Reviews
"This impressive social science analysis stands much political punditry on its head. So far as voting goes, the question is less why poor Americans are victims of false consciousness than why affluent Americans in wealthy states are traitors to their class."--Morris P. Fiorina, author of Culture War?: The Myth of a Polarized America
"I enjoyed reading this book. I learned a lot about political misconceptions and counterintuitive properties of elections--my view of political data will never be the same."--Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan
"The divide in American politics is about more than the ideological distance between the two parties. Through careful statistical analysis, Andrew Gelman solves the mystery of how Democrats can do so well in certain places where rich people live, yet still not be the party of the rich. This book will help people on all sides to see politics more clearly, and it will require all of us to toss many pieces of conventional wisdom into the dustbin."--E. J. Dionne Jr., author of Why Americans Hate Politics
"Occasionally, there are books providing insights into the political process that force a basic change in the way people think about elections. This is one of them. The author makes clear that while North-South or red-blue divides reflect both 'have versus have-not' conflicts and the more recent liberalization of the upscale 'creative class,' the state-by-state reality is much more nuanced and complex. This volume points the way to whole new lines of research and is essential reading for those interested in the future of American political parties."--Thomas Edsall, political editor of the Huffington Post
"[The authors have] been poring over data trying to get at the driving forces at work in American politics.... findings suggest that the divides in America run deep and are linked to an ongoing, internal battle between two increasingly distinct American economies."--Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class
The book is unusual in aiming to enlighten the general lay reader through a step-by-step analysis, not merely to engage in a debate with other political scientists. Through a clear and crisp writing style, it quotes and refutes many widespread views of journalists and political pundits, even as it builds on the political science literature.... The book's elegance comes first from the clarity of the income-party model but also from its methodology. By consistently repeating similar analyses that contrast state and individual effects, they refute the "ecological fallacy" of stereotyping individuals' behavior on the basis of data about where they live. For example, many have compared state income with state voting and falsely concluded that rich individuals vote more Democratic. The authors are able to quickly dispel this myth while simultaneously navigating the intricacies of relationships between income and voting.... this fun-to-read book may become a minor classic.--Terry Nichols Clark and Christopher Graziul, in Science
"As the 2008 election season reaches its peak, media pundits will speak gravely of the deep ideological divisions reflected in a political map of red and blue states, but according to [this book] much of the analysts' glib assessments is misguided and does little to advance our understanding of why Americans have voted as they have.... This is a fascinating, well-written, and thoroughly researched work that deserves a wide audience. Highly recommended for all libraries." Thomas J. Baldino, Library Journal September 15
"I realized while reading Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State that I hadn’t seen a book with so many charts and graphs since I struggled though economics and statistics—and that if the textbooks back then had been as interesting as Andrew Gelman’s analysis of the American electorate, I might have done better in college. . . . But how do the Democrats manage to win in the rich states without winning rich voters? This is the Freakonomics-style analysis that every candidate and campaign consultant should read."--Robert Sommer, in The New York Observer
"[The authors] crunch numbers and draw graphs, arriving at a picture that refutes the influential one drawn by Thomas Frank, in “What’s the Matter with Kansas?,” of poor red-staters voting Republican against their economic interests. Instead, [they] persuasively argue, the poor in both red states and blue still mostly vote Democratic, and the rich, nationally speaking, overwhelmingly vote Republican. Meanwhile, voting patterns tally more closely with income in poor states than in rich ones. Of the popular image of affluent, urban, latte-drinking Democrats, [they] pointedly note that the demographic is most common in 'precisely those states where national journalists are likely to live.'"--The New Yorker
"If you ever doubted the value of empirical research, this book will change your mind. It's full of novel, data-driven results."--Bryan Caplan, author of The Myth of the Rational Voter
If there is one "politics" book you should read this year, it is Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do.... To a great extent the collective of Andrew Gelman, David Park, Boris Shor, Joseph Bafumi and Jeronimo Cortina have produced a work which is a response in substance, if not style, to pundit productions by the likes of David Brooks and Thomas Frank. While the prose stylings of Brooks and Frank illustrate in an engaging manner what is "known," that is, fleshing out Conventional Wisdom with concrete specific exemplars, Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State is more a series of charts girded by clarifying and interpretative text. Like good science Gelman et al. generate surprising and novel results, at times defying their prior expectations. This is a contrast to the modus operandi of most mainstream pundits, who select data which can vividly depict the plausible veracity of their hypotheses. While the core of Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State is an analysis of the American political scene, their data sets suggest possible reasons that the pundits themselves come to the conclusions which they do. You not might agree with all the inferences made by Gelman et al. from their data, but there is value in clarity even if the contention is incorrect.--Razib Khan