Richard Florida follows up on what exactly a recent Gallup poll on differences in religiosity by state tells us about America. He compares the poll’s findings with his own socioeconomic data, which confirms correlations identified by the longstanding World Values Survey:
Gallup notes the relationship between religious intensity and American voting patterns, with the most religious states generally skewing Republican and the least religious trending Democrat. Our own analysis bears this out. We found a substantial positive correlation between religiosity and the percent of state residents that voted for McCain (.67) and consider themselves conservative (.78), and a substantial negative one between religiosity and the percent of residents who voted for Obama (-.64) and consider themselves liberal (-.75)….
Politicos on the left and right like to explain religious voters’ proclivity purely in terms of values. But this misses a central point – that religion is inextricably bound up with the nation’s underlying economic and geographic class divide.
See the rest of the story at The Atlantic: Cities.
Phillip Quintero is an Associate with the Communications and Editorial departments at the SSRC. He is a graduate of The New School for Social Research with a Master's degree in politics, and maintains an interest in social and political theory and philosophy. When not at the SSRC, he teaches cycling with Bike New York, and is an adjunct faculty member at Parsons School of Design.
