This prejudice is so common and yet so easy to refute. All you have to do is find a non-partisan list of the 50 states ranked according to philanthropic giving, such as this one.
(Methodology: "We compare the rank of each state's average adjusted gross income to the rank of each state's average itemized charitable deductions," so the ranking takes into account the average income in a state, not merely the raw charity amount per state.)
Then find an electoral map of red/blue states, such as this one based on voting patterns in the past four presidential elections:
The result is below (updated for the 2008 election) - every state, from most philanthropic to the least, with their voting classification next to them. The pattern is pretty stark - the top 25 most philanthropic states heavily lean red, and the bottom 25 heavily lean blue. In fact, a neutral state doesn't even appear until #18, and bluish state doesn't even appear until #22:
1. Mississippi: Red
2. Arkansas: Pink
3. South Dakota: Red
4. Oklahoma: Red
5. Tennessee: Pink
6. Alabama: Red
7. Louisiana: Pink
8. Utah: Red
9. South Carolina: Red
10. West Virginia: Pink
11. Idaho: Red
12. Texas: Red
13. Nebraska: Red
14. North Dakota: Red
15. Wyoming: Red
16. North Carolina: Pink
17. Kansas: Red
18. Florida: Neutral
19. Georgia: Red
20. Missouri: Pink
21. Kentucky: Pink
22. New Mexico: Light blue
23. Montana: Red
24. Indiana: Pink
25. Alaska: Red
26. New York: Blue
27. Iowa: Light blue
28. Nevada: Neutral
29. Ohio: Neutral
30. Maine: Blue
31. California: Blue
32. Maryland: Blue
33. Washington: Blue
34. Vermont: Blue
35. Oregon: Blue
36. Pennsylvania: Blue
37. Virginia: Pink
38. Arizona: Pink
39. Delaware: Blue
40. Illinois: Blue
41. Michigan: Blue
42. Hawaii: Blue
43. Colorado: Pink
44. Minnesota: Blue
45. Connecticut: Blue
46. Wisconsin: Blue
47. Rhode Island: Blue
48. New Jersey: Blue
49. Massachusetts: Blue
50. New Hampshire: Light blue
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2 comments:
do you have any data about who is actually contributing? maybe the democrats are especially generous in those states...in response to the problems exacerbated by those republican administrations. : )
I don't have the data about who is actually contributing, though studies have been done on that - for example:
"...conservative households give 30 percent more money to charity than liberal households, but liberal families make, on average, 6 percent more than conservatives. Conservative giving was shown to be more generous in every income bracket."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/13/opinion/main2260285.shtml
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