www.amconmag.com/2004_12_20/cover.html
December 20, 2004 issue Copyright 2004 The American Conservative Baby Gap How birthrates color the electoral map By Steve Sailer Despite the endless verbiage expended trying to explain Americas remarka bly stable division into Republican and Democratic regions, almost no on e has mentioned the obscure demographic factor that correlated uncannily with states partisan splits in both 2000 and 2004. Clearly, the issues that so excite political journalists had but a meager impact on most voters. For example, the press spent the last week of th e 2004 campaign in a tizzy over the looting of explosives at Iraqs al-Q aqaa munitions dump, but, if voters even noticed al-Qaqaa, their reactio ns were predetermined by their party loyalty. The 2000 presidential election, held during peace and prosperity, became instantly famous for illuminating a land culturally divided into a spraw ling but thinly populated red expanse of Republicans broken up by smal l but densely peopled blue archipelagos of Democrats. Four years of staggering events ensued, during which President Bush disca rded his old humble foreign policy for a new one of nearly Alexandrine ambitions. Yet the geographic and demographic profiles of Bush voters i n 2004 turned out almost identical to 2000, with the country as a whole simply nudged three points to the right. Only a few groups appeared to have moved more than the average. The count ies within commuting distance of New Yorks World Trade Center became no ticeably less anti-Bush. Yet even the one purported sizable demographic changethe claim by the troubled exit poll that Bush picked up nine poin ts among Hispanicsappears to be an exaggeration caused by small sample sizes and poor survey techniques. In the real world, Hispanic counties s wung toward Bush only about as much as everybody else did. That the president launched a war under false pretenses no doubt caused a few highly-informed constituencies, such as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the subscribers to this magazine, to shift many of their vo tes, but almost every group large enough to be measurable by exit pollin g was relatively stable. If they supported Bushs foreign policy in 2000 , they supported his contrary stance in 2004 and vice versa. Still, this doesnt mean voters are choosing red or blue frivolously. Ind eed, voters are picking their parties based on differing approaches to t he most fundamentally important human activity: having babies. The white people in Republican-voting regions consistently have more children tha n the white people in Democratic-voting regions. Ill focus primarily on Caucasians, who overall voted for Bush 58-41, in part because they are doing most of the arguing over the meaning of the red-blue division. The reasons blacks vote Democratic are obvious, and o ther racial blocs are smaller. Whites remain the 800-pound gorilla of et hnic electoral groups, accounting for over three out of every four votes . The single most useful and understandable birthrate measure is the total fertility rate. This estimates, based on recent births, how many child ren the average woman currently in her childbearing years will have. The National Center for Health Statistics reported that in 2002 the average white woman was giving birth at a pace consistent with having 183 babi es during her lifetime, or 13 percent below the replacement rate of 21 children per woman. This below-replacement level has not changed dramati cally in three decades. States, however, differ significantly in white fertility. The most fecund whites are in heavily Mormon Utah, which, not coincidentally, was the o nly state where Bush received over 70 percent. White women average 245 babies in Utah compared to merely 111 babies in Washington, DC, where Bush earned but 9 percent. The three New England states where Bush won less than 40 percentMassachusetts, Vermont, and Rhode Islandare three of the four states with the lowest white birthrates, with little Rhode I sland dipping below 15 babies per woman. Bush carried the 19 states with the highest white fertility (just as he d id in 2000), and 25 out of the top 26, with highly unionized Michigan be ing the one blue exception to the rule. Among the 50 states plus Washington, DC, white total fertility correlat es at a remarkably strong 086 level with Bushs percentage of the 2004 vote. You could predict 74 percent of the variation in Bushs shares just from knowing each states white fertility rate. When the average fertility go es up by a tenth of a child, Bushs share normally goes up by 45 points . In a year of predictably partisan books, one lively surprise has been Wha ts the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank, a left-wing journalist from Kansas who, after a sojourn in Chicago, now lives with his wife and sin gle child in the Democratic stronghold of Washington, DC Frank is puzz led by why conservative Republicans in his home state are obsessed with cultural issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and teaching evolution i n the schools instead of the leftist economic populism that Frank admire s in Kansass past. While the Christian Right in Kansas doesnt much hold with Darwin, they a re doing well at the basic Darwinian task of reproducing themselves: pro -life Kansas has the fourth-highest white fertility in the country at 2 06 babies per woman, and the birthrate of the conservative Republicans t hat Frank finds so baffling is likely to be even higher. On the crucial question of whether a group can be bothered not to die out, Whats the Matter with Massachusetts? Massachu settss whites are failing to replace themselves, averaging only 16 bab ies per woman, and the states liberal Democrats are probably reproducin g even less than that. So white birthrates and Republican voting are closely correlated, but wha t causes what? The arrow of causality seems to flow in both directions. To understand whats driving this huge political phenomenon, you have to think like a real-estate shopper, not like an intellectual. Everybody lo ves to talk real estate, but the sharp insights into how the world works that you hear while shooting the breeze about houses and neighborhoods seldom work their way into prestigious discourse about public affairs. As youve seen on all those red-blue maps, most of Americas land is red, even though Kerry won 48 percent of the vote. Even excluding vast Alask a, Bushs counties are only one-fourth as densely populated on average a s Kerrys counties. Lower density helps explain why red regions both att ract the baby-oriented and encourage larger families among those already there. A dozen years ago, University of Chicago sociologist Edward O Laumann an d others wrote a tome with the soporific postmodern title The Social Org anization of Sexuality. I wrote to them and suggested a follow-up called The Sexual Organization of Society because, in my experience with Chica go, where people lived coincided with their sexual status. In 1982, when I moved to Chicago as a young single man, I sought out detailed advice on where the greatest density of pretty girls lived and there rented a 2 1st-floor apartment with a stunning view of Lake Michigan. I became enga ged three years later, and so, mission accomplished, I moved to a less c hic neighborhood with more affordable rents. Two years later, when my br ide became pregnant, we relocated to an even more unfashionable spot whe re we could buy ample square footage. Singles often move to cities because the density of other singles makes them good places to become unsingle. But singles, especially women, generally vote Democratic. For example, in t he 2002 midterm elections, only 39 percent of unmarried women and 44 per cent of unmarried men voted for a GOP candidate for the House of Represe ntatives. In contrast, 56 percent of married women voted for the GOP, si milar to their husbands 58 percent. The celebrated gender gap is, in tr uth, largely a marriage gap among women. When city couples marry, they face major decisions: do they enjoy the adu lt-oriented cultural amenities of the city so much that they will stick it out, or do they head for the suburbs, exurbs, or even the country to ...
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