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Originally posted by Lesbianosaur this thread was started to discuss possible reasons for the discrepancy.

really, was it? does it matter?

what do you have to say further? or have you already said it?

The study is biased towards blue states.

To fix it, match pairs of states that have the same electoral college points, and then average the divorce rates again on them. Then it'll be fair.

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Originally posted by Krypton There are far more red states than blue, thus, the red states have more chances to have higher than average divorce rates than blue states would..

This makes no sense. Basically you're saying that larger samples have more of a chance of including outliers, which is perfectly true, but you neglect to mention that, ceteris paribus, a larger sample will also have more of a chance of including outliers on the low end as well, not just outliers on the high end.

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles This makes no sense. Basically you're saying that larger samples have more of a chance of including outliers, which is perfectly true, but you neglect to mention that, ceteris paribus, a larger sample will also have more of a chance of including outliers on the low end as well, not just outliers on the high end.

What are the populations of the blue states compared to the red states?

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Originally posted by Q5echo EDIT> what kind of a difference in rates are we talking about here? after taking Nevada and Arkansas out the difference half a percent?

If you would read the first post, you would see that I already addressed that point. Taking out Nevada and Arkansas only lowers the rate for red states by about .15. Still much higher than the blue states.

The point about marriage rates is a valid one. Red states have more marriages, so if an equal percentage of marriages break up in both blue states and red states, the red states would still show a higher divorce rate as a percentage of the general population.

Another thing to consider is that fundamentalist Christians divorce more frequently. Since fundamentalist Christians are far more common in the red states, that would go some way toward explaining the trend.

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Originally posted by Krypton What are the populations of the blue states compared to the red states?

Of the ones included in the study? The total for each group is probably about equal, since California was not included in the blue states.

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles The point about marriage rates is a valid one. Red states have more marriages, so if an equal percentage of marriages break up in both blue states and red states, the red states would still show a higher divorce rate as a percentage of the general population.

While true, a higher marriage rate can be a symptom of a high divorce rate. After all, those who divorce often remarry, resulting in more marriages and, thus, a higher marriage rate.

It would be difficult to seperate the effect of having more marriages generally (due to more people choosing to marry) versus the effect of having more marriages as a product of marriages tending to be shorter-lasting.

Knowing the percentage of the adult population that is married might help resolve this -- if a state has a higher marriage rate, but no higher proportion of its population is married, then most of the additional marriages are presumably due to people re-marrying. It might be helpful to exclude nonresident marriages re: Nevada in particular when examining marriage rates.

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles Of the ones included in the study? The total for each group is probably about equal, since California was not included in the blue states.

Of all the states that have reported divorce rates, what are their respective blue and red populations? You're doing a study right? Make it better by examining all aspects of the results, just to make sure the notion that "family values proponent's own social policy doesn't work in their respective districts".

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Originally posted by Krypton Of all the states that have reported divorce rates, what are their respective blue and red populations? You're doing a study right? Make it better by examining all aspects of the results, just to make sure the notion that "family values proponent's own social policy doesn't work in their respective districts".

Heh, I shouldn't have said "study," this is just my speculation on social trends with the limited data available to me. I am interested in doing demography / social trends statistics professionally, though. It's fascinating to me.

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Originally posted by Arbiter

I wonder if there are statistics available for number of first marriages and first divorces in a state. Those might be interesting to examine...

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Originally posted by Krypton Of all the states that have reported divorce rates, what are their respective blue and red populations? You're doing a study right? Make it better by examining all aspects of the results, just to make sure the notion that "family values proponent's own social policy doesn't work in their respective districts".

I fail to see how the size of the samples really matters - when you're talking about 100+ million people in each sample, whether they are precisely equal or off by 10 million on one side or the other doesn't bear any statistical significance.

Something that would be more interesting than a red state v. blue state comparison, glancing at the map, is a regional comparison. It seems to me that divorce rates in Southern states are much higher than those in New England or the upper Midwest where you get both blue and red states. The causation is likely more closely related to regional culture rather than any sort of politics - I imagine that political leaning is simply another effect rather than a causation.

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