Ordering Vindaloo or Hunting for Venison? How You Vote - The New York Times

I was active in a thread on the NY Times site, discussing how lifestyle choices correlate with lifestyle choice.

First Post:

This is nothing new. Diversity, is both cause and effect of openness to experience. Open-minded people, as per the Big Five and/or OCEAN personality inventories, tend to be liberal, and their lifestyle choices reflect that. They tend to get educated, move to cities, and enjoy a greater variation in travel, reading, and music. They enjoy urban, dense environments with a range of identities. People with low openness, or for the sake of simplicity, the close-minded, tend to stick close to home, favor family and church, and tend to distrust urban, diverse environments. This dimension seems to also informally correlate with disgust and fear of the unknown, something seemingly related to a fear of the foreign. 

You likely have guessed, or assume, that I am very liberal, and I am an fairly empathetic person, but I would not find engaging with such people enjoyable, or at least not for long. The ones I do have in my environment, the obvious ones, are the most belligerent, hateful people, and the more subdued ones are nice, but not people I personally engage with, although I can certainly enjoy conversations about personal topics with them.

In truth, the more my spouse and I understand how we do not fit in the United States, and that humanitarian and welfare concerns will likely be treated as less important than work, the more we consider emigrating. As individuals, we would better fit in Sweden or the Netherlands, while as a couple we might enjoy Canada or New Zealand.

An additional comment, in the same thread:

Manhattan is just fine for us, we are successful and we are surrounded by people that we like. Manhattan is a diverse place, with a wealth of culture. It is not that we can't find places we love, and might love us, like NYC, LA, SF, Seattle, etc., it is the national character that disagree with us so much, i.e., work over quality of life and short term over long term solutions. No matter, unless Democrats capture the government for the next few decades, human welfare, rights and the environment - too many concerns to mention - will take a back seat to work, the military, and religion. It is not worth the grief and upset to stick around.

Responding to an anti-Muslim post:

For some of us, it is just the opposite. I live in Manhattan, and although I do not like the stratification of ethnicity and class, I have few issues with diversity.

• We own an NYC condo in a full-service doorman building, and our floor of 10 apartment is home to a diverse range of people, Canadian (female, working at the UN), a middle eastern couple, East Asians (immigrant and domestic, young and senior), Jews (NYC is home to the largest number), Indian (doctor at NYU), as well as some White people, like me. Our building staff is largely Hispanic and African-American, but also Asian. The super originated from the Caribbean, and the managers have been Hispanic.

• I work in financial technology, and my coworkers are often from India, Russia and/or Eastern European states (Romaine, Ukraine), Ireland, Japan, Ecuador, China, and the US, with some of the latter working remotely from South Dakota and North Carolina, and the our team includes African-Americans as well. Sadly, it is disproportionately male.

• The businesses we enlist locally are often run by ethnic groups, however stereotypical, with Asian dry cleaners, household cleaners that are Eastern European and/or Caribbean, with ethnic food prepared by people from many countries, wait staff from around the world, and from many parts of the US.

Although I dislike the stratification of class and race, diversity works for us.

Responding to an anti-liberal post:

That's nonsense. I see many conservatives in this forum, while claiming that liberals think of them as bigots and reprobates, essentially assume liberals are similarly disposed, but of course in another direction...

Responding to a post about IQ and the recent election:

It was not much different than usual, except maybe that conservative party voters were even less educated than usual. Those within the highest education groups tend to vote liberally, as do, sometimes the lowest, although this is mediated by ethnicity. The middle tends to be conservative. With this last election, it was not different, and as usual, increasing education tended to indicate voting liberally.

As per FiveThirtyEight:

• Education, Not Income, Predicted Who Would Vote For Trump
• Even Among The Wealthy, Education Predicts Trump Support

Responding to a conservative post about high school graduation rates:

You might do better to compare similar demographic groups along levels of education and how that relates to voting, to avoid the confounds created by race, ethnicity, gender and religion. When comparing like to like, education is a great divider between Democrats and Conservatives.

Then consider Asians at 50.5% with Baccalaureates, with 21.2% having graduate degrees. Asians vote democratic too, at 79%. In truth, the prototypical Republican is White, Christian, exurban, male and less educated, while Democrats are typically Non-White, Non-Christian, urban, female and more educated. Obviously a broad stroke generalization, but these demographic splits predict a lot of variation.

Responding to a poster who thought the relationships were invalid, and simply about money and geography:

Maybe you didn't notice, but your criticism was mentioned and negated:

"These relationships persist after accounting for things like partisanship, income, education and geography."

Responding to a poster decrying the cost of education, and how that is impacting diversity:

It is not just the unaffordability of education, although it is an outcome, but the inequality, the lower quality of life that it engenders, and the maltreatment coming out of our government, and the short-sightedness of our culture, that is ruining American lives.