DO REPUBLICANS TEND TO BE DUMB AND RACIST? TAKE A GUESS

Before the 2004 election I wrote a piece about how states' average intelligence scores, measured by standardized IQ tests, correlated with 2000 (Bush v Gore) voting patterns and with average income. People were very uncomfortable about the topic, even the raw numbers made people uneasy. Sunday I read a story by Paul Craig Roberts (former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, an Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and a Contributing Editor of the far right magazine, National Review) in Information Clearing House called "Polls Show Many Americans are Simply Dumber Than Bush".

Roberts starts with a powerful premise: "Two recent polls, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll and a New York Times/CBS News poll, indicate why Bush is getting away with impeachable offenses. Half of the US population is incapable of acquiring, processing and understanding information." He goes on to excoriate the media for acting as propaganda tools for the political Establishment instead of taking journalism seriously. But with about half the population seeing right through Bush's lies and distortions-- mass media propagandists or not-- the real problem is "lies with the absence of due diligence on the part of the other half of the population."

He asks a chilling question at one point: "What does it say for democracy that half of the American population is unable to draw a rational conclusion from unambiguous facts?"

Now consider the correlation's from 2000. Keep in mind that IQ scores are based on a mean IQ being 100. There are 18 states whose population had an average or above IQ (3 digits). Only two of those states-- New Hampshire, where the election was tampered with by Republican operatives who are now serving prison sentences, and Virginia-- voted for Bush. On the other hand the dozen states with the lowest average IQ (and the correspondingly lowest average incomes) all voted for Bush. Connecticut has the highest average IQ (113) and the highest average income ($26,979) and it voted overwhelmingly for Gore-- just as overwhelmingly as Mississippi, with the lowest average IQ (85) and the lowest average income ($14,088), voted for Bush.

Interestingly yesterday's WASHINGTON POST did a story about a very different-- but not unrelated-- demographic examination, entitled "Study Ties Political Leanings to Hidden Biases." The conclusions-- Republicans are more likely to be racists and bigots than Democrats or independents-- shouldn't exactly come as a suprise.