Value Voters - Steve Sailer nails another one

The American Conservative's Steve Sailer writes brilliantly about some demographic data that must be known by most political pundits but is rarely mentioned - for obvious reasons. It has the effect of highlighting racial truth behind the constituencies served by the Democrats and those of the Republicans.

"...the cost of childrearing varies more across the country than ever before. A study of census data by the New York Times found that “Manhattan’s 35,000 or so white non-Hispanic toddlers are being raised by parents whose median income was $284,208 a year in 2005.” Second was San Francisco, where the 50th percentile of income for white parents of small children fell at $150,763. That explains a lot about why the city by the bay is last in the country in percentage of residents under 18, below even retirement havens such as Palm Beach.

The culture wars between Red and Blue States are driven in large part by these objective differences in how family-friendly they are, financially speaking. "

"Consequently, I devised a measure called “Years Married” (modeled on Total Fertility) that estimated how many years a woman could expect to be married during her childbearing years of 18-44.

For example, white women in Utah lead the nation by being married an average of 17.0 years during those 27 years from age 18 through 44. In contrast, in liberal Washington D.C., the average white woman is married only 7.4 years. In Massachusetts, where Bush won merely 37 percent, years married average just 12.2.

Applied to white women, this new measure proved to be the single-best predictor imaginable of Bush’s share of the vote by state in the last two elections. Bush carried the top 25 states, while Kerry won 16 of the lowest 19.

The 2004 correlation coefficient was a stratospheric 0.91, accounting for an astonishing r-squared equal to 83 percent of total variation in voting by state. This has to be one of the highest correlations for an unexpected factor ever seen in political science."

"This theory suggests that, in order to encourage marriage and children among voters, Republicans should pursue policies that raise wages, lower demand for houses, and keep the public schools from eroding further. The most obvious way to move the country toward a more Republican future is to restrict immigration. This revamped GOP could then position itself as the party of more weddings and more babies, while describing the Democrats, with some accuracy, as the party of dying alone."

Value Voters

by Steve Sailer

from The American Conservative

Feb 11, 2008