I hope this is not in violation of the 11/15 rule…..
But, in response to Ole’s post, I did some investigation of state “average” IQ and where the state’s electoral votes went.
First, I found this site, which seemed to be on the mark. I then correlated the IQ scores here with what ACT reports and got r=.8, so figured the IQ scores were up to snuff.
Results below:
Results of state IQ and electoral preference: Not much of a pattern.
For 7 out of 11 IQ categories, Bush won, and did so in both in the “high” and the “low” groups.
I then double checked how I interpreted the graph and ran a chi-square analysis, and the cell frequencies did not show significant differences between IQ and voting preference (assuming alpha=.05). (see here).
You can take what you want from this, but it appears to me that IQ (at least aggregated state IQ) didn’t have that much of an impact in this election.
Posted by A. Beaujean at 03:46 PM