“Neither of the NPR employees voted for Bush”

[J. J.]

How many times do we have to go through this.....

Bush won those with an undergrad degree by several points, while Kerry won those with a high school education by a point.   Kerry did win those with post graduate degrees - but enough of those would be lawyers to tip that balance.

That having been said, I don't believe that individuals with college degrees are smarter than those of us who don't have them.  Its just that the above argument makes a whole lot more sense than yours.

Those who can, do.
Those who can't, teach.

Most people with graduate degrees are not lawyers.

He didn't say that they were; he said that there were enough to tip the balance.

If you look at the states with the highest percentage of people with a high school diploma, you'll find that Kerry won 2 out of the top 10; if you look at states with the lowest percentage of with a high school diploma, you'll find that Kerry won 2 out of the bottom 10.

That isn't an outstanding statistical relationship graduating high school and who wins the state.

I was surprised to see that California, hardly Bush country, was in the bottom ten.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/p20-550.pdf

[J. J.]

How many times do we have to go through this.....

Bush won those with an undergrad degree by several points, while Kerry won those with a high school education by a point.   Kerry did win those with post graduate degrees - but enough of those would be lawyers to tip that balance.

That having been said, I don't believe that individuals with college degrees are smarter than those of us who don't have them.  Its just that the above argument makes a whole lot more sense than yours.

Those who can, do.
Those who can't, teach.

Most people with graduate degrees are not lawyers.

He didn't say that they were; he said that there were enough to tip the balance.

If you look at the states with the highest percentage of people with a high school diploma, you'll find that Kerry won 2 out of the top 10; if you look at states with the lowest percentage of with a high school diploma, you'll find that Kerry won 2 out of the bottom 10.

That isn't an outstanding statistical relationship graduating high school and who wins the state.

I was surprised to see that California, hardly Bush country, was in the bottom ten.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/p20-550.pdf

Are you aware of the fact that in MA, CT, RI, NY, WA and MD people are better educated than those in AL, MS, TX, SC, UT, and AND OK?

Are you aware of the fact that both RI and CA are in the bottom ten states in terms of percentage of the population that graduated from high school?  Are you aware of the fact that WY, NB, AK, MT, ND, IA, and UT are in the top ten?

[J. J.]

Did you ever notice how few American novels have been written by English professors?

[J. J.]

I was surprised to see that California, hardly Bush country, was in the bottom ten.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/p20-550.pdf

You can thank Prop 13, which was passed by anti-tax zealots, for that. Also, CA has a lot of immigrants.

Another this, is a HS diploma equivalent from state to staet? I have the feeling a NY HS diploma is more meaningful than an AL one.

Well, we might expect some of those states, especially in the South, to have low numbers; there is perhaps less of a tradition of educational achievement there.  However, RI is not a Southern state and NH, another New England state, is on the top of the list.  We also have some western states and farm belt IA at the top.

I'm not correlation between lower education levels and states Bush (nor Kerry, BTW) carried.  The entire argument basically looks like a load of crap.

Further, yes CA has a lot of immigrants, but so does TX, NY and FL.  Non English speaking immigrants.  I would notexpect someone whose first language is not English to graduate from an American high school at the same rate as a native English speaker.

I am not seeing any great relationship between educational level and who carried what.

If we would take this on a micro level, Philadelphia has lower HS graduate levels thand the bordering counties (Montgomery, Bucks, Delaware) and has substantially lower college and post graduate levels.  Kerry won those counties by substantially lower levels than he won Philadelphia.  I would not reach the conclusion (that Shira did that with Bush voters) that Kerry voters in PA were  ignorant or uneducated.

[J. J.]

Not you.
Most other Republicans would, though.
I remember quite a few threads on "Why do Blacks not vote for us" in the run up to the election and while the wording was different, basically that's what most Reps (not you) said.

There are cultural values involved (and there are in the South* as well).  Looking at the states with a high level of high school graduates and a low level of high school graduates, there isn't too much of a difference between Bush and Kerry.

*I'm going to note something.  The bulk of the African American population in Philadelphia is first through third genernation Southern; they migrated to Phila between 1920-1970.  This was primarily a rural, agricultural society at the time (it isn't anymore).  There be a strong relationship between rural culture and lower high school graduation rates.

Now, you couldn't make this argument about RI.  :-)

[J. J.]

That isn't an outstanding statistical relationship graduating high school and who wins the state.

I was surprised to see that California, hardly Bush country, was in the bottom ten.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/p20-550.pdf

That doesn't show how good a state does graduating students from high school, but rather how good wherever they were living when they were 16 to 18.  If someone is 70, they were in HS at a time when about 65% of students graduated, and only 40% of the adult population over 25 was a HS graduate.  For someone who is 55 or younger, they were in HS at a time when 86-88% of students graduated (a rate that has now held for close to 40 years).

A state that has a relatively low component of older persons (such as those in the West that have had high growth, will have a larger percentage of adults who have completed high school.   But this is just another way of saying that they have a relatively large share of adults under 55.  States that have seen large scale emigration may have low levels of adult completion.  People move more in their 20s and 30s.  If a HS graduate leaves the state, then the relative share of older adults increases, and the overall HS completion rate decreases.

I have to disagree.  It really doesn't matter where the voter was educated, but where the voter voted.  This is, to an extent, a reflexion of the electorate.

The Hispanic population doesn't explain RI at all. 

What I find interesting is that you have a TX and CA in the bottom 10, that have voted completely oppositely in the last 5 elections and MN and ND in the top 10 that have voted completely oppositely in the last 5 elections.  The latter pair actually have split in every election since 1972, but in three of those a favorite son was on the ticket from MN.

I'm not seeing education as being the controlling factor.

[J. J.]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I wasn't arguing that it was

I think that this was the point of the tread, that only the undereducated vote for Bush, while those with higher educational attainment vote for Kerry. :-)

CA, for example, could be producing a lot of HS graduates, who end up getting jobs in MN.  Likewise MN could have a terrible educational system, but has jobs that attracts mostly out of state HS graduates.  The people left in CA are the voters for that state, just the people comming to MN are the electorate for that state.

[J. J.]

I took a look at my HS twentieth year reunion book from 2000; the class was 103 (excluding foreign exchange students and those that couldn't be located). 

25 no longer live within 50 miles of the HS. 

16 that I know of have a college degree (at least); of those 16, ten do not live in the 50 mile radius.

If we would look at the district, we could decry how "bad" the school was at the time, because it only produced a 5% in the number of college graduates in the area 20 years later.

In actuality, it probably produced about 15% (possibly up to 20%) college graduates, and probably did produce in excess of 20% that attended college.

We might be seeing something similar in CA.

[J. J.]

Shira is correct, the educated states, measured by the 2002 data on what percentage of people 25 or older have a bachelor's degree, tended to vote for Kerry.

Perhaps some states with high HS graduation rates and low rates of bachelor's degrees did not do a good job of preparing their kids for college.

Assuming that ranking is correct, we don't find a strong relationship

The bolded ones are Bush states:

Maryland        37.6
Colorado    35.7
Virginia    34.6
Massachusetts    34.3
Connecticut    32.6
New Jersey    31.4
Vermont            30.8
Minnesota    30.5
New Hampshire    30.1
Rhode Island    30.1
Delaware    29.5
Kansas            29.1
New York    28.8
Washington    28.3
California    27.9
Illinois    27.3
Nebraska    27.1
Oregon            27.1
Hawaii            26.8
Utah            26.8
Missouri    26.7
Arizona            26.3
Texas            26.2
Pennsylvania    26.1
Florida            25.7
Alaska            25.6
New Mexico    25.4
North Dakota    25.3
Georgia            25.0
Wisconsin    24.7
Ohio            24.5
Maine            23.8
Indiana            23.7
Montana            23.6
South Dakota    23.6
South Carolina    23.3
Iowa            23.1
Alabama            22.7
Michigan    22.5
North Carolina    22.4
Louisiana    22.1
Nevada            22.1
Kentucky    21.6
Tennessee    21.5
Idaho            20.9
Mississippi    20.9
Oklahoma    20.4
Wyoming            19.6
Arkansas    18.3
West Virginia    15.9

You also have the situation of Bush winning more states.  Even if you go into the really close states (NH, WI, NV, AZ), there really isn't a correlation.  We should be seeing all of those grouped around the same educational level; that is not the case.

It does illustrate the Northeast, Pacific Rim breakdown reasonably well.

I would like to see a link and where DC ranks.

[J. J.]

It's a significant difference, even though you screwed up Michigan.

15/19 of the most educated went for Kerry.
4/31 of the least educated went for Kerry.

If it was truly random, the probability of that would be 19 choose 15 * 31 choose 4 / 50 choose 19 = 4.011 * 10^-6.

That gives us most of the one sided test probability 4.157 * 10^-6

Due to symmetry, the two sided test is then 8.314*10^-6

True, the 19 / 31 I picked was somewhat arbitrary, although it's also the number of states that went for Kerry and Bush respectively. Still we have a strong correlation between ranking (note that I never used the actual percentage) and who they voted for.

Wrong again, at it's your model that is wrong.  These are not random and we know the data.

We know that there were these four states that were relatively close, NM, NV, NH, WI.  If the premise is correct, then they should have similar educational levels.

NM has 25.4% college graduate levels, which is -10.3 points below the the highest Bush state , CO (35.7%) and +9.5 above the lowest Bush state (WV, 15.9%)

NV is at 22.1% -13.6 from high, and +6.3 from low.

NH (30.1%) is -7.6 from Kerry's high (MD 37.6, more from DC 45%+) and +8.6 from the low (MI 22.5%).

WI (24.7%) is -12.9 from Kerry's high and +2.2 of the low.

Now, comparing the states you have the highest NH (30.1) with the losest NV (22.1%) with an 8 point difference (which is actually larger than some of the difference between some of the "Kerry carried" results).  You shouldn't have this if education was a major factor.  Those four states should have had similar education levels.

[J. J.]

I said assuming they were random. Oh, well, you'll say I'm wrong on statistics just out of principle.

No, what I am saying is that your modeling is wrong.  The problem you have, in all seriousness, is that you usually end up testing for something other than what you you are looking for.  I'm saying that most you statistical arguments have design flaws, not math flaws.

[J. J.]

It is always good to see you post Vorlon.  :-)

[J. J.]

I have tried to resist posting this, but I can't any longer.

The person sho started this thread, Shira, posted during the election about the "Million new voters" in FL, and that these were implicitly Kerry voters.  Turnout went up but those "million new voters" didn't exist.

Math is not Shira's strong suit.

Ironically, I suggested Kerry should write off FL and but resources into OH and WV.  It might have been better Kerry strategy.