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Originally Posted by Fred H.
Todd writes:
Perhaps Todd, if you have the right candidate. But Kerry couldn’t pull it off, and I suspect that Hillary won’t have a prayer. On the other hand, if the Dems nominate Zell Miller in 2008, many of us red state folk may turn blue.
Best I can tell, the birth rate correlation is a fact. Additionally, there’s a very high correlation between red states and the number of years people are married. So it seems to me that people who stay married and have offspring currently tend to perceive that Republicans better reflect their family values—what is best for the survival and future of their offspring. And single people and those who don't stay married long obviously tend to have different family values.
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Yeah, it's a shame that's the best the dems could do, both in terms of their candidate and in terms of their marketing of their own values and the weak attempt at unity among their factions. The elephants have done a hell of a job promoting unity via their values platform, even before 9/11. I'm not sure how much was strategic and how much was just exploiting current events, but the joining of corporate and religious values into a single platform is more than I would have thought even possible 20 years ago. Birth rate or at least population density does seem to be part of the equation, but my feeling is that it might be a more indirect factor than Steve Sailer theorizes. I admittedly tend to have a bias toward "political psychology" and the effects of perception and influence rather than direct biological explanations.
If you're ever interested in the view of the current red and blue from the perspective of the left (and probably the center as well), just for curiosity ... I got the feeling from skimming Tom Frank's book "What's Wrong with Kansas?" that he captures it pretty well. I gather from some of the reviews that a few of his details on Kansas could probably be debated (perhaps he is too close there to see it objectively?) but I think he captures the general flavor.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1551
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS.../nationbooks08
Have a Happy New Year !
Todd