Also, no one talked about causation, just correlation.

Just a brain.

One example: life expectancy, teen pregnancy rate, college education. It’s all much more likely that these things feed out of income issues rather than political leanings, so those charts are basically redundant. Income is the first thing that would come to my mind on any chart that had Rhode Island and Massachusetts at one end and Alabama and Mississippi at the other.

Your assumptions on cause and effect could use some work, too. Again, just one example: an already “blue” state is much more likely to believe that the more you spend on unionized government schools, the better education is going to work. The highest spending isn’t even on your chart, the District of Columbia.

Have fun with your pup!

There are quite a few factors in those charts that you’re overlooking, deliberately or not. “post hoc ergo propter hoc” is especially dangerous in issues where there are many variables.

Hint: look at the outliers in the charts. Despite the contempt of some people for outliers, it’s the holes in a concept that often make a difference, not the fabric.

That is why I am nervous about hanging around a place where a strain of fact-resistant TB is endemic…