# Red/Blue states that you would expect to lean the other way **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [December 21, 2020, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-states-that-you-would-expect-to-lean-the-other-way/928526 "2020-12-21T11:50:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ukulele_ike1/32/4613_2.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike1)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2020, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-states-that-you-would-expect-to-lean-the-other-way/928526/41 "2020-12-22T22:34:37Z")
Temporarily embarrassed hillbilly millionaires. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2020, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-states-that-you-would-expect-to-lean-the-other-way/928526/42 "2020-12-23T00:06:40Z")
> [@FlikTheBlue](#): > > The easy answer is that Stacey Abrams is more politically talented than Beto O’Rourke Word. Knowing where and on what to focus is a critical skill in winning elections. > [@Chronos](#): > > While there are certainly artisanal syrupers and B&Bs in Vermont, those aren’t the sorts of professions you can fill an entire state with. Or even more than a small fraction of a state (i.e., smaller than the margin by which Vermont is blue). Yeah, the caricature of Vermont as the place to where kooky NYers migrate to live off the land and enjoy hemp in peace is amusing, but it’s just a caricature. Though reliably “blue” in presidentials (in contrast to NH being “swing”) Vermont has elected Republican governors as recently as 2003-2011 and 2017-today. These are the last redoubt of your old school “Eastern Republican” type, as opposed to Movement Conservatives, mind you (work led me to be part of some meetings with Jim Douglas back when he was in office), but still it’s not as simple as red/blue. Vermont, though, still does have some elements of more libertarian bent such as their notoriously easy firearms laws, reflecting their ruralness. But in general they lean liberal on the greater social issues and that’s reflected in their Congressional and Presidential resutls. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lantern2/32/3010_2.png) [@Lantern2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern2)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2020, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-states-that-you-would-expect-to-lean-the-other-way/928526/43 "2020-12-23T18:45:52Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Vermont. Its a rural, lily white state and on paper it should be diehard republican like Idaho, but its one of the most left leaning states in the union. I know the northeast in general is left leaning, but Vermont is far more left leaning than Maine or New Hampshire for example. Because I am procrastinating about some other project (also involving data) I decided to cook up a quick model of Biden’s vote share regressed on some basic variables like white/urban share of population and region. It’s not a great model (adjusted Rsquared of 0.53 but it’s a start). One of the biggest outliers is Vermont where the model predicts 46% and Biden got 66%. Washington and Wisconsin are two other states where Biden got more than 10 points more than predicted. In Indiana Biden got 3% more than predicted and in Ohio 6%. Two states where Biden got less than predicted by 11% are Florida and New Jersey. Actually I am becoming intrigued and wonder which other variables would improve the model. Maybe I will work on it and post my results some time. This type of simple statistical model isn’t rigorous but it’s a good starting point for analysis IMO. ---
**Author:** ![Author\_Balk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Author\_Balk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Author_Balk)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2020, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-states-that-you-would-expect-to-lean-the-other-way/928526/44 "2020-12-23T19:20:32Z")
I checked out a list of percentage of the state is evangelical Christian and it’s a good indicator of whether they voted for Biden or Trump. Of the top 20 percentage of evangelical Christians only Georgia and Virginia voted for Biden. And of the bottom 20 only Utah, Wyoming and North Dakota voted for Trump. Apparently they didn’t consider mormons as evangelical Christians which is why Utah is on the bottom 20. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lantern2/32/3010_2.png) [@Lantern2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern2)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2020, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-states-that-you-would-expect-to-lean-the-other-way/928526/45 "2020-12-23T19:31:54Z")
I added percentage of Bachelors and Masters degrees and not surprisingly this adds a lot of explanatory power to the model. Vermont is still a big outlier. I think religion may well be a key variable. Vermont appears to be low on that so that may be a key factor why it’s so blue. ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2020, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-states-that-you-would-expect-to-lean-the-other-way/928526/46 "2020-12-23T19:37:39Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Though reliably “blue” in presidentials (in contrast to NH being “swing”) Vermont has elected Republican governors as recently as 2003-2011 and 2017-today. These are the last redoubt of your old school “Eastern Republican” type, as opposed to Movement Conservatives, mind you (work led me to be part of some meetings with Jim Douglas back when he was in office), but still it’s not as simple as red/blue. Massachusetts, which absolutely no one would consider a red state, has had Republican governors 22 of the 30 years since 1991. ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2020, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-states-that-you-would-expect-to-lean-the-other-way/928526/47 "2020-12-23T19:43:25Z")
Of course, the legislature and pretty much any statewide or federal office (except for Lieutenant Governor and 4 years of Scott Brown in the Senate) has been solidly Democratic over that same period. ---
**Author:** ![Lantern2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lantern2/32/3010_2.png) [@Lantern2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lantern2)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2020, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-states-that-you-would-expect-to-lean-the-other-way/928526/48 "2020-12-23T19:47:59Z")
A model with just 3 variables: the percentage which is white, has a Master’s degree and attends weekly worship can explain 85% of the variation of Biden’s vote share. Incidentally the model is almost dead on for predicting Indiana. Relative to race and education, perhaps religiosity is underrated today as a political factor. ---
**Author:** ![qubed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f07891/32.png) [@qubed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qubed)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2020, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-states-that-you-would-expect-to-lean-the-other-way/928526/49 "2020-12-23T20:05:58Z")
New Mexico hasn’t always been Democratic, and until very recently, it has elected a variety of both Rs & Ds to state-wide elections. In 2000, Gore won by just 336 votes — a 0.06 % margin. NM has 47% Hispanic population — the largest percentage in the USA — which does lean Democratic. It’s been slowly increasing (it was 38% in 1990), which is probably the biggest factor of the dominance of Democrats in state-wide elections today. The Southeast corner of NM does tend to be very conservative, it’s culturally very similar to West Texas. Hence NM-2 district is very reliably Republican and has only been D for 2 year periods during blue waves (2008 & 2018). ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2020, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-states-that-you-would-expect-to-lean-the-other-way/928526/50 "2020-12-24T12:42:18Z")
> [@Lantern2](#): > > Relative to race and education, perhaps religiosity is underrated today as a political factor I used this FiveThirtyEight piece from September in my Political Geography course — “Being white and also an evangelical Protestant is [strongly correlated](https://wthh.dataforprogress.org/blog/2018/11/5/understanding-white-evangelicals) [with voting](https://wthh.dataforprogress.org/blog/2018/11/11/what-the-fuck-white-evangelicals) [Republican](https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2018/8/21/data-for-politics-14-who-is-trumps-base) — much more so than being white and not having a college degree.” (Piece is linked below; link in previous quote is to an original data source). > **[A Big Chunk Of People Of Color And White People With Degrees Are Behind Trump](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-big-chunk-of-white-americans-with-degrees-and-people-of-color-are-behind-trump/)** > > The overarching story of recent American elections is that 1) voters of color, who have long been Democratic-leaning, are a growing share of the electorate; 2) … ---
**Author:** ![Crankyhillbilly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7993a0/32.png) [@Crankyhillbilly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crankyhillbilly)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2020, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-states-that-you-would-expect-to-lean-the-other-way/928526/51 "2020-12-31T04:14:42Z")
As A West Virginian I think that the switch for Dem to Repub is strictly economic. Decades of a lousy economy eventually caused people to give up on Dems. Other factors contribute of coarse, racism, stupidity being major ones but it is really the economy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-states-that-you-would-expect-to-lean-the-other-way/928526.md?page=2)