What's the matter with Connecticut?

A companion to Tom Frank's book.

Check out fascinating findings in a paper "Rich state, poor state, red state, blue state: What's the matter with Connecticut?" by Andrew Gelman of Columbia University, Boris Shor of the University of Chicago, Joseph Bafumi of Dartmouth and David Park of Washington University in St. Louis.

One of the more intriguing observations is that

In poor states, rich people are much more likely than poor people to vote for the Republican presidential candidate, but in rich states (such as Connecticut), income has almost no correlation with vote preference. . . . In poor states, rich people are very different from poor people in their political preferences. But in rich states, they are not.

This suggests an interpretation that the U.S. is polarized and divided is a more complex way:
Not only do red and blue states vote differently, but they cast their votes according to different patterns -- and that "red-staters and blue-staters live in two different political universes."

E. J. Dionne Jr. in the Washington Post suggests that this

helps explain why Southern Republicans such as President Bush pursue policies that are hugely beneficial to their wealthy base even as they try to diminish the political impact of class warfare by shifting the argument to other subjects: religion, values or national security.