2004 presidential election by average SAT scores

[Pinko]

Remember the faux 2004 presidential election by IQ thing? Get ready for the real version.
The following is a list of states ordered by the state's mean SAT verbal and math scores (highest to lowest) colored red or blue depending on which candidate it went to in '04. I find it quite revealing...

New York ConnecticutMassachusettsNew Jersey New HampshireD.C.Maine Pennsylvania DelawareGeorgia Rhode Island Virginia North CarolinaMaryland FloridaVermontIndiana South CarolinaHawaiiOregonAlaskaTexasWashingtonCaliforniaNevadaArizona Montana Ohio Colorado Idaho West Virginia Tennessee New MexicoKentucky WyomingMichiganAlabamaIllinoisMinnesotaKansasLouisianaMissouri Nebraska Oklahoma Utah WisconsinArkansasIowa Mississippi North Dakota South Dakota

[hobo_baggins]

1. eh, while its good to see, i still think SAT scores don't mean shit

[Warpy]

5. They mean you're good at taking tests.

I know because I'm great at taking tests. I'm just a dimwit in real life.

One point: to believe New Mexico is a GOP state, poor SAT scores and all, you have to believe that 17,000 people here left their nice warm houses to go stand in line to vote for a single local judge but ignore all the national races. Since Democrats swept the judge races, I think we can pretty well assume that 17,000 Democrats simply had their votes subtracted from the national races (but not the local races) to give Stupid a 3,000+ vote "majority."

[Deja Q]

7. Tests show you can think how the author thinks. & is that thinking at all?

I fail miserably at tests. Especially when tests want you to look at how THEY look at things. And some of those tests do not have the best real-world methods, which are more simple than the test's "choose the simplest method".

and, bingo. I can run rings around some MCSEs...

Tests are a joke. It's empirical knowledge and how to use it.

[hippiechick]

2. Indiana's 16th ?

:wow: I find that really, really hard to believe .....

[marmar]

3. And in Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin...

Relatively few students take the SAT. THe ACT is the much more common test in the Great Lakes region.

[demnan]

4. Do you have a link for this?

I find it hard to believe that D.C. scored 6th.

[marmar]

8. Why?

:shrug:

[maxsolomon]

6. high schoolers take the SAT. they don't vote.

This proves nothing.

[deadmessengers]

9. B.S.

Georgia floats between 48th and 50th, with Mississippi and South Carolina in the other 2 spots at the bottom of the SAT range. Your figures are wrong.

[hlthe2b]

10. where to start, where to start...

first of all, "mean" (average) scores are highly impacted by the extreme outliers (very high and very low). Median scores would be more meaningful, since this represents the 50 percentile and as such, are not affected by the extremes.

BUT, on a much more basic level, scores for students in a state hardly reflect voters in thefive states I went to high school, college, grad school, and post grad school in over a decade, none of the states I was educated in are represented by my scores. Many states (e.g., California, Colorado, Florida) have had a very high rate of inward migration/outward migration. This has to be taken into account as well.

so, silly... very silly

[On the Road]

11. Well, I Think This is Interesting Data

and that it shows an important effect -- as long as it's not another hoax like the IQ thing.

And to everyone who's jumping all over this: there was no mention of "intelligence" in the original post. There was no claim that the people who took the test were the ones voting. And it is not an academic paper under peer review.

There was a hoax in 2000 and 2004 purporting to show a strong correlation between IQ and voting Democratic. SAT scores were used in place of other measures because they're readily available and checkable. The point is that if you substitute SAT scores for average IQ, the correlation appears to be real.

[brainshrub]

12. This is bullshit.

I don't believe this for a second.

[formernaderite]

13. But what an anomaly DC is....

the actual residents born,bred and schooled here do lousy overall on SAT tests....it's the people who moved to DC that raise the average.

[AndreaCG]

14. That seems low for the midwest states

I believe a lot of them take the ACTs not the SATs however. That might affect the scores somehow.