Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote The Way They Do

“Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do” is a description of the American Political scene. The writers of the book offer up several reasons why they came to the conclusions they did. The overall theme of the book put the idea that, the elites leaned more left while the lower class sided with more conservative ideals, to bed. For some areas of the United States this can certainly hold true. What Gelman mentions is that looking at the economic breakdown matters.

When you look at just the state voting demographic you negate important information about who is voting for either party. On of the bigger points is that in poorer states class is a better indicator of how votes will roll out. The correlation between wealth and politics is less imperative in the states that are richer. This concept. This is even true when you look at the county demographics. This can also be explained through the breakdown of religion within states.

When we generally think about the conservative right we think social and economic conservatism. With the left there is more social liberal tendencies with economic conservatism. Now the wealthy right is doubly economic conservative because they can easily pair it with their social trends. The wealthy left tend not to be this way because of the DNC party ideals. Each individual party has general stances on particular issues and influences its constituents like so.

Above are what I found to be the explanation of why more wealthy states go blue and the wealthier go red. There are such differences today in the two parties that dominate our politics. Gelman’s driving force is that the wealth and the religious states offer critical information about the voting demographics in our country. We see the clear “Blue and Red” diagrams in the mainstream media, but many of these outlets come from New York and Washington D.C. where the general wealthy population is more liberal. They neglect the important information about the specific voter turnout.

Gelman worked on many different angles. He struck information form other countries like Canada and going back for data in the early 1900’s to paint a clear picture of how these economic swings effect the overall red and blue. The summary of it all comes down to two points of thought. The religious tendencies of Democratic voters in blue states are secular, while the Republican voters regularly practice their faith and tend to be more conservative. These hold true for most wealthy individuals. The second point is that the wealthy states tend to go blue but wealthy in poor states tend to side with the RNC and their ideals.

Between the easy read and the easy to digest graphics Gelman and his information paints a picture of a broke political system separated by wealth and a cultural war. Whether someone votes blue or red, he shows us how it can be traced back locally to wealth, religion, and party ideals.