Regional differences in party support have attracted a good deal of attention since the 2000 election. A striking feature of the current pattern is that Democratic support is higher in more affluent states. At the individual level, income is associated with Republican support, but in a recent paper, Gelman et al. (2006) find that this relationship is weaker in more affluent states. In affluent states, people with high and low incomes both tend to vote Democratic; in poorer states, people with low incomes vote Democratic while people with high incomes vote Republican. This paper extends Gelman et al.'s analysis by considering both education and income. We find that the effects of income and college education both vary among states, in a largely independent manner. Variation in the effects of college education is related to the educational composition of the state: where college education is more common, it is more strongly associated with support for the Democrats. Overall, regional differences are largest in the middle classes, contrary to the claims of some popular and theoretical accounts. There is some evidence that a pattern of weaker class divisions is associated with more support for the Democrats.
So egalitarian communities tend to be inclusive and spread wealth more effectively, or at least have the wealth to spread. Perhaps such communities witness the richness of diversity and celebrate it by voting democratic.
Poorer communities with less wealth to go around, tend to reinforce stratification in social structure, support concepts of unworthy poor and prejudice. Republicans in poor states are more inclined to blame the poor for their problems and take no responsibility for helping them. I've believed this all along. Now it's documented by research.
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