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Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do | 
 enlarge | Authors: Andrew Gelman, David Park, Boris Shor, Joseph Bafumi, Jeronimo Cortina
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $17.79
You Save: $10.16 (36%)
New (23) Used (5) from $17.79
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 6047
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 248
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 069113927X
Dewey Decimal Number: 324.973
EAN: 9780691139272
ASIN: 069113927X
Publication Date: August 10, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
On the night of the 2000 presidential election, Americans sat riveted in front of their televisions as polling results divided the nation's map into red and blue states. Since then the color divide has become a symbol of a culture war that thrives on stereotypes--pickup-driving red-state Republicans who vote based on God, guns, and gays; and elitist, latte-sipping blue-state Democrats who are woefully out of touch with heartland values. Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State debunks these and other political myths. With wit and prodigious number crunching, Andrew Gelman gets to the bottom of why Democrats win elections in wealthy states while Republicans get the votes of richer voters, how the two parties have become ideologically polarized, and other issues. Gelman uses eye-opening, easy-to-read graphics to unravel the mystifying patterns of recent voting, and in doing so paints a vivid portrait of the regional differences that drive American politics. He demonstrates in the plainest possible terms how the real culture war is being waged among affluent Democrats and Republicans, not between the haves and have-nots; how religion matters for higher-income voters; how the rich-poor divide is greater in red not blue states--and much more. Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State is a must-read for anyone seeking to make sense of today's fractured American political landscape. Myths and facts about the red and the blue: Myth: The rich vote based on economics, the poor vote "God, guns, and gays."
Fact: Church attendance predicts Republican voting much more among rich than poor. Myth: A political divide exists between working-class "red America" and rich "blue America."
Fact: Within any state, more rich people vote Republican. The real divide is between higher-income voters in red and blue states. Myth: Rich people vote for the Democrats.
Fact: George W. Bush won more than 60 percent of high-income voters. Myth: Religion is particularly divisive in American politics.
Fact: Religious and secular voters differ no more in America than in France, Germany, Sweden, and many other European countries.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Clear and accessible; Important argument September 22, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is a wonderful book for those interested in American politics and elections. While drawing heavily on the existing research in political science and advancing that research in significant ways, the book is written for a general audience. I found it refreshingly clear without dumbing down the material. I decided to use the book in my introductory level political science class this semester and my students have responded very well. They were excited by the argument and able to develop an understanding of how to do good research on political questions. The many graphic representations of data were particularly useful, as the students were able to use those graphs and charts to reconstruct Gelman's argument on their own, which made this an even more valuable learning experience.
This book advances an important argument, and should be required reading for journalists. Just last week I heard a talking head prattle on about rich people voting for democrats and poor people supporting republicans, something that, as Gelman shows definitively, is completely false. By removing this false assumption, Gelman is then able to show what's really going on in our polarized politics: cultural and religious differences among middle class and wealthy voters drive the red/blue division. His suggestions for how this information should be used by campaigns and researchers are useful.
In short, non-specialists and students will find this book engaging, accessible, and full of interesting and counter-intuitive arguments. Specialists should find the book useful for the compilation of data and previous research in one place, and if they teach political science will want to consider using this text in lower division American politics and methods courses.
Analysis to make you think September 4, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I read this book as a psychologist who is familiar with Gelman's work in statistics, and so if this book had been written by someone else, I never would have noticed it. I thought it had a lot of great insights, and a lot of very clever ways of thinking about how to analyze political (or any) data. The book is not full of numbers, in fact I don't think there is a single table of numbers in it - everything is done with graphs.
Occasionally I would have liked more information on the analysis techniques used, but I realize I'm probably in a minority.
 Save your money--should have stayed an article August 24, 2008
10 out of 19 found this review helpful
This book is fine as far as it goes--the author provides a mind-numbing sequence of chapters, charts, and maps showing that rich states do not vote the way rich individuals do, and poor states do not vote the way poor individuals do.
Unfortunately, while he has a point and it is a useful important point, that is as far as the book gets. I was hoping for something much more nuanced, something that focused on all of the issues the way Paul Ray does, or Yankelovich or Weiss. This book focuses on religion and income--that's it.
I found two statements worth noting.
Page 23: "...the country is polarized in two ways, *economically* between the rich and the poor, and *culturally* between upper-income Americans in red and blue areas." [Emphasis in original as italics.]
Page 177: "We need to move beyond stereotypes of income and place in order to understand how Americans of different backgrounds, attitudes, and cultures express their views in the electoral process."
Duh. The last sentence is the book, above, is what I thought this book was going to be about. Not so. Nor do the terms electoral reform or Congressional corruption appear in this book.
Much more important books you can spend money on (I have reviewed all):
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The Clustering of America
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back
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