Abstract
The so-called “red/blue paradox” is that rich individuals are more likely to vote Republican but rich states are more likely to support the Democrats. Previous research argued that this seeming paradox could be explained by comparing rich and poor voters within each state – the difference in the Republican vote share between rich and poor voters was much larger in low-income, conservative, middle-American states like Mississippi than in high-income, liberal, coastal states like Connecticut. We use exit poll and other survey data to assess whether this was still the case for the 2012 Presidential election. Based on this preliminary analysis, we find that, while the red/blue paradox is still strong, the explanation offered by Gelman et al. no longer appears to hold. We explore several empirical patterns from this election and suggest possible avenues for resolving the questions posed by the new data.
About the authors
Avi Feller is a PhD Student in the Department of Statistics, Harvard University; e-mail: avifeller@fas.harvard.edu.
Andrew Gelman is a Professor in the Department of Statistics and Political Science, Columbia University.
Boris Shor is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy and Assistant Professor in the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago and University of California, Berkeley.
©2013 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
