Mapping Out the US — Pick Your Favorite Quadrant
Below the fold is an interesting graph I found on Kevin Drum’s Washington Monthly site. The graph plots out social and economic attitudes in the US, from liberal to conservative, and places each of the 48 continental states on the graph accordingly. It’s interesting to ask yourself whether you consider yourself a liberal or a conservative on these two subjects, and then look and see the states where you’d feel most at home.
Call the top left quad A, the top right one B, the bottom left one C, and the bottom right one D. Where did you wind up, with respect to your social/economic attitudes? A, B, C, or D? And did it match the states you’d want to live in, if you had your druthers?
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:39 pm
The graph legends need a little work, but what’s interesting to me is the remarkable void left in quadrant D (socially liberal but economically conservative) and the almost void in quadrant A. Also, I suspect that a rural/urban divide would alter the map in interesting ways.
How cool would it be to collect this data for the last 100 years and then animate the graph?
July 6th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
I thought that was interesting too (the lack of points in the right bottom quad. I would think that D would be consistent with left leaning libertarians of the sort you find in VT and NH, but even they are in the left bottom.
I have no doubt that an urban/rural split would break things up considerably. In NY, I suspect, you would get NYC in the bottom left, and the rest of the state in the top right.