# 14/15 of the Lowest Per Capita States are Republican **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [December 13, 2012, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953 "2012-12-13T20:12:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/21 "2012-12-14T06:25:57Z")
The 15 states/DC with the highest unemployment rate and for whom they voted in the 2012 presidential election (O = Obama, R = Romney): O 37 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 8.5 O 37 FLORIDA 8.5 O 39 OREGON 8.6 R 39 SOUTH CAROLINA 8.6 R 41 GEORGIA 8.7 O 41 NEW YORK 8.7 O 43 ILLINOIS 8.8 R 44 MISSISSIPPI 8.9 O 45 CONNECTICUT 9.0 O 46 MICHIGAN 9.1 R 47 NORTH CAROLINA 9.3 O 48 NEW JERSEY 9.7 O 49 CALIFORNIA 10.1 O 50 RHODE ISLAND 10.4 O 51 NEVADA 11.5 What’s up with Democrats and unemployment??? The 15 states/DC with the lowest unemployment rate: R 1 NORTH DAKOTA 3.1 R 2 NEBRASKA 3.8 R 3 SOUTH DAKOTA 4.5 R 4 IOWA 5.1 R 5 UTAH 5.2 R 5 WYOMING 5.2 R 7 OKLAHOMA 5.3 O 8 HAWAII 5.5 O 8 VERMONT 5.5 R 0 KANSAS 5.7 O 10 NEW HAMPSHIRE 5.7 O 10 VIRGINIA 5.7 O 13 MINNESOTA 5.8 R 14 MONTANA 6.0 O 15 NEW MEXICO 6.3 What’s up with Republicans and jobs??? ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/22 "2012-12-14T11:55:15Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > What’s up with Republicans and jobs??? Considering their income, they’re still mostly “Takers”, according to Romney. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/23 "2012-12-14T13:02:01Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > The Democratic Solid South of the century following the Civil War was heavily pro-union and pro-organized labor? Where you had industry that tended towards unionization, yup. Have you really never read about the coal miners of Appalachia? That involves parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and even into Georgia. They were very pro-union, and many of them fought and died in labor disputes. Now, if you’re familiar much at all with the economic history of the deep south, you’re aware that up through even the 1970s there was (comparatively) little heavy industry. As early as post-reconstruction you had attempts at industrializing the South along the lines of the current Rust Belt, but it was never nearly as successful at building an industrial base. FWIW, that’s actually the reason the South is poor, not their politics. The South was pre-industrial agrarian for 60 years longer than the North and this has lead them to a long lasting “deficit” in development. Even with modern migration from North to South that deficit hasn’t been undone entirely. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/24 "2012-12-14T13:08:20Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > This is your thread, your conclusion (not premise). Your conclusion doesn’t hold water. It’s not up to me to propose any alternative. I might later on, but I still want to understand what position you are staking out first. To me he’s not even made a meaningful conclusion. At first he really made no point at all, then he basically said (to paraphrase): “I assume that in the South, the people voting Republican are all of the entrepreneurs and business managers, and I assume they’re responsible for the comparatively weaker economy.” He’s basically admitted he is making an assumption and not backing it up with facts, I see no reason to give his original argument a second thought if he doesn’t come back with some support for it. He also didn’t address the problem of many of those States being Democratic for most of their recent history **and being just as poor** , so either the Democrats made these States poor (which is just as ludicrous as the converse claim) or it’s more likely that there are other reasons. A lot of people at the SDMB are overly-obsessed with politics and think that is all that makes a society. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/25 "2012-12-14T14:11:41Z")
What’s interesting about Utah is that it scores low on per capita income but relatively high on median household income. I can’t imagine anything different about Utah that would explain such a phenomenon. It’s just one of those mysteries, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/26 "2012-12-14T14:32:15Z")
I think it’s nonsensical to label entire states as Republican or Democratic. My opinion is that one’s politics is much more dependent on whether one lives in an urban or rural area than on which region of the country you’re in. There are blue urban pockets in the red states such as Austin as well as Republican strongholds in the blue states. Reliably blue presidential states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have Republican legisltures. Unless you accept the false premise of states belonging to one party, any attempts to draw other conclusions about the parties based on state rankings in other data items isn’t worth much. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/27 "2012-12-14T14:43:23Z")
Democratic states don’t seem to be very good at holding on to their population (or attracting immigrants/migrants). The states with the lowest population growth and for whom they voted in 2012. Interestingly, all those with negative growth have an “O” next to them: O 36 New York 0.45 O 37 Wisconsin 0.44 R 38 Mississippi 0.38 R 39 Missouri 0.36 O 40 New Jersey 0.33 O 41 Pennsylvania 0.32 O 42 Illinois 0.30 O 43 Connecticut 0.18 O 44 New Hampshire 0.13 R 45 West Virginia 0.13 O 46 Vermont 0.11 O 47 Ohio 0.07 O 48 Maine −0.01 O 49 Michigan −0.08 O 50 Rhode Island −0.12 Can a mod rename this thread: Fun with statistics? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/28 "2012-12-14T14:43:46Z")
> [@](#): > > What’s interesting about Utah is that it scores low on per capita income but relatively high on median household income. I can’t imagine anything different about Utah that would explain such a phenomenon. It’s just one of those mysteries, I guess. Larger number of capita per household? ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/29 "2012-12-14T14:44:54Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Larger number of capita per household? How many Osmonds in a house, anyway? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/30 "2012-12-14T14:56:15Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Larger number of capita per household? Won’t anyone think of the capita? ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/31 "2012-12-14T14:56:49Z")
I think urbanization, especially historical urbanization is very important. Until very recently, it was more or less normal to take children out of school after 8th grade or so in very rural communities. At that point it was felt they knew all they’d need to know to work in the rural workforce, and their labor was too valuable to “waste” in further school. That causes generational problems. People born to the uneducated are much less likely to seek out education themselves. Education and prosperity have historically gone hand-in-hand. It takes a long time to overcome this sort of thing, even when regulations changed. When education first became compulsory, it was a lot easier to enforce in the cities than in farming communities. Eventually, even when the enforcement sort of caught up in rural communities you had people being raised by men and women who didn’t care much about education because they themselves were not well educated. So when their kids dropped out of school at 16 or become chronically truant earlier, they were not nearly as concerned. Even in say, the 70s, when even farm children were at least expected to attend school until 16 many barely did and many dropped out right after. The ones who graduated High School were a lot more likely to have just gone through the motions and were a lot less likely to even think about further education. So their children are a lot less likely to be raised in an environment where education is important. It takes generations for those sort of things to change and the rural communities are still behind in these matters. Prosperity also breeds prosperity. With low educational standards and few job opportunities, people growing up in rural communities who “want something better” are then much more likely to move to more populated urban states, which in turn gives those states a larger labor pool and eventually modern prosperity. A lot of people migrated out of the “old confederacy” into more prosperous northern states. This trend reversed over the past 30 years, but not nearly enough to have even started to undo the economic disparity. Most of the heavily rural states are simply “behind the curve” and while some (South Carolina is a good candidate) have the potential to catch up some day some (like West Virginia, Mississippi) will probably never do so. This all has very little to do with who someone votes for in a Presidential election. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Economist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c89c15/32.png) [@Evil\_Economist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Economist)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/32 "2012-12-14T15:32:56Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > What’s interesting about Utah is that it scores low on per capita income but relatively high on median household income. I can’t imagine anything different about Utah that would explain such a phenomenon. It’s just one of those mysteries, I guess. Your wives don’t have to make a lot of money individually, so long as you have enough of them? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/33 "2012-12-14T15:52:16Z")
It’s not exactly **news,** is it, that the poorer states trend Red? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/34 "2012-12-14T15:58:27Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > It’s not exactly **news,** is it, that the poorer states trend Red? Please, it’s “Income-challenged”. And most prefer to be thought of as “more affordable states to live in”. Or living the post-Confederate lifestyle. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/35 "2012-12-14T16:00:18Z")
Interestingly, 5 of the top 15 states by per capita income have Republican governors. Maryland $70,004 D Alaska $67,825 R New Jersey $67,458 R Connecticut $65,753 D Massachusetts $62,859 D New Hampshire $62,647 D Virginia $61,882 R Hawaii $61,821 D Delaware $58,814 D California $57,287 D Minnesota $56,954 DFL Washington $56,835 D Wyoming $56,322 R Utah $55,869 R Colorado $55,387 D New York $55,246 D Is there more of a correlation between income amd how the states voted in the Presidential elections or which party runs the state? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/36 "2012-12-14T18:32:28Z")
State-level political parties aren’t the same as federal-level political parties. Your typical California Republican politician is further left than your typical Utah Democrat. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/37 "2012-12-14T18:46:31Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > If you wanted to see if Republicans knew how to make money, wouldn’t it be better to look at the average income of the folks who voted for Romney vs Obama? I don’t see what you’d expect to learn by looking at the “by state” numbers… > > [Here you go.](http://www.gallup.com/poll/157508/romney-support-among-lowest-income-voters.aspx) Looks like the know how to make money to me! Wouldn’t it be more fair to look at the _median_, in this case? I saw lots of people respond to this post, but not address this point. I think of the Republican Party, right or wrong, as 10 guys that make $10,000 each and 1 guy that makes $1,000,000, (and that one guy spreads propaganda about Democrats being socialists). Look, the average income is $100,000! But the median is $10,000. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/38 "2012-12-14T19:08:10Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > State-level political parties aren’t the same as federal-level political parties. Your typical California Republican politician is further left than your typical Utah Democrat. Agree with the wider point, but I’m not sure the example is true. Your typical CA Republican pol is pretty far to the right. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/39 "2012-12-14T19:40:25Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > What’s up with Republicans and jobs??? They seem to be ok with taking low pay compared to the liberal states? I guess that’s a positive consequence of these union-busting legislation, right? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2012, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953/40 "2012-12-14T20:13:56Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > If you wanted to see if Republicans knew how to make money, wouldn’t it be better to look at the average income of the folks who voted for Romney vs Obama? I don’t see what you’d expect to learn by looking at the “by state” numbers… > > [Here you go.](http://www.gallup.com/poll/157508/romney-support-among-lowest-income-voters.aspx) Looks like the know how to make money to me! I don’t think political ideology leads to wealth or poverty at the individual level. I think it is far likelier that wealthy people trend republican because they are rich rather than being rich because they trend republican. The higher wealth among republicans are more of a manifestation of selfishness than a manifestation of republican ideals leading to wealth. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/14-15-of-the-lowest-per-capita-states-are-republican/643953.md?page=3)