{"id":5427,"date":"2009-09-18T08:02:54","date_gmt":"2009-09-18T13:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5427"},"modified":"2009-09-18T09:31:41","modified_gmt":"2009-09-18T14:31:41","slug":"notsosmartanalysis-part-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5427","title":{"rendered":"NotsoSmartAnalysis, Part III"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, we responded to Eric Ostermeier’s collective slur against conservatives from Wednesday (“Red States have Higher Crime than Blue States<\/a>“) by factoring in an overarching, non-partisan sociological issue – the propensity toward violence and crime in the states of the Old South, the former Confederacy; there is a social dynamic in the Old South that makes the whole place a lot more angry and violent, no matter who people vote for for President, governor or the state legislature.<\/p>\n

It’s a real, current factor that predates and transcends modern politics – but it’s not strictly tied to America’s current partisan divide.<\/p>\n

So what about statistics around an issue that is <\/em>fully tied to modern politics, and the sociology and pathology that’s sprung from it?<\/p>\n

———-<\/p>\n

Eric Ostermeier’s statistics were calculated on a state by state basis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But are head-to-head comparisons of states especially meaningful?\u00a0 Most states, especially most larger states, are diverse political microcosms in their own right.\u00a0 New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan\u00a0and California are dominated by huge, vastly powerful\u00a0liberal machines – but their outstate, non-metro areas are quite conservative by contrast.\u00a0 Other states – Minnesota, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Virginia – are deeply split, with small but intense clusters of urban liberals surrounded by a suburban\/rural expanse that votes reliably Republican (and which usually carries the rest of the state financially).\u00a0<\/p>\n

But if there’s one thing that’s true across the country, it’s this:\u00a0 major metropolitan areas are almost universally governed by Democrats (or liberal Republicans, like Michael Bloomberg); even in cases like Giuliani’s New York,\u00a0Brett Schundler’s Jersey City\u00a0or Norm Coleman’s Saint Paul, the dominant political culture was sharply to the left, with the mayor fighting a David Vs. Goliath insurgency.\u00a0 And while it’s by no means as uniform, the outlying areas in all these examples are much more likely to be center to right-leaning.<\/p>\n

And statistically, it’s a blowout; nationwide, violent crime in Metropolitan areas is 58% higher than in non-metropolitan areas\u00a0 (459 to 290\/100,000).\u00a0 In states that voted for Obama, it’s drastic; violent crime in metro areas is 86% higher than outside them (448 to 240); in McCain states, metro areas are 32% more violent (465 to 350\/100,000)…<\/p>\n

…and that’s if we forget about yesterday’s issue with traditional southern violence.\u00a0 In the states of the former Confederacy, violent crime in metro areas is 20% higher than the national average (553 to 459\/100,000), while in non-metro areas it’s a whopping 48% higher than in non-metro areas nationwide (429 to 290\/100,000); indeed, non-metro crime in the former Old South (less Virginia) is only about 6% lower than crime in metropolitan areas nationwide (429 to 459\/100,000).\u00a0 Wanna see some danger?\u00a0\u00a0Non-metro crime in South Carolina is 65% higher than the national average for metropolitan areas (760 to 459\/100,000); Louisiana isn’t far behind.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Indeed – Obama’s metro areas are eight percent more violent than Mac’s states overall (448 to 411\/100,000); that ratio climbs to 38% when counting McCain’s non-Southern states (337\/100,000), and 52% higher than McCain’s non-southern, non-metro areas (with 294 violent crimes per 100,000).<\/p>\n

States – most states – seesaw slowly back and forth across the political divide; California used to vote GOP; the South was once reliably Democratic, and backed the New Deal.<\/p>\n

But for generations, now, America’s major metropolitan areas have been the province of the left; the bigger the metro areas (New York, LA, Chicago, San Francisco, Detroit, Philly), the further to the left they are.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And\u00a0while Ostermeier noted that\u00a0“Blue” state income is 11% higher\u00a0than “Red” states (without citing cost of living variances, naturally), he missed another point; the poorest cities in America are the ones that have been the longest strangled by\u00a0the left, of the ten poorest cities in the US, the record is clear:<\/p>\n