I am surprised to learn that Razib is surprised by this. I believe that it has been true ever since abortion became an issue. With the defeat of Elizabeth Dole (herself never a very enthusiastic pro-lifer), all seventeen female Senators favor legal abortion. (I believe the breakdown is 13-4 Democratic to Republican, so whiskydrinker is probably on to something. It might also be that feminist women are more likely to run for public office.)

About New England vs. the Midwest in the pre-New-Deal Republican coalition:  
 
In many ways, the Midwest/West was the more liberal (or rather "progressive") of the two wings. Think Robert LaFollette (although he had a French name; I don't know what his exact ethnic background was), George Norris, William Borah, or even Albert Beveridge (an imperialist but a domestic progressive) on the one hand vs. Nelson Aldrich, Henry Cabot Lodge, Calvin Coolidge, and forgotten figures like George Moses and Frank Brandegee on the other.  
 
The dominant tone of Upper Midwest politics from the 1910s to the 1950s was isolationist, progressive (often bordering on socialist), yet usually nominally Republican.  
 
And for that matter, Southern Democrats were all over the map (no pun intended) on economic issues; many were conservative, but others were segregationist liberals.

I also wonder how far back these stereotypes go even in western culture. In the opening chapters of Vanity Fair, for example, we have a description of Cuff, the uncontested social king (and abuser of that status) at an early nineteenth-century English public school, who is not only the tallest and strongest and most athletic, but also the smartest. He particularly impresses his social inferiors with his skill in classical languages. Dobbin, a principal character in the book, is unpopular partly because he is not very good at his studies, except in math. (Later in the book, as an adult, he is described as intelligent and well-read in all subjects, so I guess he was a late bloomer.) When Dobbin stands up to Cuff's bullying and beats him in a fight, Cuff displays his newfound respect for Dobbin by tutoring him in Latin!

Razib: I'm not sure I understand the reason behind the question, but yes, I associate and have associated with such people quite a bit. Not that I was IQ-savvy enough to calculate the IQs of my high school friends in numerical form at the time, but I certainly knew people well who in retrospect were clearly in the "100-110 range." My high school was actually not particuarly nerd/anti-nerd stratified, actually; a nerd would not be Big Man on Campus but after junior high he would be unlikely to be persecuted either, unless he also had an obnoxious personality (not just poor social skills, which I certainly had, but overtly obnoxious).  
bioIgnoramus: Actually, NorthAmericans invented (or in the case of baseball and football, developed) three great sports to which European sports are inferior (and actually, I believe basketball is rather popular in Finland).

P.S. I don't want to be PC, but surely it is a little cruel to make the opposite of "nerd" "tardish" (a word I have never heard before but that Razib presumably derived from "retarded"). What about the large middle group of people with ordinary intelligence?

On "Nerd" vs. "Geek" and possible regional variation: John Hughes (of Midwestern background) said that the characters Anthony Michael Hall played in "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club" were geeks rather than nerds because a geek will grow out of it but a nerd never will. Thus, for him, nerd was more pejorative. My own (northeastern) experience, however, is very different and is closer to Caledonian's and John Emerson's: a nerd is academically oriented, while a geek is oriented towards science fiction or Dungeons and Dragons or (pace Daniel Dare) video games. Thus, geek is more pejorative.  
As for g-dropping, in my experience is a an extremely common trait, even among the educated and intelligent. Those with a high education level or upper/middle class background do it less often than those with a low education level and working-class or lower background, but I have met very few people besides myself who are punctilious about never doing it, even among so rarified a group as Ivy League professors and graduate students.

I agree with SFG: This chart is likely to be largely correct, but is it backed up by any hard data?

It is interesting that the Eastern-born heresies (Arianism, Nestorianism, Monophysitism) were Christological in nature, while Western-born heresies (Donatism, Pelagianism) centered around man.

It's interesting that the frequent claim that 90% or more of Americans believe in God decreases to 62.8% in this poll. I assume that this is probably because of the phrase "and have no doubts about it" in the question.

Oops! I should have the read the comments more carefully instead of skimming them. I'm sorry.

What is the source for your mention of anti-Trinitarian Christians who became Jews? That sounds like a fascinating story.

Mortimer: 
As arcane points out, not everything you read or the Internet is reliable. For example, my own Google search turns up numerous articles about Osiris - some by Christians, but some by impartial scholars and some by avowed anti-Christians seeing the same parallels you do, and none except the one you previously quoted refer to Osiris as having been resurrected "on the third day." I suspect that someone made up this detail to try to make the parallels more exact. I also found only a few sources that make a similar claim for Adonis: most sources agree that vegetation gods like Adonis and Tammuz were thought of as dying when winter came and being reborn (very different from rising from the dead) with the advent of spring. 
Similarly, Semele, the mother of Dionysius, is not said to be a virgin by any source I could find. The standard account of Dionysius's birth is that Zeus, as he so often did, copulated (no virgin birth here) with the mortal woman Semele. After he aceded to her demand to show himself to her in all his glory, she died from the sight, and Zeus saved the baby by sewing him up in his thigh, from which he was later born. There is an alternate version in which Dionysius is ripped apart by Titans as you say, but even that seems to have no virgin birth elemet as your source asserts. 
The article on Mithraism on Wikiepdia is itself, of course, a potentially unreliable Internet source, but Wikipedia articles, in my experience, rarely contain blatant errors of fact or absurd interpretations. The article is very skeptical of claims along the lines of "Mithraism was almost the official religion of the Roman Empire." At the bottom, it links to scholarly articles that make the same assertions.

Also, I agree wholeheartedly that any anally experienced person who claims to be a virgin is a sick freak.

I agree. Judgmentality on the part of the recently reformed can be a very annoying thing. On the other hand, I don't think anyone in this particular article, even the genuine virgins, seemed very preachy.

I agree that people who proclaim themselves "secondary virgins" are playing fast and loose from the language, but I don't have the contempt for the term that Razib does. 
For centuries many Christians believed that a woman who committed a sexual sin even once was permanently "ruined" and deserved if not a literal, at least a metaphorical "scarlet letter." Skeptics were, quite justifiably, often critical of this attitude. Now some Christians are trying to have a more Christ-like and forgiving in atttitude, and non-believers mock this new attitude too! Can Christians ever win?