Via 538 (HT: Yglesias since I missed it originally in the 538 post):
This is interesting. If you break it up roughly, the bottom left has states where the entire population is skewed conservative, the top right is states where the entire population is skewed liberal. The top left are the polarized states and the bottom right would be the consensus middles states…if any existed. The center of the chart represents a roughly typical bi-modal distribution.
Not surprising:
+The Mid-Atlantic and New England regions are simply left skewing. The whole “East Coast” liberal thing where your Republicans are Olympia Snowe.
+The South (lessening the more you move to the fringe of the area towards the Plains states or Rust Belt) are simply right skewing.
Potentially more surprising:
+The West (generally) represents the polarized states. Oregon and Washington are strongest (with liberal coastal urban areas and conservative inlands) but certainly Colorado is a fantastic example with extremely conservative Colorado Springs and extremely liberal Denver balancing each other out and holding the bulk of the population.
Perhaps the curious thing is people pointing out the empty quarter where we would find states with massive moderate populations. This is not all that surprising to me as that would represent a normal distribution, but ideology is better represented by bi-modal distributions with a relatively small middle and large, fairly balanced middle left and middle right.
Second, we should put the scale here in perspective. There is reason to think that the policy differences between the average Bush voter (2.5) and the average Kerry voter (6.25) is probably not as much as we think (see Fiorina’s Culture War). It is probably reasonable enough to consider those in the center of the chart to be relatively consensus states and just ignore the bottom right corner.
