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Red Rats, Blue Rats...
MPS: Yuba City, CA, USA: The 2004 presidential election created divisions in the United States which pundits and bloggers labeled Red States and Blue States. Once so divided there began a analysis of these states and the residents therein. They were compared on the basis of race, religion, economics, gender, sexual preferences, epicurean preferences, birth rates and moral values.
In the interest of complete coverage The Yuba Yada Yada asked Professor Claudette Berrier, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at The Yuba Institute of Advanced Studies, to expound on the comparisons made in the media and on the World Wide Web.
TYYY: "Professor Berrier, what are your thoughts regarding the multitude of references to Red States and Blue States?"
Prof. Berrier: "I am not impressed with most of the reporting. The pertinent fact of the division is the distribution of the Electoral College Votes. Those are the numbers that are important. And, to a lesser extent, the popular vote. Comparing the states on any other basis is speculation and biased fantasy."
TYYY: "How do you mean?"
Prof. Berrier; "As I said, the pertinent fact of the division is the distribution of the Electoral College Votes. That is the only condition in which a State may be Red or Blue. In all other conditions the states are varying degrees of purple. This creates a vagueness which allows comparison with other conditions such as birth rates, income, tax rates, divorce rates and etc ..."
TYYY: "But isn't there a correlation between some of those conditions and the Red and Blue states."
Prof. Berrier: "Yes, That is what I just said. If you select your data you can make a correlation between Red and Blue States and almost anything, even something as unrelated to politics such as rats."
TYYY: "How so?"
Prof. Berrier: "Well, let us consider the distribution of the two major rat types in the United States, the Norway Rat and the Brown Rat. Considering that the Norway Rat prefers tunneling and burrows one would expect them to also prefer the rural areas of the country. Since the Brown Rat likes climbing and high places one could expect it to like the houses and buildings found in urban areas. Yet their distribution across the nation is quite mixed, though the Norway Rat is found in larger numbers in many of the coastal cities ."
"Let Us designate the the Norway Rat as the Blue Rat and the Brown Rat as the Red Rat. We then create a map of their populations and compare it to the map of the Red and Blue States and we see their distribution correlates very closely. Very closely indeed."
Red And Blue Political State Map
Red And Blue Rat State Map
TYYY: "That's amazing!"
Prof. Berrier: "Not really."
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