Hi - very popular and well written rant has been making the rounds,
and I'd like to know the validity of the data.  Quite frankly, it's a
powerful piece but without backup, well, what good is it.

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/51/image-arens.php

That link has a link to the actual page, which I did not post here as
the url has a naughty word in it.  The actual page has a few sources,
but I'm looking for a little more in depth analysis.

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Request for Question Clarification by czh-ga on 09 Dec 2004 19:15 PST

Hello bootsybus-ga,

Are you looking for confirmation about the rates of divorce in blue
and red states? Thanks.

~ czh ~

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Clarification of Question by bootsybus-ga on 09 Dec 2004 19:40 PST

that, as well as the other data points...for example


 All those Federal taxes you love to hate? It all comes from us and goes to you

Nine of the ten states that get the most federal fucking dollars and
pay the least...

And eight of the ten states that receive the least and pay the most? 

 Which state do you think has the lowest divorce rate

How about this: 9 of the 10 lowest divorce rates are ******blue states

And where are the highest divorce rates? Care to \guess? 10 of the top
10 are \red-\we're-so-\-moral states. And while Nevada is the worst,
the Bible Belt is doing its \part.

And who has the highest murder rates in the nation? It ain't us up
here in the North, .

I can confirm that several sites have pointed to the fact that the top
blue states pay more federal taxes than they get, while several red
states get nearly twice as much... per person.
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7404

The divorce stats are very hard to quantify. Yes, we know how many
there are, and we can know how many per state and we can guess how
many per marriage, but there are very good statistics that indicate
certain groups of people (including certain races) have a higher
divorce rate. They happen to live more in the south as well. The
divorce "rate" is really subjective interpretation, on both sides,
meaning not much. It could be that certain areas don't marry that
often (just cohabitating) and so divorce isn't as relevant there.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=12&did=169#MRord
Not exactly trying to add debate material, here, but it is distilled
nicely. California is up there, isn't it? Michigan, Illinois, as well.
With as big a coverage as electoral votes given, it is possible that
murder rate by association is one interpretation. At the risk of
sounding racist, there is another answer that could be given...
Certain populations of wealth are predominantly one skin color and
have less likelihood statistically of being involved with murder as
much as those with a large population of another skin color. Which is
interesting to note on this one point: Which party is the defacto
recipient of votes from the suggested latter population?

Fine, I'll take the heat for being a WASP, and actually suggesting
something that means by default I must be a racist and a homophobe,
even if it's not true that I am. I'm just disappointed to read certain
statistics that place a higher rate of AIDS, divorce, and murder
proportionally against certain races. I wish it were not so.

I think the better question might be to get the stats of various
groups who voted Republican and who voted Democrat, locally rather
than by state. I'd bet the answer might actually turn a few heads...

Here's an interesting map of 2k election that has nothing to do with
anything we're talking about, here.
http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~sara/html/mapping/election/map.html
and http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/ a 2004 version.