Update: Thanks to the journalistic skills of Kimble and StephenR we know this chart is a hoax, it has however sparked some amusing comments on the IQ/party matches for NZ:)
While procrastinating doing work on the weekend I found this little stunner
Would be interesting to see a similar exercise for the 08 election
Agnitio
[…] IQ and Voting: 2004 US election « The visible hand in economics IQ and Voting: 2004 US election. 10 11 2008. Update: Thanks to the journalistic skills of Kimble and StephenR we know this chart is a hoax, it has however sparked some amusing comments on the IQ/party matches for NZ:) … […]
[…] IQ and Voting: 2004 US election Would be interesting to see a similar exercise for the 08 election Agnitio. Posted in Other, Politics, Uncategorized… […]
I’d like to see one for NZ based on party support.
Hmm maybe I’ll have to change my avatar now. 😉
It could probably be done, not sure we have IQ by geographic area though? I’m pretty sure the census data has what percentage of the popoulation has a university degree for different regions, not sure if that data is readily availble at a dissagragted level though…
I’ll bet it would be the opposite in New Zealand.
What this really shows is that religion changes everything. Without religion in politics, the high IQ voters would not be turned off Republicans and the low IQ voters would vote Democrat to get themselves handouts.
Also, the chart surely needs weightings for state population and margin of victory.
If I was speculating I’d say ACT would have the highest, Greens would be relatively high due their large student support base, National and Labour would be similar (Labour would have a larger spread with higher IQ civil servants and lower IQ beneficiaries), and NZ First’s would be very, very low. The other parties are too small (nationwide) to be able to speculate meaningfully.
I’m very thankful religion plays such a small role in society here. 🙂
Do you think NZ First would be low due to the fact that people’s intellict deteriorates as they get really old or becuase NZ First voters are in general not very intelligent? 🙂
A healthy dose of both. 😛
The party appeals to the elderly and conspiracy theorists.
Calling BS on the US version.
I’m not sure why Goonix thinks ACT have the most intelligent supporters. I can’t offer any particular quibble with his other picks, but I’m sceptical of the intellectual support for a party that essentially denies global warming. I would have picked the parties with intelligent supporters to follow the scientific consensus on such issues.
Maybe there is a slight bias in that goonix is an ACT supporter and he thinks that all ACT voters are as intelligent as he is:P
ACT’s traditional support base are educated professionals and business owners, which would have higher IQs than the norm. Although this election ACT also probably widened their base a bit, with more rural support (for their anti-Emissions Trading Scam stance) and some populism too (law and order), which may have dragged down the mean to some extent.
And consensus is a very strong word.
Like Kimble, I smelt BS. WAY too neat.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/stateiq.asp
LOL!
haha, at least we got some good comments from goonix out of this:)
I should be more thorough next time or under goonix’s classifications people might think I’m an NZ first voter:)
With Kimble’s Sherlock Holmes-like intuition and my virtually limitless Google skills we will educate you all!
If anybody has data that links IQ to party affiliation in NZ, send it to me. I’ve just about finished some work on political ignorance in NZ showing that ignorance has predictive power in explaining party and policy preferences above and beyond the demographic factors that predict ignorance. The ignorant are more likely to disagree with basic economic propositions, are more likely to vote Labour, and less likely to support the Greens.
Very interesting Eric. Have you got a link?
Will as soon as I’ve finished writing up the results. Next couple days at latest. I’d expected it to show up in explaining NZ First support, but there’s nothing there not explained already in the demographics (education, etc).
Very good.
If you have access to the journal ‘Intelligence’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5068743.ece
Anyone else notice ‘Mossouri?’
Goonix, send me an email and I’ll send you the working draft. There’s some problem with my being able to FTP from off campus so I’ll have to do things the old fashioned way.
Most people couldn’t pass an election policy test if they were given one only a small minority understand the issues.
This article by Gareth Morgan suggest NZ First voters aren’t so dumb:
http://nbr.infometrics.co.nz/column.php?id=409
Immigration ‘small benefit’ to UK
Record levels of immigration have had “little or no impact” on the economic well-being of Britons, an influential House of Lords committee has said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7322825.stm
What about the correlation between IQ and a states percentage of people voting for Obama in the 2088 presidential election as plotted on: http://blog.faithnscience.com/