Gallup as released it's state of the states poll, here and it shows that the further you move from the center and Southern portions of the country the healthier a life style people live on average.
The chart below shows political affiliations throughout the country, the darker the green the more conservative the state.
And finally, per capita income, the lighter the green, the lower the income.
And a couple of broad paint brush assumptions. A more conservative leaning person is going to be opposed to health care reform, someone with lower income is going to be in higher need of health care reform since they can't afford insurance and potentially (due to their low income) work in a position that doesn't offer them health care benefits.
So if you look at the three charts there is a huge swath in the South which leads the nation in unhealthy life styles, are conservative and on the lower tier of per capita income.
So, in a completely unscientific way I am going to tie these three together and once again be wowed by the GOPs ability to influence its members to vote against their own economic and well being interests. Clearly poor people with unhealthy lifestyles would benefit the most from health care reform and yet, it would seem these very same people are the ones most against it.
Feel free to disagree just be polite about it.
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Comments
"Average citizens" do NOT live on reservations... we reserve THAT particular bit of racism for the Indigenous people... who never have cared about the almighty greenback.
WHY do we have people living on reservations? Pure racism.
WHY is Indigenous unemployment so high? Pure racism.
In failing to ADDRESS the fact that the REASON that some of the areas in question have such low incomes is racism Gallup fosters the perception by non-indigenous people that indigenous people are "lazy, good for nothing, trash".
First off, American Indians and Alaskan Natives make up 0.7% of the US population, which translates into roughly 2.5 million people. They would have to all live in one area to have the any correlating effect on the point I was trying to make, which was to tie low income conservative people with voting against their economic interest.
I'll not only concede you the points you made on racism and unemployment, I'll agree with you, with the caveat that the Bureau of Indian Affairs skews the unemployment figures upwards some by counting anyone over 16 who is not looking for work and housewives as unemployed. Even taking that away Native American employment is abysmally high.
I'm not sure where your making the correlation that Gallup failed to address anything, the polls I included from them only reflected healthy lifestyles, income and political leanings. To infer from them that they promote the impression that indigenous people are "lazy" is a stretch at best, they infer nothing in regards to indigenous people.
The fact (and I haven't seen any polling so I'll just concede this point to you as well) that indigenous people vote 80% Democratic does nothing to debunk my point since, as I've already pointed out, they are not gathered together in a population density enough to have an effect on the data.
According to the last census they make up the following percentages of population of the Southern states:
North Carolina: 1.1%
South Carolina: 0.3%
Alabama: 0.4%
Arkansas: 0.8%
Texas: 0.5%
Louisiana: 0.6%
Georgia: 0.2%
Tennesee: 0.3%
Missouri: 0.4%
Florida: 0.3%
Mississippi: 0.4%
Whereas, though the tide has turned against Republican dominance across the nation, except in Wyoming, Utah and other western pockets, the South still enjoys a huge portion of its population that identifies itself with being conservative. The Reagn Democrats, Blue Dogs or whatever you would like to call them predominantly come from the South and even though the polling numbers now show much of those states to be swing states, even the Dems in those states identify more with traditional Republican values than Democratic. So I stand by my point that the GOP consistently is able to convince its lower income members to vote against their economic interest.