Why has the economic crisis deepened America’s conservative drift? The trend towards the hard right is most pronounced in the least well off, least educated, most blue collar, most economically hard-hit states.
Why?
It is a fascinating glimpse into the Human (or is it American?) Psyche — and I am very curious about it:
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Consider these fascinating bullet points from Gallup:
• Conservative states are considerably more religious than liberal-leaning states. And, this correlation between religion is increasing
• Conservative states are also less educated than liberal ones; This correlation between conservative affiliation and education (percent of adults who are college graduates) is also substantially higher than before.
• States with more conservatives are less diverse.
• Conservative political affiliation is highly negatively correlated with the percent of the population that are immigrants or gay and lesbian.
• There is no correlation to race or ethnicity, however, whether measured as percent white, percent black, or percent Hispanic (Fascinating).
• Conservative political affiliation is strongly correlated with percentage of a state’s workforce in blue-collar occupations;
• Conservative political affiliation is highly negatively correlated with proportion of workforce engaged in knowledge-based professional and creative work.
• States with more conservatives are considerably less affluent than those with more liberals.
• Conservative political affiliation is highly negatively correlated with state income levels and even more so with average hourly earnings.
I don’t know about you, but I find these datapoints amazing. Can anyone explain the thought process under this? It is not what I was expecting . . .
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Source:
Why America Keeps Getting More Conservative
Richard Florida
Reuters, Feb 13, 2012
http://m.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2012/02/why-america-keeps-getting-more-conservative/1162/
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