White Elephants Breed Like Rabbits

INFO VISUALIZATION: I ran across an interesting hypothesis while running through Andrew Sullivan.







I have many issues with this chart and with the authors spurious conclusions. But rather then rehash them, you can read a comment on the article here.



My main problem with the article is the author seems to believe this to be a relationship of causation, rather then just association. Long story short, association is not automatically causation, but the author makes a lot of assumptions to the contrary.



Also, he attempts to take on Thomas Frank, but fails miserably. He writes:

In a year of predictably partisan books, one lively surprise has been What's the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank, a leftwing journalist from Kansas who now lives with his wife and single child in the Democratic stronghold of Chicago. [...]



While the Christian right in Kansas doesn't much hold with Darwin, they are doing well at the basic Darwinian task of reproducing themselves: pro-life Kansas has the fourth highest white fertility in the country at 2.06 babies per woman, and the birthrate of the conservative Republicans that Frank finds so baffling is likely to be even higher. On the crucial question of whether a group can be bothered not to die out, "What's the Matter with Massachusetts?" would be a more pertinent question. Massachusetts' whites are failing to replace themselves, averaging only 1.6 babies per woman, and the states' liberal Democrats are probably reproducing even less than that.

What ignorance. Someone needs to inform this guy that California is the biggest state and one of the fastest growing and a liberal stronghold. Oh yeah, and that white democrats aren't the only democrats.



Kansas? Take a look at this map and tell me the democrats have anything to fear about the rapid growth of Kansas. (It's above Texas and Oklahoma.)







Yeah, it's the one where at least two thirds of its counties have a shrinking population. And here's a bit of history: Kansas had 11 electoral votes in 1932. Now it has 6. I don't imagine those 717,507 Kansas Bush voters have liberals shaking in their boots.