lol, omg, A HOAX!!! A HOAX!!!
The funniest part of this is Sinner googled up the same site I did for the figures, and as he surely knows from the intensive probe, using the "revised" figures provided by the infinitely more
authoritative source of
VanSloan@Yahoo (snicker) those actually reconfigure the chart thusly:
• 104 IQ
New Hampshire - Kerry
• 103 IQ
Oregon - Kerry
Massachusetts - Kerry
Wisconsin - Kerry
• 102 IQ
Colorado - Bush
Connecticut - Kerry
Illinois - Kerry
Iowa - Bush
Kansas - Bush
Minnesota - Kerry
Montana - Bush
Nebraska - Bush
North Dakota - Bush
Oklahoma - Bush
Vermont - Bush
Washington - Bush
• 101 IQ
Alaska - Bush
Maryland - Kerry
Michigan - Kerry
Missouri - Bush
New York - Kerry
Ohio - Bush
Utah - Bush
Wyoming - Bush
• 100 IQ
Arizona - Bush
California - Kerry
Idaho - Bush
Maine - Kerry
Nevada - Bush
New Jersey - Kerry
Pennsylvania - Kerry
Rhode Island - Kerry
South Dakota - Bush
Virginia - Bush
West Virginia - Bush
• 99 IQ
Delaware - Kerry
Hawaii - Kerry
Indiana - Bush
• 98 IQ
Florida - Bush
Arkansas - Bush
• 97 IQ
Alabama - Bush
Georgia - Bush
Kentucky - Bush
Louisiana - Bush
North Carolina - Bush
Tennessee - Bush
Texas - Bush
• 96 IQ
New Mexico - Bush
• 94 IQ
Mississippi - Bush
South Carolina - Bush
...which I submit,
still shows an interesting bit of a top to bottom trend, even though the fuzziness in the middle makes it not
quite as funny.
Alas the joke
is ruined altogether if you look at the individual PDFs by state at
collegeboard.com for the mean SAT scores, which I did, and which virtually stands the chart symmetrically on its head, for 2004 anyway, with IA, AL, KS and KY near the top and MA, NY and CA near the bottom.
Now, how seriously are
you prepared to take
that data?
In fact, according to some of the more thoughtful of the roughly 5 Billion websites which discuss it, apparently the chart
Bill Well used
actually seems to be more closely related to
average per capita income per state*, which is of course
is implicitly
linked to the number of people completing higher education. According to the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, in 2004 that chart looks like this:
State - *
Connecticut..........43,292*
New Jersey...........40,002
Massachusetts......39,408
Maryland...............37,424
New York...............36,296
New Hampshire......34,703
Colorado................34,510
Minnesota.............34,039
Virginia..................33,651
California................33,403
Delaware................33,321
Washington............33,264
Alaska...................33,254
Illinois....................33,205
Wyoming................32,235
Rhode Island...........31,937
Pennsylvania...........31,706
Nevada....................31,487
Michigan..................31,196
Wisconsin................30,723
Hawaii.....................30,589
Vermont..................30,534
Nebraska................30,331
Florida....................29,972
Ohio.......................29,953
Kansas...................29,545
Georgia...................29,259
Missouri..................29,094
Texas.....................29,076
Maine.....................28,935
Oregon...................28,806
Indiana....................28,797
Tennessee...............28,565
North Dakota............28,521
Iowa........................28,398
North Carolina...........28,301
South Dakota............28,299
Arizona....................26,931
Oklahoma.................26,567
Kentucky..................26,352
Alabama...................26,276
South Carolina...........26,138
Louisiana...................26,038
Montana....................25,775
Idaho.........................25,583
New Mexico.............. 25,502
Utah..........................25,230
West Virginia.............24,672
Arkansas...................24,296
Mississippi................23,343
New Mexico..............25,502
Utah.........................25,230
West Virginia.............24,672
Voodoo!
On the other hand, you can go to
www.census.gov yourself and surf state by state (under
Social Characteristics) for a breakdown of the percentages of the population attaining a bachelor's degree or higher.* This is what those figures were in 2003, and how they voted in 2004:
State - *
Massachusetts 35.8*
Colorado 34.7
Connecticut 34.6
Maryland 34.5
Virginia 32.2
New Jersey 32.1
Vermont 32.0
Minnesota 30.6
New Hampshire 30.3
Washington 30.2
New York 29.7
California 29.1
Rhode Island 29.1
Kansas 28.7
Hawaii 28.2
Illinois 28.1
Delaware 27.6
Alaska 26.6
Oregon 26.4
Utah 26.2
Maine 25.9
Montana 25.8
Georgia 25.7
Nebraska 25.3
Florida 25.0
North Dakota 25.0
North Carolina 24.3
Texas 24.5
Arizona 24.3
Michigan 24.3
Pennsylvania 24.2
Missouri 24.1
Idaho 24.0
Wisconsin 23.8
New Mexico 23.7
Wyoming 23.7
South Carolina 23.2
South Dakota 23.1
Ohio 23.0
Iowa 22.5
Oklahoma 21.9
Tennessee 21.5
Louisiana 21.3
Alabama 21.2
Indiana 21.0
Nevada 19.5
Arkansas 19.0
Mississippi 18.7
Kentucky 18.6
West Virginia 17.0
If you want to argue the basic veracity of
that data, you can take it up with the Census Bureau, and if you still can't see a bit of trend you might want to clean your monitor--even though I'm really not insisting it has any particularly exotic meaning.
After all as summa you fellers might be likely to point out, them book-learned edumicated peeple what done gone off to them dang old liberal colleges ain't no account no how.
P.S. to albed, I have no imagination? lol, you wouldn't recognize imagination if it flew a squadron of B52s directly up your ass.