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

"Red State, Blue State" starts with an often under-reported paradox: wealthy states vote Democratic whereas wealthy people vote Republican. It then proceeds to explore this paradox from every angle possible using polling data. My background is data mining. What impresses me most about "Red State, Blue State" is the way it effectively communicates results in understandable ways, particularly using charts rather than complicated formulas. It is not a book about innuendo, selected examples, or technical bravado. It is a book about effectively communicating the results of innumerable polls and many elections to understand a paradox. The book is divided into three parts. The first introduces the problem, leading up to a chapter on how pundits -- both on the left and the right -- can be so confused. Chapter 3 introduces the idea of the "ecological fallacy", which is the tendency to take summarized information (say, poor states vote Republican -- which tends to be true) and to apply it to individuals (say poor people vote Republic -- which tends to be false). The second dives into the issue in more detail, both historically and geographically. It is highly unusual to see authors attempt to apply theories about US politics to other countries. This is a daring approach, since most American readers will not find it relevant. The final section discusses what it all means, particularly the importance of party stances on economic issues versus social issues. I do not agree with every conclusion in the book. In particular, I feel that the data provides more support for the Republicans "southern strategy" than the authors do. In addition, there is one area where I believe the book could have gone into more detail, and that is the role of turnout in presidential elections. Prof. Gelman (who is a renown statistician at Columbia University) and his coauthors do an excellent job exploring the relationships between the outcome of elections and individuals, states, and other geogrphic regions. At just over 200 pages, it is definitely worth reading.

This book is like a bottle of Gummy bear vitamins for the politically curious. The cover and maps look colorful and inviting. The words and charts are made from careful research of election results and polls. They are delightful, but require a bit of time to chew. The insights from the book fortify the mind to better digest the barrage of information and opinions about American voters. Dr. Gelman introduces many common misconceptions about American voters with funny quotes from famous politicians and pundits. He offers reasons behind these myths and debunks them with clear analyses that are presented in the form of powerful and thought-provoking graphs. I appreciate the large amount of graphs & charts that he includes in the book, because they help the reader to see the logic behind his viewpoints. To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, "Andrew Gelman knows American voters (and so can we)".

The subtitle of this book is "Why Americans vote the way they do". It looks primarily at three influences: State and region; income; and religion. Gelman is fully capable of getting as math- and statistics-heavy as anyone. He is, after all, a professor of statistics. But in this book, he takes another path --- he lets all the technical details sit in the background and presents results using a lot of graphs, but minimal mathematics. He punctures a number of myths. Perhaps the most famous myth was part of a title of a book "What's the matter with Kansas?" which posited that Kansans vote against their own economic interest because of disagreement with the Democrats o social issues. In fact, wealthier Kansans vote Republican, poorer Kansans vote Democratic. Further, that same pattern (the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to vote Republican) happens in *all* states. But there's more. The very first words in the introduction are a quote from Tucker Carlson to the effect that wealthy people, particularly those with incomes over $100,000, vote Democratic. Strictly speaking, Carlson is wrong. Rich people tend to vote Republican (and this trend is more in evidence at incomes below about $100,000 ... that is, people who earn $100,000 are *much* more likely to vote R than those who earn $50,000; peoploe who earn $200,000 are still more likely, but the difference between 200K people and 100K people is smaller than that between 100K and 50K). Gelman is kinder, and calls Carlson 'half right' because rich *states* vote Democratic more than poor states do. Open the book to almost any page, and you're likely to find something interesting: On page 47, for instance, he compares Southern and non-Southern states and voters over time. Here we learn, e.g., that the gap between rich voters and poor voters in terms of voting Republican has been growing since 1960 (when it was 0), and that it is growing much faster in the South than elsewhere. On page 84, we learn that, in poorer states, rich people tend to be more religious than poor people (most true in SD, AR, and AL), while in rich states, rich people tend to be *less* religious (most true in NJ and NY) On page 126, he graphs split ticket voting over time -- it rose from the late 1950s to mid 1970s, peaking at almost 30%, and declined since then -- in 2004 it was a little under 20%. On page 151 he analyzes how he thinks Kerry and Bush should have shifted their economic positions to maximize their share of the vote. In short, this is the kind of thought-provoking book that a lot of people here would love. Clearly, this book is for people who like numbers and graphs --- but, again, you do *not* need to know a lot of math to read it, there are no formulas, and the most advanced statistic used is 'correlation'. Warmly recommended.

I like it when books make clear that there's a paradox in the everyday way we discuss things. In Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State, the paradox is as follows: rich people vote Republican, but rich states vote Democrat. Why is that? Isn't that a lovely little problem? The answer is just as interesting: partisanship is much more important in poor states than it is in rich states. The poor in Texas and Mississippi are Democrat, while the rich are Republican. The poor and the rich in Connecticut -- the canonical other end of the wealth spectrum -- are about equally Democratic. Ohio, which is halfway between Mississippi and Connecticut on the income, is also divided in its party affiliation. A host of questions fall out of this, among them: why, then, is Connecticut uniformly Democrat? To put it more precisely: why are the wealthy in Connecticut Democrats, where elsewhere they would be Republicans? Why are the wealthy Republicans? Why are the poor Democrats? And why does this partisan divide appear more in poor states than in wealthy ones? The answers Gelman comes up with are quite interesting, but I'm not sure I'd recommend that you read this book to get them. Instead I might point you to Gelman's earlier paper, "Rich State, Poor State, Red State, Blue State: What's the Matter with Connecticut?". (The title is a hat tip to Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.) The paper is a quicker read, and as such doesn't feel quite as repetitive as the book.

This is a wonderful book for those interested in American politics and elections. While drawing heavily on the existing research in political science and advancing that research in significant ways, the book is written for a general audience. I found it refreshingly clear without dumbing down the material. I decided to use the book in my introductory level political science class this semester and my students have responded very well. They were excited by the argument and able to develop an understanding of how to do good research on political questions. The many graphic representations of data were particularly useful, as the students were able to use those graphs and charts to reconstruct Gelman's argument on their own, which made this an even more valuable learning experience. This book advances an important argument, and should be required reading for journalists. Just last week I heard a talking head prattle on about rich people voting for democrats and poor people supporting republicans, something that, as Gelman shows definitively, is completely false. By removing this false assumption, Gelman is then able to show what's really going on in our polarized politics: cultural and religious differences among middle class and wealthy voters drive the red/blue division. His suggestions for how this information should be used by campaigns and researchers are useful. In short, non-specialists and students will find this book engaging, accessible, and full of interesting and counter-intuitive arguments. Specialists should find the book useful for the compilation of data and previous research in one place, and if they teach political science will want to consider using this text in lower division American politics and methods courses.