Albeit modestly so. The 2014 GSS data are out. Converting wordsum results to IQ scores with an average wordsum of 6.11 and a standard deviation of 1.83 wordsum points, the mean IQ of 2012 presidential election voters by who they voted for (n = 988): Voted for IQ Obama 99.0 Romney 100.8 3rd party 105.3... Read More

John Derbyshire got his hands on a campaign support email for and from Jeff Bell. Bell is the Republican challenger for the New Jersey Senate seat currently held by Democrat Cory Booker. Some snippets from the Derb's excerpts: Mitt Romney is too much of a restrictionist for Bell's tastes. The Derb has a devastating take... Read More

Steve Sailer, touching on the tendency for presidential elections to bring out marginal voters who don't participate in mid-term elections: That seems a plausible working assumption, though trying to quantify the electoral differences between mid-term and presidential election cycles has revealed it to be less obvious than I would have assumed it would be. Taking... Read More

As one of the most demographically representative states in the country, and one with an enormous amount of American history packed into it to boot, the gubernatorial results out of Virginia this week are worth examining as a way of better understanding America's contemporary social landscape. - Cuccinelli, the Republican, won among whites by a... Read More

Although the 2012 GSS did not include any questions on presidential voting plans for the same year, the survey did sneak in a question on presidential approval, querying respondents on whether they approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling the job of president. Because it's fun and often causes people to make... Read More

Randall Parker points to a CNBC article focused on unfunded pension liabilities at the state level that is packed with quite a bit of data on the financial condition of the fifty. I've been after something like this for several years. There are multiple ways to view the numbers, but probably the most broadly informative... Read More

Writes Jack Hunter: Ever the proverbial fool, after seeing that pithy rhetorical ploy I knew I had to say something. The Herostratus effect must be an order of magnitude larger than any further attempts to restrict the public's access to guns could hope to be. A decade their senior and having never toked up in... Read More

Jack Cashill, who is always putting forward interesting and controversial (in an accurate sense of the word) ideas, is one of my favorite writers, not least of all because he plugged me into the local political scene. His recent contention that early voting was a key to Obama's reelection victory is hardly an exception to... Read More

Reflecting on the 2012 presidential election, Half Sigma writes:The Edison exit polls, paid for and reported on by the major media, didn't query voters on abortion at the state level, but Reuters has the information. The following shows the public split on the legality of abortion in the nine tightest swing states as well as... Read More

There's been a palpable shift among those in the Establishment towards openly, without the air of furtiveness, subjugating the concerns and well being of heterosexual white men to those and that of all our assorted 'minorities'* since Obama's reelection earlier this month. The "new normal" was prominently on display today on NPR's Morning Edition, in... Read More

Alerted by Steve Sailer of the ability to cross tab exit polling data for free via Reuters, I thought it'd be a fun challenge to try and paint an electoral map red--entirely--to contrast with the easy-to-create blue one. Perhaps married white men earning at least six figures annually (though in honor of Jokah Macpherson, I... Read More

Upon realizing that for cost-cutting reasons there were insufficiently sized exit polling operations carried out in 19 safe states and the District of Columbia, I'd resigned myself to the actualization that it wouldn't be possible to create hypothetical electoral maps based on select demographic characteristics for the 2012 Presidential election. Damn. But the media consortium... Read More

The WSJ has a typical, intentionally misleading companion graphic to the 4,134th article in this year's election cycle about the growing, increasingly determinative role of the Hispanic vote in deciding who will become President next January and every four years after that until the earth crashes into the sun: The number of Hispanics eligible to... Read More

The Romney/Obama split on individual campaign contributions from current employees of Bain Capital over the last year through the end of the latest FEC reporting period is 77.7%/22.3%. Among those who listed the federal government as their employer, it's 17.0%/83.0%. It's obvious an Obama administration will do everything in its power to keep the beast... Read More

++Addition++Inductivist looks at predictors of support for and opposition to same-sex marriage. --- I didn't get around to looking at the exit polling on North Carolina's recently passed Amendment 1 defining marriage as exclusively existing between one man and one woman last week after the vote had taken place. Finally getting around to doing so... Read More

Not satisfied (nor fully convinced) by looking at a few select exit polls, I calculated the total number of self-described tea partiers, defined as those who either "support" or "strongly support" the movement, who have voted for the four Republican Presidential candidates up through the Alabama and Mississippi primaries that took place earlier this week,... Read More

In a previous post, I tried to convey that self-described tea party members are essentially uber conservative (in the contemporary American political context) rather than being decidedly libertarian in their emphasis. I didn't articulate the point too well, because, well, verbal articulation isn't my forte. So let's turn to the Arizona exit poll results for... Read More

The fact that Ron Paul blows the rest of the GOP presidential field out of the water when it comes to campaign contributions from military personnel is one that the Republican establishment can't profitably address. This isn't 1975. In 2012, US military personnel are among the most respected and honored people in the country. Consequently,... Read More

++Addition++Noah offered some much needed guidance as to what geographic areas constitute "the beltway". Due diligence has now been done. I've cleaned up the FEC zip code areas to better reflect what the post was trying to show (and now more accurately does).---We hear plenty of grumbling from the conservative 'grassroots' about those referred to... Read More

Having a little more fun at the FEC website, I calculated the total dollar amounts received by presidential candidate through the end of November 2011 from individuals* who listed "lobbyist" as their occupations:Presidential candidateLobbyist $1. Rick Perry$25,5002. Tim Pawlenty$11,7703. Newt Gingrich$11,5004. Mitt Romney$8,0005. Rick Santorum$3,0006. Herman Cain$2,5007. Barack Obama$1,1508. Jon Hunstman$5009. Michelle Bachmann$25010. Charles "Buddy"... Read More

Reading Mangan's recent post contrasting the top sources of campaign contributions for the Romney and Paul presidential campaigns, I was surprised to find that the Texas congressman's three largest boosters are the Army, Air Force, and Navy. As Dennis points out, the lists compiled by OpenSecrets.org are comprised of donations from employees, family members, and... Read More

The strategy is as simple as it is obvious as it is disingenuous. Continue to urge Republicans to abandon immigration restrictionism and instead Hispander at full bore. It's inevitable that Hispanics are going to continue growing not only in absolute numbers but also as a share of the US population, so best not to do... Read More

Apparently reeling a bit from a publicizing of the uptick in deportations that have taken place under the Obama administration, the department of homeland security announced that it will abnegate deportation proceedings against some 215,000 El Salvadorans illegally present in the US through at least late 2013, citing damage from earthquakes--earthquakes that occurred in the... Read More

++Addition++Razib explains why the quest for the representative state is doomed to fail.I should point out that I'm not arguing much of anything in this post but instead have created a list that does just what it is purported to do--show by what amount each state deviates from the national mean when it comes to... Read More

With Herman Cain out, race isn't an issue in the Republican presidential nominating process. It never was among voters, of course, as GOP voters are overwhelmingly white. Age, educational attainment, income, sex, and religious affiliation are still there, but of the polling data I've combed through, the only characteristic outside of political orientation (is the... Read More