[extropy-chat] Enlightenment and the election

[Patrick Wilken]

> While the liberal intelligentsia and media have been pompously trying
> to portray blue states as better educated and red states as more
> ignorantly benighted, even going so far as promoting a hoaxed up list
> of states by average IQ vs how they voted which alleges to show smart
> states as for Kerry and dumb states as for Bush, here is some real data
> which cannot be disputed: SAT Scores by State vs election results:

I don't believe it anymore than I believed the IQ scores by state when 
I first saw them. Where do you get these figures? I found the original 
IQ scores pretending to show the South as dumber than the North 
insulting. However, its doesn't make any sense to me that California 
and New York are going to have lower average SAT scores than 
Mississippi or Kansas. Richer states are likely to better education and 
better SAT scores. It would be fascinating if this wasn't true. This 
seems to be to be a simple inversion of the original bogus IQ post.

One confusing factor is that there are large differences in the 
proportion of students taking the SAT in different states:

http://www.sciway.net/statistics/satstates96-98.html

According to these 1998 figures, which haven't changed much in six 
years (the r^2 correlation between total SAT scores by state between 
1998 and 2004 is .98), Alabama only has 8% of graduates taking the 
test, whereas New York has 76%. Given the reasonable assumption that 
the probability of taking the SAT is non-random (i.e., when the number 
of students doing the test is not 100% of the State the better educated 
students are more likely to take the test) it would seem the figures 
below (if true) are worthless without a proper normalization.

If we do a simple correlation between voting for Bush and total SAT 
score we get a positive r^2 correlation of .12, whereas if you look at 
voting for Bush compared with proportion of students sitting the SAT 
you get a negative r^2 correlation of .31 (i.e., states with more 
students sitting the test are much more likely to vote for Kerry). Much 
more of the variation in State voting is accounted for by the 
likelihood of students sitting the test, than the total SAT score. My 
guess is that this is related to the fact that on average poorer states 
were more likely to vote for Bush than richer ones.

best, patrick

===================================================
State	Vote	Vote	SAT V	SAT M	%	Total
Alabama 	Bush	1	562	558	8	1107
Alaska 	Bush	1	521	520	52	1024
Arizona 	Bush	1	525	528	32	1047
Arkansas 	Bush	1	568	555	6	1098
California 	Kerry	0	497	516	47	1002
Colorado 	Bush	1	537	542	31	1071
Connecticut 	Kerry	0	510	509	80	1008
D.C. 	Kerry	0	488	476	83	951
Delaware 	Kerry	0	501	493	70	1002
Florida 	Bush	1	500	501	52	1010
Georgia 	Bush	1	486	482	64	953
Hawaii 	Kerry	0	483	513	55	986
Idaho 	Bush	1	545	544	16	1072
Illinois 	Kerry	0	564	581	13	1116
Indiana 	Bush	1	497	500	59	982
Iowa 	Bush	1	593	601	5	1180
Kansas 	Bush	1	582	585	9	1139
Kentucky 	Bush	1	547	550	13	1093
Louisiana 	Bush	1	562	558	8	1101
Maine 	Kerry	0	504	501	68	996
Maryland 	Kerry	0	506	508	65	1011
Massachusetts 	Kerry	0	508	508	77	1007
Michigan 	Kerry	0	558	569	11	1101
Minnesota 	Kerry	0	585	598	9	1144
Mississippi 	Bush	1	562	549	4	1111
Missouri 	Bush	1	570	573	8	1116
Montana 	Bush	1	543	546	24	1090
Nebraska 	Bush	1	565	571	8	1126
Nevada 	Bush	1	510	513	33	1019
New Hampshire 	Kerry	0	523	520	74	1032
New Jersey 	Kerry	0	497	508	79	997
New Mexico 	Bush	1	554	551	12	1101
New York 	Kerry	0	495	503	76	992
North Carolina 	Bush	1	490	492	62	964
North Dakota 	Bush	1	590	599	5	1173
Ohio 	Bush	1	526	540	24	1063
Oklahoma 	Bush	1	568	564	8	1111
Oregon 	Kerry	0	528	528	53	1036
Pennsylvania 	Kerry	0	497	495	71	987
Rhode Island 	Kerry	0	501	495	72	991
South Carolina 	Bush	1	478	473	61	947
South Dakota 	Bush	1	584	581	5	1126
Tennessee 	Bush	1	564	557	13	1115
Texas 	Bush	1	494	501	51	989
Utah 	Bush	1	572	570	4	1149
Vermont 	Kerry	0	508	504	71	1005
Virginia 	Bush	1	507	499	66	1001
Washington 	Kerry	0	524	526	53	1034
West Virginia 	Bush	1	525	513	18	1034
Wisconsin 	Kerry	0	581	594	7	1137
Wyoming 	Bush	1	548	546	10	1087