Rich State, Poor State

Via Henry Farrell, Gelman et. al. post some interesting maps. First, which states would John Kerry have won were only poor voters allowed to vote:



Basically it seems that here Bush wins only the whitest of states, though not super-white Maine. Next, only people in the middle third of the income distribution:



This looks a lot like the actual election results, though there are a few states Kerry carried in reality despite losing middle income voters. There are no states Bush won without carrying middle income voters. Last, people in the top third:



Basically, rich people love Bush. But not the rich people who live New York, its suburbs in New York or New Jersey, or DC, or the DC suburbs (i.e., Maryland) or those who live in California. Interestingly enough, a huge proportion of political journalists and editors and people who run media companies live in precisely those places. One wonders if this doesn't have a distorting effect on media types' perception of what's going on in politics.