Pandagon

Ezra has written a review of the book Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State Andrew Gelman, who has written a book exposing the truth behind one of the weirder myths of American politics---that people are more likely to vote Democratic the richer they get. The other assumption, which is getting a lot of play as people gape in horror at the imbeciles filling up McCain/Palin rallies with their conspiracy theories and their hate, is that Republican voters are uneducated working class people. As I mentioned before, the most interesting example of that stereotype I've seen was the commenters at Sadly, No who looked at this picture and assumed it was a double wide. It is, in fact, an extremely expensive house in a pretty well-to-do neighborhood. Granted, most of the houses around it have Obama signs, so it's easy to see where the stereotype of rich or at least upper middle class Democrats comes from, but Gelman has statistics to explain why that is, and a lot of it has to do with the blueness of Austin itself. See, well off liberals tend to flock together in dense areas where they have a disproportionate influence on the media image of both wealth and liberalism.