etc, the third party pipe dream is becoming less and less tenable as the US becomes less and less non-Hispanic white. Whites are the only people with whom Kang's famous taunt to (or was it Kodos'?) "go ahead, throw your vote away", actually resonates. Sarvis, the libertarian, got over 87% of his votes from whites. Cuccinelli received a strikingly similar share of his total votes from whites, coming in at just under 89%. McAullife, in contrast, received just over half of his votes (54%) from whites. Perhaps the seemingly disparate Democratic coalition breaks apart at some point in the future, but currently whites are the only ones who appear to have any willingness to oppose it.

- Why I think Rand Paul's liberty message has legs to stand on in the future: Sarvis' won nearly 15% of voters under age 30 but less than 6% of those aged 30 and over. Whether or not this is constitutes the making of a deal with the devil, reasonable people will disagree.

- The fat-cats-versus-working-class-union-types dichotomy became antiquated decades ago, not least because of the spending advantage Democrats now regularly enjoy, this election clearly being no exception. The new paradigm pits the top and the bottom in alliance against the middle:

Though he lost the race, Cuccinelli won comfortably among voters in households with annual incomes in the $50k-$100k range, and held his own in the $30k-$50k and $100k-$200k ranges, but was blown out by McAullife both among those earning less than $30k and among those making $200k+.

- Another way to characterize today's political dynamic is to pit the government trough eaters and trough fillers against the government food trough producers, or value transferers vs. value creators. Without the state's DC suburbs, from which almost 1-in-5 voters hailed from, Cuccinelli would've won by nearly the same margin he ended up losing by.

- While arguing that there should be some sort of property ownership requirement as a prerequisite to voting eligibility will figuratively lead to one being tarred-and-feathered to shouts of "no to Jim Crow!", the exit polls offer a more modest tact to take in opposition to universal suffrage, of a less personal nature than that preferred by Howard Stern, but similarly based.

Queried on whether Cuccinelli's positions--fairly described as strongly socially conservative within the parameters of contemporary American politics--were too liberal, too conservative, or just right, 8% of exit poll respondents answered "too liberal". Among this group comprising 8% of the electorate, 77% voted for McAullife! The actions of the 13% who said he was too liberal but still voted for him and to a lesser extent the 9% who said the same while voting for Sarvis are comprehensible, but the only conclusion regarding the vast majority who voted for McAuliffe because Cuccinelli is too liberal is that they simply have no idea what "liberal" or "conservative" means in a political context! These are people who would garner a goose egg (okay, it's multiple choice, but you get the idea) on Pew's Political News IQ test, unable to name the vice president or say which party controls the Senate.

Let's not be too critical of this contingent of utterly clueless voters, though. Chances are, they are quite a vibrantly diverse and diversely vibrant crowd and consequently worthy of reverence (even if--or perhaps especially because!--they come almost exclusively from the bottom part of that top-and-bottom alliance we spoke of earlier).

The reverse probably occurred as well, as there were inevitably a few Cuccinelli voters who said McAullife was "too conservative", but their numbers were too small to be statistically reliable and thus were not reported on.

Nigeria had fewer people than Chicago when I was a wee lad

The Pew Research Center is an honest organization that provides often interesting and useful data on social issues, public opinion and demographic trends. That assertion, though, needs to be qualified by pointing out that Pew is honest by way of commission, while it is often less so by way of omission. The center regularly conducts a survey entitled "News IQ" in which American adults are surveyed on their knowledge of current events.

If I recall correctly, Pew originally included racial breakdowns in the quiz results, though it stopped doing so several years ago and it looks as though Pew only maintains the most recent results on its site. Now it appears as though a stop to breaking down results by sex is imminent. Report results from the latest survey only separate out male and female responses for three questions that specifically have to do with women (tragically, men performed better on all three!). However, after completing the quiz online, results are broken down by sex, age, and educational attainment.

While men performed better on the three ostensibly girl power questions (identifying Marissa Mayer, the percentage of congress critters who are female, and female college graduation rates), women actually outscored men on two of the thirteen items, the two concerning subjects of elevated interest to many women--same-sex marriage and educational curricula. While sexless feminists might be interested in female figures engaged in traditionally masculine pursuits, most women are far more interested in traditionally (and biologically) feminine concerns like social inclusion and nurturing.

If Pew stops reporting results by sex, we're left with age (fairly predictable question by question and a dead giveaway overall), education (more obvious than the outcome of a Globetrotters-Generals game), and party affiliation (almost indistinguishable this time around).

One age-related result does catch the eye:

Percentages who correctly answered "Nigeria" by age range:

18-29 -- 47%
30-49 -- 45%
50-64 -- 43%
65+ -- 29%

The question is multiple choice with four possible answers, so old fogies are essentially oblivious to the specific differences in rates of fertility between various different countries in the world. You don't have to care about demographics for demographics to care about you, of course.

Deficit spending is about who's doing it

After mulling it over, I think we need a third party presidency for budget deficit reduction to become a sustained, acted upon priority.

Pew has tracked public prioritization of reducing the nation's federal budget deficit for nearly twenty years, and from someone whose default position is one of starving the beast, looking at how partisan positions flip flop depending on which party controls the presidency makes for depressing viewing. The following graph shows the percentage of survey respondents indicating that budget deficit reduction (from '02 onward; prior to that the query was on paying off the national debt, which, while not the same thing, captures similar sentiments) should be a top governmental priority. Results come from surveys conducted in January of each year:

During Clinton's presidency, Republicans cared more about cutting the deficit than Democrats did. Under Bush that flipped, and during Obama it flipped back again. It makes sense if you're all for redistributive spending so long as your guy is the one doing it. It doesn't make so much sense if your party is putatively the one opposed to leviathan's accretion, however.

It's often said that reducing the deficit and restoring fiscal sanity is important in determining the world that older generations will leave to their kids and grandkids, but those kids care less about it than their elders do. Of the 21 issues examined, the only one with a wider old-young (50+ and 18-49 years, respectively) gap is "securing social security", for obvious self-interested reasons.

There might be some reason for cautious optimism, though. Over the last decade, the trend has been upward across the political spectrum, and the GOP now has a high profile champion or two on the issue.

Pivoting to provide Republican pols with political advice, how about emphasizing opposition to gun control? While it's politically savvy, it's not pusillanimously appeasing--a state's gun ownership rate is one of the strongest predictors of how it votes. The higher the rate, the redder the state. And of the 21 issues Pew asked about prioritizing, gun control garnered the highest "should not be done [at all]" response rate of all.

Opposition to restrictions on firearm capacities and ownership is highest among the young, the wealthy, and the well educated, while support for increasing restrictions is highest among the old, the poor, and the uneducated. Excepting the political angle, contemporary demographic trends on the questions of gun control and same-sex marriage are pretty similar. Unlike a lot of other 'social issues' that see the conservative standing athwart history yelling "stop" (which, while I'm personally sympathetic to, is usually portrayed and conceived of in the popular consciousness the antithesis of being hip and forward-thinking), the right to bear arms is important to people who are going and who have gone places in their lives.

Where to be born vs. where people are being born

The Economist's "sister" company has made an earnest, contemporary attempt to determine which countries are the most and least propitious ones to be born into. Check out the list and notes on the methodology there.

The first thing that jumps out at me is that the best places to be born are doing the least birthing, while the worst places are doing more than their fair share of it. The correlation between a country's where-to-be-born index score and its total fertility rate is a statistically significant .49. A couple of tweaks could easily make that moderately robust relationship considerably stronger still.

Firstly, give sub-Saharan Africa more reasonable representation. Of the 80 countries included, only four--including the 'crown jewel', South Africa (#53)--make the cut. The other three--Angola, Kenya, and Nigeria--rank 76th, 79th, and 80th on the ranking of where it's best to be born, respectively. They rank 1st, 3rd, and 2nd when it comes to procreation, however.

Secondly, reduce Eastern Europe's and central Asia's representation. There are a lot of old Soviet countries included that tend to be, rather uniquely, both crappy places to be born and places where there isn't much birthing occurring. A lot of attention is given to the question of which countries will be the globe's prime movers in the 21st century, but a less frequently inquired about question (and one with a clearer set of answers) is which places will be bit players.

That said, as constructed an observable pattern still emerges:

At one remove, the list paints a dysgenic global picture. Of course, the right-thinking editors at the august magazine don't actually mention anything about fertility (the closest they come is a parenthetical "demography", devoid of any expounding), but Economist readers can surely read between the lines (with quantification to boot if they visit this our humble online outpost here!).

It has become unfashionable for the Establishment to push population reduction as a policy goal even with the ascent of green thinking because of the rather obvious implication that the hardest hit if such a goal was realized would be NAMs--especially immigrants--domestically and third-worlders internationally. Even when the subject is bandied about in the more politically incorrect parts of the media world, the racial and ethnic ramifications are often glossed over.

Recently, Randall Parker wondered how to best sell leftists on how to cut the demand for low-skilled labor and, by implication, thus reduce illegal immigration from south of the border. Similarly, how best to sell them on promoting eugenic birthing?

Egalitarianism seems like the most plausible avenue to pursue. A simple thought experiment demonstrates. In the real world scenario, Mr. and Mrs. Rich, worth $10 million, have one kid, while Ms. Poor, worth $10k, has five. Kid Richie gets $10 million passed on to him, while each of the Poories get $2k. He's worth 5,000 times more than they are. In the Ideal World, Mr. and Mrs. Rich have five kids while Ms. Poor has one. Each of the Richies get $2 million, while Poorie gets $10k. Now a Rich kid is only worth 200 times as much. Presto, a 25 fold reduction in the wealth gap!

On the 2012 presidential election

I'd planned on creating electoral maps by various demographic characteristics today, but to my great disappointment it appears that exit polling was only conducted--or at any rate, recorded--at the state level in select places, unlike in the last few presidential elections for which even far flung and predictable states like Alaska and Hawaii got in on the action.

With that option off the table, a few observations will have to suffice:

- The racial polarity of the two parties continues to become starker. Whites, who comprise three-quarters of the total electorate, only narrowly constituted a majority of Democratic voters this election, with 55% of Obama's votes coming from non-Hispanic whites and 45% coming from Hispanics and other non-whites. In contrast, whites cast over 89% of Romney's votes this time around. In 2008, 60% of Obama's support came from whites and in 2004, 66% of Kerry's did. If not in 2016 then almost certainly by 2020 the majority of Democratic voters will be non-white.

- While it seems inevitable that non-whites will soon become the majority in the Democratic party, are we justified in confidently asserting that whites will continue to dominate the GOP? After all, young white voters were a key part of Obama's 2008 coalition, with whites under 30 breaking for him 54%-44%. Putting aside the fact that the answer must be "yes" if for no other reason than non-whites will not vote Republican in under any circumstances, Romney swung the young white vote by an impressive 17 points, winning it 51%-44%, tripling the improvement he was able to boast among whites aged 30 and older.

- The wealthy shifted back to the GOP in 2012 from 2008 in a substantial way. Romney improved over McCain by 16 points among those earning more than $200,000 a year, winning them 54%-44% where McCain had lost them 46%-52%. Among those making under six figures, Obama held his ground, however, ceding only 2 points to Romney relative to McCain in 2008. Obama won the five-figure majority 54%-44% this time around, virtually unchanged from his 55%-43% advantage in 2008.

- The question of whether or not self-described white evangelicals would turn out to support a socially moderate Mormon appears to have been answered in the affirmative. In both 2012 and 2008, they comprised 26% of the total electorate, indicating no dampened enthusiasm relative to other voters this time around. While McCain garnered 73% of this solidly Republican group, Romney did even better, winning 78% of their support.

- In a conversation I had last week, the question of whether or not the Catholic Church's public opposition to aspects of Obamacare mandating that it include contraception in health care it provided to its beneficiaries would compel Catholics to repudiate Obama was raised. After pointing out that lay Catholics in the US don't seem to care much one way or the other about what the Church says about anything, I emphasized that Catholicism needs to be separated into two groups, one white and the other Hispanic, if analyzing it is going to tell us anything meaningful. Well, while Romney won among white Catholics 60%-40%, he had his clock cleaned among non-white (read Hispanic) Catholics by a staggering 11%-89% margin. While the latter is extrapolated from exit polling data and consequently might be corrupted to some extent by fitting the exit polling figures to actual vote totals after the returns were in, the fact remains that as the Catholic population becomes increasingly Hispanic, Catholics as a whole will continue to move decisively to the left.

- What characteristic in a president is most important? Among those who answered "shares my values", "is a strong leader", or "has a vision for the future", Romney won by a bit less than a 60%-40% margin. But among the one-fifth of the electorate who answered "cares about people like me", Obama absolutely crushed it, 81%-18%. Yep, in 21st century America, this is what a leader does to win hearts and minds:

Intelligence and fertility by class, over time

Channeling Charles Murray, Randall Parker comments on the increasing social stratification that has come to define the contemporary Western world:

This isn't the 1950s when people could expect to pair up with a husband or wife and get a factory job that put them at similar status level to a large portion of the total population. We've got a much wider spread of classes and far more cognitive sorting. The poor are dumber on average and the upper classes are smarter on average. The classes have less in common: less shared understanding, fewer shared values, fewer shared experiences with cultural products such as TV and radio shows.

On the one hand, inequality has been public enemy number one for multiple generations now. On the other hand, one major consequence of a shrinking world is that cognitive sorting keeps getting easier to do and is continually approaching ubiquity in practice.

I wondered what insights the GSS might offer. The survey has a question for which respondents are asked which of four social classes they feel they belong to--lower, working, middle, or upper. The following graph shows mean wordsum scores by self-identified class membership over time. The three variables have not been cross-referenced for every year the survey has been conducted (not sure why, as each has independently been included since its inception, but it is what it is), which is why the years displayed jump around as they do. To avoid issues of English language fluency, the foreign-born are excluded:

Steady as she goes. Of course, this doesn't necessarily speak to potential changes in material or cultural class differences over the last several decades per se, but the cognitive sorting by class isn't blatantly obvious, at least not by this measure.

And because detecting dysgenic trends is a hobby horse here, the mean number of children by class over time:

Sample sizes are smaller for the lower and upper classes (self-assessment rates split about 5%-45%-45%-5%) so their respective lines bounce around more, but the pattern over time is pretty consistent--higher class means somewhat lower (and later) fertility, and people across the social spectrum are having fewer children today than their parents had.

GSS variables used: BORN(1), YEAR, CLASS, WORDSUM, CHILDS

White guys are the worst

A fun article that appeared on the classy site Jezebel (I'm not a regular reader--Tony Horton brought the piece to my attention) does a pretty good job (for an anecdote, anyway) of illustrating the demographic hipness hierarchy that exists in contemporary America. Ben Mandelker, apparently a pretty typical SWPL guy, who is a few months into the P90X workout program, ranks, countdown style, the supporting cast. Like other lists that ostensibly have nothing to do with ethnic, racial, or sexual characteristics, this one allows us to make observations about demographic characteristics that the person or people creating the list probably didn't have in mind when constructing it, at least not consciously.

I've reproduced his rankings in the proceeding table, but replaced names and editorializing with racial and sexual characteristics, as well as a few relevant parenthetical notes. I've inverted from worst-to-best to best-to-worst for ease of viewing:

From best ...

1. Black woman

2. Black man

3. White man* (!)

4. White man (physically handicapped)

5. White woman (bisexual... actually, "omnisexual")

6. White woman (foreign-born)

7. White woman (old)

8. Black man

9. White man

10. Hispanic woman

11. Asian man

12. White man

13. White man

14. White woman

15. White woman

16. White man (foreign-born)

17. White man

18. White woman

19. White man

20. White man

21. White man

22. White woman

23. White man

... to worst

We know having black friends is hip, even if those friends were immersed in middle class values growing up and they end up living in mostly white neighborhoods (the three black characters' names are Pam, Adam, and Tony, not L'akisha, D'Brickshaw, and Terrance). The lowest ranking non-white is the Asian guy (the West's softest minority target) and he still comes in among the top half. Sexual deviancy and disability provide whites with some limited means for advancement.

In summation, the only black woman takes the gold. The two black guys average a 5 slot. The sole Hispanic gets a 10 slot and the only Asian an 11 slot (a spot also occupied by foreign-born whites). For white women, the mean is the 12 slot, and for white men it's the 14 slot.

Wait, am I describing a specific data set or the modern zeitgeist? Right, I could be doing either thing, hence the illustrative value of Mandelker's article.

* Daniel, who is clearly one cool cat, is my favorite member of the supporting cast, followed closely by Adam (#2) because of how hard he pushes me and Timmy (#20) because he reminds me most of myself.

IQ Wars: McCain voters win

The 2010 GSS data have been released. As Inductivist noted, this is a fun time for quant bloggers. There will be a lot of sifting through special modules for the 2010 battery of questions, but of broader interest are converted IQ averages of voters in the 2008 election. With the post-racial man who putatively put together an autobiographical masterpiece on one side and milfy trailer trash on the other, the last Presidential election should've added an exclamation mark to the trend towards higher IQ Democratic voters and lower IQ Republican ones, yes?

No. Converting the white mean on the wordsum vocabulary test to an IQ of 100 with a standard deviation of 15, the following table shows the average IQ of voters categorized by who they voted for, and then further broken down into groupings based on sex, race, party affiliation, and age (n = 921):

Voted for...	Obama	McCain	McCain's edge
All	99.9	102.5	2.5
Sex
Men	100.4	102.2	1.9
Women	99.6	102.7	3.0
Race
White	103.2	102.9	(0.3)
Black	92.9	n/a	n/a
Hispanic	96.6	n/a	n/a
Asian	107.1	n/a	n/a
Party
Republican	101.3	102.7	1.4
Democrat	99.9	96.0	(3.9)
Independent	98.5	104.3	5.8
Age
18-24	99.4	100.9	1.6
25-34	98.6	101.5	3.0
35-49	100.4	103.7	3.3
50-64	101.0	103.3	2.3
65+	99.2	100.5	1.3

The sample sizes for non-whites who voted for McCain were simply too small to even be considered mildly suggestive and are consequently not included. Of the 351 respondents who report having voted for him, a whopping five are Hispanic, three are black, and two are Asian.

It's not especially surprising that among all voters, McCain supporters have an IQ edge, since despite all the Senator has done to dilute their population share, whites are the only ones who vote for the GOP. More remarkable is the IQ parity among white Obama and McCain backers. That Obama won the $200,000+ income category has been pointed out by Half Sigma as evidence that smart whites are increasingly finding the Republican party repulsive, but Obama's edge among this affluent group was only 52%-46%, nearly identical to the nationwide popular vote (52.9%-45.7%). The partisan divide among wealthy whites mirrors that of the rest of the country.

Traitorous Republicans and Democrats are both revealed to be less intelligent than their truer compatriots, hardly constituting a novel observation. The spread among independents does come as a bit of a surprise. I'm not sure how to account for it. Maybe the "independent conservative" members of the Savage Nation explain the variance.

McCain's IQ advantage is maintained across the generational spectrum. The Obama youth are more vociferous than they are intelligent. Funny how the McCain advantage is slimmer on each end--among kids full of quixotic notions and the elderly who are losing the ability to digest complicated and detailed information, turning instead to presumed probity and aesthetics to guide them--and thicker among the stone cold middle-aged realists!

Notice how even though the white average is set at 100 and NAMs are included in these figures, the racially inclusive averages are at or above 98, which is generally considered to be the nation's mean IQ. Eligible voter participation rates and IQ correlate at .65 (p=0) at the state level, and both educational and income profiles show the average voter to be considerably more educated and wealthy than the average residents of the most educated and wealthiest states.

Parenthetically, the converted IQ average for third party voters (n = 30) is 105.6. That's fairly predictable, since merely seeking these candidates out requires some degree of intellectual curiosity.

GSS variables used: PRES08, RACECEN(1)(2)(4-10)(15-16), SEX, AGE, PARTYID(0-2)(3)(4-6), WORDSUM, BORN(1)

Catholic and Protestant fertility over time

Talking to my dad and brother, we somehow got into Catholic fertility in the US. After describing a family with five or six kids, it's still fairly common to hear the quip, "Are they Catholic?" I'm aware of the stereotype, though it wasn't formed from actual firsthand experience. The more noticeable distinction I've picked up on is between those who are genuinely religious and those who are only nominally so (or not at all). My dad guessed greater Catholic fertility remained the case today, though maybe not as pronounced as it had been when he was growing up.

Fortunately, the GSS contains relevant self-reported data on the question extending back to the early seventies. The following graph shows the mean number of children among white Protestants and Catholics in the US over time. To avoid issues with uncompleted procreation while simultaneously trying to minimize unnecessary overlap, only respondents in their forties at the time they participated in the survey are included. The question does not specifically inquire exclusively about biological children, but it insinuates as much. A handful of respondents likely included adopted or step children, but the number is probably insignificant and anyway presumably effects both Protestant and Catholic respondents equally:


Looks like the fecundity gap exists and was a bit wider a generation ago than it is now, but over the last four decades at least has not been very significant and is barely existent at all today.

From the view of the churches, though, Catholics do have the upper hand, since among Hispanics in the US Catholics outnumber Protestants by about five-to-one, and Hispanic birthrates are far higher than white birthrates are.

GSS variables used: RELIG(1)(2), YEAR, RACE(1), CHILDS, AGE(40-49)

Change in voter turnout from 2008 to 2010

It's commonly reported that the turnout for US midterm elections differs from presidential elections. I've always assumed this to be the case without thinking about it in anything more than a general sense. Because any type of restraint on voter participation--whether it is a legal restriction like being incarcerated at voting time or just one of volition like bad weather or a hip black friend not being up for election, is good for those on the right--I figured numbers for whites, the affluent, and older folks would drop off less than they would for minorities, the poor, and the young.

Exit polling allows for actual quantitative comparisons to be made, and the following table does just that, looking at the change in the absolute number of voters from 2008 to 2010, and, more interestingly, the declines in percentage terms across various demographic categories:

	2008	2010	Abs chg	% chg
Male	55190120	40125074	(15065046)	(27.3)
Female	62235668	43468831	(18766837)	(30.2)
White	86895083	64367307	(22527776)	(25.9)
Black	15265352	9195330	(6070023)	(39.8)
Hispanic	9394063	6687512	(2706551)	(28.8)
Asian	2348516	1671878	(676638)	(28.8)
Other	3522774	1671878	(1850896)	(52.5)
18-24yo	11742579	5015634	(6726945)	(57.3)
25-29	9394063	5015634	(4378429)	(46.6)
30-39	21136642	11703147	(9433495)	(44.6)
40-49	24659415	17554720	(7104695)	(28.8)
50-64	31704963	26750050	(4954913)	(15.6)
65+	17613868	17554720	(59148)	(0.3)
<$30k	21136642	14210964	(6925678)	(32.8)
30-50k	22310900	15882842	(6428058)	(28.8)
50-75k	25833673	17554720	(8278953)	(32.0)
75-100k	17613868	12539086	(5074782)	(28.8)
100-200k	23485158	15882842	(7602316)	(32.4)
200k+	7045547	6687512	(358035)	(5.1)
Less than HS	4697032	2507817	(2189214)	(46.6)
HS grad	24659415	14210964	(10448452)	(42.4)
Some college	36401994	23406293	(12995701)	(35.7)
College grad	32879221	25078172	(7801049)	(23.7)
Postgraduate	19962384	17554720	(2407664)	(12.1)
Democrat	46970315	29257867	(17712448)	(37.7)
Republican	38750510	29257867	(9492643)	(24.5)
Independent	32879221	24242232	(8636988)	(26.3)
Liberal	25833673	16718781	(9114892)	(35.3)
Moderate	51667347	31765684	(19901663)	(38.5)
Conservative	39924768	35109440	(4815328)	(12.1)
Protestant	64584183	45976648	(18607536)	(28.8)
Catholic	30530705	19226598	(11304107)	(37.0)
Jewish	2348516	1671878	(676638)	(28.8)
Other	7045547	6687512	(358035)	(5.1)
None	14091095	10031269	(4059826)	(28.8)
Union member	24659415	14210964	(10448452)	(42.4)
No union member	92766373	69382941	(23383431)	(25.2)
Urban	34053479	25914111	(8139368)	(23.9)
Suburban	57538636	40961013	(16577623)	(28.8)
Rural	25833673	16718781	(9114892)	(35.3)
Gov't do more	59887152	31765684	(28121468)	(47.0)
Gov't does too much	50493089	46812587	(3680502)	(7.3)
Northeast	27007931	17554720	(9453211)	(35.0)
Midwest	29356447	20898476	(8457971)	(28.8)
South	39924768	25914111	(14010657)	(35.1)
West	21136642	19226598	(1910044)	(9.0)

Unsurprisingly, black numbers dropped the most. Blacks are the most 'racist' group in the US, and there weren't any high profile races across the country involving black candidates. Consequently, more than one in three blacks who voted in 2008 stayed home in 2010 (where the black option existed, though, blacks kept pace with whites--blacks constituted 25% of the electorate in South Carolina in 2008, and did so again in 2010). The "other" figure decreased from 3% to 2% from '08 to '10 according to exit polling data, but that's presumably more an artifact of reporting percentages in whole figures and probably shouldn't be taken seriously.

The drop among those aged 18-24 is the only category, save for the "other" racial classification, precipitous enough for the 2010 total to be less than half of what it was in 2010. Black ops is in, helping the hip black guy push through his political agenda is out. We'll vote for our favorite celebrity, but not for his Congressional allies. How boring! I advocate emulating Hertz and Avis and raising the voting age to 25.

Those of retirement age, in contrast, maintained virtually the exact same numbers as they did in '08. As age increases, the drop in participation steadily decreases. The recent elections were decided by adults.

Among those earning up to $200,000, the decreases are consistent. Only the rich deviated from the overall trend, coming out in relatively greater force than the rest of the population. Deficit spending driving the US economy off the cliff and all that matters to people with money.

The relationship between educational attainment and voting rate changes is, as in the case of age, clear and consistent. Nearly half of those who didn't graduate high school who voted in '08 did not vote in '10. That only applied to one-eighth of those with graduate degrees.

An obvious reason the Democratic party took a shellacking this time around is that liberals and Democrats were less motivated to vote than they were in '08. In contrast, self-described conservatives were out in close to the same numbers both elections.

Not only was the election decided by adults, the adults were far more skeptical of government involvement in society than the kiddos were a couple of years ago. In '08, 60 million voters shared the sentiment that "government should do more". This time, only 32 million voters did. And they were a minority--47 million said "government is doing too much".

I assume California, where several "key" elections took place, is the reason that the decrease in the west is smaller than it is throughout the rest of the country.

We are doomed (economically), and other 2010 mid-term election observations

++Addition++Patrick Cleburne notes that I disagree with the idea that immigration is a winning issue for the GOP. That's a product of poor communication on my part, not my actual sentiments. I'm just speculating that going as far as Angle did may have been politically counterproductive. I suspect (and the exit polling data appears to support me) that people who are seriously concerned with immigration will seek out politicians' stances on it, so making it a campaign centerpiece is unnecessary and runs the risk of opening one up to all the usual point-and-sputter charges of racism, bigotry, hate, etc.

---

California's Proposition 19 was shot down at nearly identical rates by race. Like American Idol and Monday Night Football, the attempt to legalize marijuana use among those old enough to drink is something people of every color can appreciate, or in this case, object to:

Race	Yes	No
White (60%)	46%	54%
Black (10%)	47%	53%
Hispanic (22%)	45%	55%
Asian (4%)	39%	61%
Other (3%)	48%	52%

The partisan differences are far more distinct, however:

Party	Yes	No
Democrat	56%	44%
Republican	30%	70%
Independent	47%	53%

Without taking this into consideration, we'd miss the fact that non-white Democrats fell in between independent whites and Republican whites in their levels of opposition to Prop 19. Support only came from white Democrats which, even in solidly blue California, wasn't enough to get it passed. There's a take-home message or two here for SWPLs.

Arizona and Colorado each had propositions (actually an amendment to the state constitution in the case of the latter) on healthcare up for voter consideration that were similarly designed to challenge the Obama plan. As expected, in both states conservatives and Republicans were the most supportive of the propositions, liberals and Democrats the least so, with moderates and independents in between.

Far more remarkable (and in my opinion, encouraging) was how the age trend ran in the opposite direction it so consistently runs on other issues largely defined by party affiliation. Young people were most supportive of the propositions and, by extension, are the least supportive of Obamacare. In Arizona:

Age	Yes	No
18-29 (10%)	60%	40%
30-44 (21%)	55%	45%
45-64 (42%)	57%	43%
65+ (28%)	50%	50%

In Colorado, the 18-29 age range was too small to reliably report a breakdown for, but the trend is similar:

Age	Yes	No
18-29 (9%)	N/A	N/A
30-44 (22%)	48%	52%
45-64 (47%)	48%	52%
65+ (21%)	43%	57%

Young adults appear to understand that a socialized healthcare system is one in which they will be paying for benefits their elders will enjoy without getting anything in return. With the inversion of the age pyramid that is taking place across the Western world, the young are already going to be dealing with increasing demands on their resources from social security and other old age entitlements that are not tied directly to healthcare. They are understandably reluctant to take on the burdens Obamacare will inevitably place on them.

I wonder if supporters of the Arizona and Colorado propositions were aware of how the age element played into the results. This was the first general election in which such propositions directly challenging Obamacare could be put to the voting public, so waiting until 2012 would've meant passing up the earliest opportunity. But it also would've meant a higher percentage of the electorate would've been in the 18-29 year old range. In Arizona, it didn't matter--Prop 106 passed. In Colorado, however, amendment 63 narrowly went down to defeat.

Moving to the congressional elections, following President Obama's victory in the 2008 election, Half Sigma decried the GOP becoming a party of poor, dumb whites, citing Obama's victory among the highest income voters. Two years later, the clarion call is sounding a bit silly. One of the good (or convenient, anyway) things about stagnating per capita wealth in the US over the last decade is that like comparisons among voters by income range can be made across election cycles. The following table shows the percentage of voters who voted for the Democrat in their district's House race ('06 and '10) and who voted for Obama ('08):

Income	2006	2008	2010
$30k-	63%	64%	56%
$30k-$50k	56%	55%	51%
$50k-$75k	50%	48%	46%
$75k-$100k	52%	51%	42%
$100k-$200k	47%	48%	42%
$200k+	45%	52%	35%

More than half of all voters earning more than $200,000 a year supported Obama. A couple of years later, only one-third of high income earners voted Democrat. The country's most affluent swung farther back to the right--a full 17 points--than any other income group--where swings ranged from 2 to 9 points--did between '08 and '10. Either Obama is a uniquely SWPL candidate, or a lot of people didn't know who they were voting for. Everywhere exit polling was conducted and reported at the state level showed that income and voting Republican correlated positively with two exceptions; the uber SWPL state of Oregon, where the trend mostly ran in the opposite direction, and Delaware, where income wasn't much of a factor.

Contingent upon the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, I suspect the latter will prove to be the case, with many high income earners abandoning Obama in his reelection bid. On the brighter side for the left, however, post-graduates who don't make jack shit are still reliably Democratic!

Kudos to the media establishment for preferring the term "independent" to "moderate" when referring to swing voters. Among self-described moderates, Republicans gained a relatively paltry 6 points between '08 and '10 (and still lost them as a group, 42%-55%). Among self-described independents, though, the swing was more than twice that, at 13 points, for a 56%-38% victory. Parenthetically, moderate is a potential answer to the question on political ideology, while independent is a potential response to the question on party identification.

Despite disingenuous admonitions to Republicans about becoming the "party of no" from leftist commentators on NPR and NBC, 56% of the electorate asserted that the government needs to hear a lot more noes than it has been hearing lately ("government is doing too much"). Only 38% said the "government should do more".

Ideally, rather than asking specifically about illegal immigration, exit polls would query voters on immigration in general. The illegal adjective has negative connotations for most people, and consequently when asked to choose the most important issue among a list of several, those who identify illegal immigration as the most pressing are probably more restrictionist than would be the case if the issue in question was regarding immigration policy in general. Or more precisely, those who might choose immigration as their most important issue instead of say, healthcare, still choose healthcare if the immigration choice is limited to one concerning only illegal immigration.

That said, there are plenty of people out there who care about illegal immigration and want to make it easier for those who are illegal to become legal residents, in some cases by merely being present in the US and wanting to live here. And among those who care about illegal immigration the most, Republicans won big, 69%-26%. The pragmatic lesson here for politicians is that (in the general election) restrictionism wins, but it doesn't need to be a centerpiece of their campaigns.

Far from being an unfortunate curmudgeonly exception to the ebullient optimism of the American people, a plurality of voters basically agree with the Derb that we are doomed:

Life for the next generation will be...
Better	32%
Worse	38%
About the same	26%

For those hoping to see pessimism reclaimed, consider an even greater reason to be optimistic! In three seemingly random states that held a Senate and/or gubernatorial election--Colorado, Florida, and Ohio--exit pollsters asked voters whether the economy was in a normal downturn or in long-term decline:

US economy is in...	Colorado	Florida	Ohio
Normal downturn	22%	23%	22%
Long-term decline	72%	73%	77%

Whether you're from the mountain west, the Ohio valley, or the sunshine state, sing it from the rooftops: We are doomed!

Less happily, most Republicans continue to be sunny on the war in Afghanistan. A little over a month ago, Pat Buchanan wrote a column presaging a splitting of the blanket by the tea party wing and war wing of the new GOP. Looks like the latter has the advantage of strength in numbers:

War in Afghanistan	Approve (40%)	Disapprove (54%)
Democrat	23%	77%
Republican	60%	40%

Those opposed to the war are a minority (within the GOP; it's the majority opinion more generally), but at least they are now a substantial one.

In a series of email exchanges I had with the late Richard Nadler, the open borders conservative pointed to John McCain's strong performance among Hispanics in his '04 Senate reelection campaign, in which he won 70% of their votes. But he also won 77% of the white vote, illustrating Steve Sailer's observation that Hispanics tend to vote as whites do, shifted several points to the left.

Six years later, McCain won reelection again. His good fortune was sealed in the primary when he defeated JD Hayworth, but apparently his triumph there did not come without cost. After a decade of being the GOP establishment's front man on amnesty, one nebulous ad about completing "the danged fence" and his Hispanic support vanished* (so goes the media narrative, anyhow). He lost 40%-57% among Hispanics to Rodney Glassman, whose campaign stance on immigration was almost indistinguishable from McCain's.

Yet McCain still sailed to an easy victory because he won the far more important white vote by a wide margin, 64%-29%. It's still one person, one vote after all!

Despite the presumption many have of Christine O'Donnell as a Christian kook, she won among whites in Delaware, 51%-45%. She lost her Senate bid because more than one-fifth of the state's electorate is black, and blacks voted against her 93%-6%, nearly the same rate that blacks voted for Obama in the '08 presidential election. C'mon, don't act surprised. You know how black guys feel about white girls who won't put out!

In most states with large Hispanic populations and a Senate election taking place, exit pollsters asked voters an absurdly dichotomous question about whether most illegal immigrants should be "offered legal status" or "deported". Strangely enough, the question was left out in Florida! Could it be that the majority of those favoring deportation voted for a Hispanic guy and against a white guy? That doesn't fit the narrative and simply must be kept from the public at all costs!

Along with their opposition to federal healthcare mandates, Kentucky offers another reason to find joy in the phrase "the children are our future". Rand Paul pulled off a nearly impossible feat for a Republican in a tight statewide election--he won the 18-24 year old vote, 52%-47%. While I'm a bit wary of how he'll vote on immigration legislation, he embodies my sentiments more than any of the other 99 Senators he'll be sharing the chamber with next year.

Initial exit polling data was reported to show that Sharron Angle had taken a black-like shellacking among Hispanics in Nevada's Senate election. As it turns out, her performance among Hispanics (30%-68%) was in line with Republicans nationwide (34%-64%). It's hardly surprising that given eligibility for affirmative action benefits, low levels of educational attainment, low incomes, high rates of poverty, and high rates of welfare usage, Hispanics are going to find a home in the Democratic party. Very few currently backing Democrats would otherwise be inclined to vote Republican if only the GOP would listen to Bryan Caplan.

Finally, a conundrum from Washington. Patty Murray, the Democrat, won among those aged 45 and older, 54%-46%, but Dino Rossi, the Republican, won among those aged 18-44 by an identical 54%-46%. Hey, I only claimed that Rand Paul's feat was nearly impossible.

* His Arizonan support, anyway. McCain was never able to persuade many Hispanics to back him in '08, even though as I wrote a month before the election, he could not have asked for a more favorable Democratic opponent to be running against as far as garnering the Hispanic vote was concerned:

We have the highest-profile open borders member of the GOP's national leadership, who teamed up with Ted Kennedy in an amnesty attempt that united the public in opposition and who virtually barred restrictionists from the Republican National Convention, running against Obama, who lost the Hispanic vote 64%-36% [to Hillary Clinton, during the Democratic primaries], a margin less favorable than Bush enjoyed among Hispanics in '04. Could you [, Richard Nadler,] ask for a better setup? Yet McCain is getting massacred by Obama among Hispanics. The polls show him losing the Hispanic vote 59%-29%, an Obama advantage that has held steady for several months.

Demographics by state a generation down the road

Our children are our future, right? So we'd best have an idea of who they are. The 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores are out, and the companion site is laden with worthwhile data.

In the US, 12% of school age children are enrolled in private schools, so NAEP does not capture them. It's difficult to find a demographic breakdown of private school students at the national level, but using 2005-2006 data from the National Center for Educational Statistics, I calculate it to be 75.5% white, 9.5% black, 9.2% Hispanic, and 5.8% some other race (unless otherwise noted, "non-Hispanic" should be assumed to describe each category other than Hispanic). At the national level, public schools are 55.8% white, 17.0% black, 21.1% Hispanic, 4.8% Asian, and 1.2% Native American (2007 data). Thus just looking at public education stats slightly shrinks the size of the white slice of the Millenials pie, while correspondingly increasing the non-white share.

The following table presages the demographics of the future by showing racial percentages of the public school student body (8th grade) at the state level, ordered by the most important indicator of social failure (no, bigot, not low test scores, by the percentage of the student body that is white!):

State	White	Black	Hispanic	Asian	NatAm
Vermont	95.2	1.7	1.1	1.7	0.3
Maine	94.1	2.5	1.1	1.5	0.8
West Virginia	93.0	5.2	0.9	0.7	0.1
New Hampshire	92.5	1.9	3.1	2.2	0.3
North Dakota	86.0	2.0	2.1	1.0	8.38
Kentucky	85.2	10.9	2.7	1.1	0.1
Iowa	85.1	5.7	6.5	2.1	0.6
Montana	84.0	1.0	2.5	1.2	11.4
Wyoming	83.9	1.6	10.0	1.1	3.5
South Dakota	83.2	2.0	2.4	1.1	11.2
Idaho	81.6	1.2	14.0	1.7	1.6
Indiana	78.9	12.7	6.8	1.4	0.3
Utah	78.9	1.5	14.7	3.3	1.6
Ohio	78.6	17.1	2.7	1.5	0.1
Wisconsin	76.8	10.5	7.6	3.6	1.5
Minnesota	76.4	9.4	6.1	6.0	2.1
Missouri	76.1	17.9	3.7	1.8	0.4
Nebraska	75.4	8.0	12.9	2.0	1.7
Pennsylvania	74.0	15.9	7.2	2.8	0.2
Kansas	73.2	8.9	13.5	2.6	1.7
Massachusetts	72.2	8.3	14.1	5.0	0.3
Oregon	72.2	3.1	17.6	4.9	2.2
Michigan	71.5	20.3	4.7	2.5	0.9
Rhode Island	69.9	8.9	18.3	3.1	0.7
Tennessee	68.6	24.8	4.9	1.5	0.2
Washington	68.0	5.7	15.1	8.6	2.6
Arkansas	67.0	22.6	8.1	1.5	0.7
Connecticut	65.2	13.9	16.6	3.9	0.4
Colorado	61.5	6.0	27.9	3.4	1.2
Alabama	58.9	35.6	3.5	1.1	0.8
Virginia	58.6	26.6	8.8	5.6	0.3
Oklahoma	58.1	10.8	10.0	1.9	19.2
Alaska	57.1	4.0	6.1	7.5	25.3
North Carolina	56.8	29.0	10.3	2.4	1.5
Illinois	55.4	19.9	20.4	4.0	0.3
New Jersey	54.9	17.4	19.4	8.1	0.2
South Carolina	53.7	39.3	5.1	1.5	0.4
Delaware	53.0	33.0	10.4	3.2	0.4
New York	51.6	19.5	21.0	7.4	0.5
Louisiana	49.2	46.0	2.7	1.4	0.8
Florida	47.6	23.9	25.7	2.5	0.3
Georgia	47.5	39.2	10.0	3.1	0.2
Maryland	47.0	37.9	9.0	5.6	0.4
Mississippi	46.4	50.6	1.9	0.9	0.2
Arizona	44.5	5.6	41.6	2.8	5.4
Nevada	43.1	11.0	36.4	7.9	1.5
Texas	34.8	14.3	47.2	3.4	0.3
New Mexico	29.6	2.6	55.6	1.4	10.9
California	29.4	7.7	50.2	11.9	0.8
Hawaii	19.4	2.3	4.6	73.0	0.6
District of Columbia	5.4	83.2	9.9	1.5	0.1

("Asian" includes Pacific Islanders; "NatAm" = Native American)

Clearly Vermont, like neighboring New Hampshire, will continue to be one of the worst places in the country to live for decades to come, while California and Nevada will continue to get better and better!

Excluding DC and Hawaii, New Mexico is the only state in the US where whites currently do not consitute a majority. In a generation, several other states concentrated in the Southwest and South will follow suit.

According to Bill Clinton, this will be "good for America". I'm skeptical. But that's not the purpose of the post--relaying the data is.

Tracking political orientation by age group over time

Last week, NPR ran a story on a Pew Research report on the millennial generation, highlighting the age group's political liberalism. There is little in the report that is surprising, though I found this remark by the president of Pew Research to be prognostic value:

Mr. KOHUT: Many people, not just whites, I think only 60 percent of this generation is white. They have a positive view of government - a more positive view of government, at least, than other generations. And they even supported higher rates, relatively higher rates, such things as affirmative action with preferential treatment for minorities.

Looking down the road, when the up-and-coming generation is 40% white, what will the support-preferential-treatment-for-minorities numbers look like? Will the term "minority" continue to be translated as "non-white", or will it fall out of use as everyone becomes a statistical minority based on their racial compositions?

I wondered more generally whether or not the contemporary political liberalism of those under age 30 is an exception in recent history or a continuation of past trends. Over the last several decades, have young adults been as liberal relative to other age groups as they are today, or are those designated by demographers as millennials especially leftist in their outlooks?

Turning to the GSS, I used Pew's generational conventions for age groupings. Millenials are 18-29, Xers 30-44, baby boomers 45-63, and silents 64-81. Because I was looking back in time, the age groupings do not correspond to static generational labels, of course--the intention is to see if the political orientations of young people have become especially liberal in the last few years. Higher values indicate political conservatism and lower values indicate political liberalism, with 4 representing perfect moderation. The graph shows the mean for people in each age grouping by year of survey.


Still presumably riding the wave of the 60s, young adults tended to describe themselves as considerably more liberal than older generations did through the 70s, at which point the average response became moderate. Since the turn of the millennium, it looks as though those under 30 have remained noticeably more liberal than those over 30 (although only by about one-fourth of a standard deviation). So the Pew report appears to be capturing something not entirely predictable.

As time goes on, the under 30 cohort continues to become less and less European by ancestry. Looking only at whites, there does not appear to have been any detectable shifting over the last three decades, the apparent noise in 1998 and 2002 notwithstanding.


I suspect much of the liberal skew of young adults today stems in large part from the fact that they are, as a group, less white than older generations are. Neither whites nor non-whites are becoming more liberal or conservative than before. Instead, non-whites are more liberal than whites are, and they're coming to represent a growing percentage of the young adult aggregate.