Andrew Gelman's Take on State Ideologies

Andrew Gelman, author of Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do, provides the following description of a graph that he prepared on the ideology of the 48 states (Hawaii and Alaska are missing):

"Here’s a graph of the 50 states (actually, I think Alaska and Hawaii are missing), showing the average economic and social ideology of adults within each state. Each of these is scaled so that negative numbers are liberal and positive are conservative; thus, people in Massachusetts are the most liberal on economic issues and people in Idaho are the most conservative:"

 This graph helps place the states ideologically on both economic and social issues. For more about the graph and its preparation, go to: http://andrewgelman.com/2008/06/ranking_states/.