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There's an interesting article by Nat Cohn in the Upshot blog in today’s New York Times that explores how as a nation we divide over certain data points.
The first one explored is gun ownership. If the 2016 election was limited to gun owners, Trump would have carried every state but Vermont. If the election had been limited to non-gun owners, Clinton would have carried 48 states, lost West Virginia and there wasn’t enough data to call Wyoming. Gun owners broke to Trump by 63-31 while Clinton carried non-gun owners 65-30.
Other maps compare white voters to minority voters, white working class to everyone else, urban to rural, evangelicals to non-evangelicals, union to non-union, married to singles.
All the data was derived from the 2016 Exit Polls.
It could be seen ironic that Vermont remained blue. Vermont has some of the most lenient gun laws in the USA.
I would interpret this as saying that gun ownership influences voters in virtually all states to vote Republican. Vermont is the exception - the state is very rural and has an elderly population with little racial diversity which normally equates to preferring Republicans. But it is so ideologically liberal on most issues apart from guns that Republicans cannot win even this relatively more conservative part of the Vermont electorate. Gun owners are a smaller part of the electorate in more urban states like California, so their profile is probably less reflective of the state as a whole than is true in Vermont.
I would interpret this as saying that gun ownership influences voters in virtually all states to vote Republican. ...
We have the usual trope about causation vs. correlation. As the article itself notes, gun-ownership-status correlates strongly with voting-preferences. But it remains unclear, as to whether a passel of attitudes and preferences, just happens to neatly fit with orientation towards guns... or if it is precisely one's attitude towards guns, that predisposes one's vote.
Another one that intrigues me, is the role of educational attainment. Much has been said about the "working class" vote going overwhelmingly for Trump, while among college-graduates, the voting-split is much more even. Well, among persons with post-graduate degrees, the advantage overwhelmingly goes to Clinton. Why did she win the PhD-JD-MD contingent? Causality, or correlation?
There's an interesting article by Nat Cohn in the Upshot blog in today’s New York Times that explores how as a nation we divide over certain data points.
The first one explored is gun ownership. If the 2016 election was limited to gun owners, Trump would have carried every state but Vermont. If the election had been limited to non-gun owners, Clinton would have carried 48 states, lost West Virginia and there wasn’t enough data to call Wyoming. Gun owners broke to Trump by 63-31 while Clinton carried non-gun owners 65-30.
Other maps compare white voters to minority voters, white working class to everyone else, urban to rural, evangelicals to non-evangelicals, union to non-union, married to singles.
All the data was derived from the 2016 Exit Polls.
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