Steve Sailer (born December 4, 1958) is a reporter, movie critic for The American Conservative, VDARE.com columnist, and founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute, which runs the invitation-only Human Biodiversity discussion group for scientists. Among other topics, he writes about race and intelligence.
Steve Sailer's analysis of the Red and Blue states
In the wake of the 2004 presidential election, Sailer published an extensive analysis of the factors that, in his view, led to this divide.
First, in a cover story in the December 20, 2004 edition of The American Conservative, he discovered a very strong correlation between a state's white fertility rate and its support for Bush in that election. (He included the District of Columbia in his analysis because it has electoral votes.) The state with the highest white fertility, Utah (2.45 children per woman of childbearing age), had the highest vote for Bush (71%). The District of Columbia, with both an overwhelmingly African-American population and the lowest white fertility of any jurisdiction in the country (1.11), gave only 9% of its vote to Bush. More tellingly, when each state's Bush share was plotted against its white fertility rate, the correlation coefficient for a straight line was 0.86. In the social sciences, a correlation coefficient of 0.6 is considered "high". [1]
Several weeks later, Sailer discovered a second demographic variable that correlated even more strongly to each state's vote for Bush than white fertility. By analyzing census data, he determined the average number of years that a white woman in each state could expect to be married during her normal childbearing years (ages 18 through 44). When each state's Bush share was plotted against this variable, the straight-line correlation coefficient was 0.91. As in the previous analysis, Utah and the District of Columbia were at the two extremes. [2]
Sailer recognized the possibility that including the District of Columbia could skew his results. He then looked at an Internet site known as the Laboratory of the States, which is devoted to analysis of statistical differences among U.S. states. Of the 377 variables included in the database, and excluding the District of Columbia, he discovered that the two variables he had already identified were first and third in strength of correlation with a state's 2004 Bush vote. (Years married for whites was first, and white fertility was third.) Ranking second among these variables was inflation in housing prices between 1980 and 2004. Here, states with lower housing inflation were more likely to vote for Bush. [3] In fact, Bush won the 26 states with the lowest housing inflation during that period. [4]
Finally, Sailer tied all of these trends into a phenomenon he called "The Dirt Gap," which he outlined in another American Conservative piece. [5] Examining the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the U.S., Sailer discovered a fundamental geographic divide between many Democratic-leaning and Republican-leaning areas:
- 73% of the population of the biggest blue-state metropolitan areas lives in cities where suburban growth is constrained by oceans or Great Lakes.
- By contrast, only 19% of the population of the biggest red-state metropolitan areas lives in cities that are so constrained.
Physical constraints to growth are a major factor that drives high housing inflation in many areas. This in turn makes housing less affordable for young families. Sailer argues that young adults who decide to flee expensive areas to find affordable housing are more likely to become Republican, while those who stay behind tend to vote Democratic.
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