(disclaimer: I know the author of this book, Andrew Gelman, and he sent me a free copy)
Andrew Gelman is a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University, and runs his own very interesting blog: statistical modeling, causal inference, and social science. His latest book is Red state blue state rich state poor state and I review it below the fold.
The subtitle of this book is "Why Americans vote the way they do". It looks primarily at three influences: State and region; income; and religion. Gelman is fully capable of getting as math- and statistics-heavy as anyone. He is, after all, a professor of statistics. But in this book, he takes another path --- he lets all the technical details sit in the background and presents results using a lot of graphs, but minimal mathematics.
He punctures a number of myths.
Perhaps the most famous myth was part of a title of a book "What's the matter with Kansas?" which posited that Kansans vote against their own economic interest because of disagreement with the Democrats o social issues. In fact, wealthier Kansans vote Republican, poorer Kansans vote Democratic. Further, that same pattern (the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to vote Republican) happens in all states.
But there's more.
The very first words in the introduction are a quote from Tucker Carlson to the effect that wealthy people, particularly those with incomes over $100,000, vote Democratic. Strictly speaking, Carlson is wrong. Rich people tend to vote Republican (and this trend is more in evidence at incomes below about $100,000 ... that is, people who earn $100,000 are much more likely to vote R than those who earn $50,000; peoploe who earn $200,000 are still more likely, but the difference between 200K people and 100K people is smaller than that between 100K and 50K). Gelman is kinder, and calls Carlson 'half right' because rich states vote Democratic more than poor states do.
Open the book to almost any page, and you're likely to find something interesting: On page 47, for instance, he compares Southern and non-Southern states and voters over time. Here we learn, e.g., that the gap between rich voters and poor voters in terms of voting Republican has been growing since 1960 (when it was 0), and that it is growing much faster in the South than elsewhere.
On page 84, we learn that, in poorer states, rich people tend to be more religious than poor people (most true in SD, AR, and AL), while in rich states, rich people tend to be less religious (most true in NJ and NY)
On page 126, he graphs split ticket voting over time -- it rose from the late 1950s to mid 1970s, peaking at almost 30%, and declined since then -- in 2004 it was a little under 20%.
On page 151 he analyzes how he thinks Kerry and Bush should have shifted their economic positions to maximize their share of the vote.
In short, this is the kind of thought-provoking book that a lot of people here would love. Clearly, this book is for people who like numbers and graphs --- but, again, you do not need to know a lot of math to read it, there are no formulas, and the most advanced statistic used is 'correlation'.
Warmly recommended.