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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter February 9, 2013

Sorting the American States into Red and Blue: Culture, Economics, and the 2012 US Presidential Election in Historical Context

  • Benjamin Highton

    Benjamin Highton is a Professor of Political Science at UC Davis who specializes in public opinion and voting behavior. A former APSA Congressional Fellow, he joined the Davis faculty in 1999. *Special thanks to Matthew Buttice, Ronald Rapoport, and Walter Stone for advice and comments on various aspects of this project.

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From the journal The Forum

Abstract

This paper analyzes variation in presidential outcomes across the American states from 1972 through 2012. The findings show that differences in cultural policy preferences across the states are more important than economic preferences for explaining state outcomes in 2012. This result fits a long-term trend of the growing importance of cultural issues – absolutely and relative to economic issues – for sorting the states, which has had the effect of rotating the “party cleavage” line that divides the Democratic and Republican parties in presidential elections.


Corresponding author: Benjamin Highton, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Davis

About the author

Benjamin Highton

Benjamin Highton is a Professor of Political Science at UC Davis who specializes in public opinion and voting behavior. A former APSA Congressional Fellow, he joined the Davis faculty in 1999. *Special thanks to Matthew Buttice, Ronald Rapoport, and Walter Stone for advice and comments on various aspects of this project.

Received: 2012-12-19
Published Online: 2013-02-09

©2013 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston

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