Intelligence and support for Bush

I thought it might be interesting to look at two different sets of numbers. One is the approval ratings for George Bush for each state. The other set of numbers is the average IQ for residents of the state. Is there a correlation? I will have three columns below. The first is the name of the state then we have the approval rating for Bush and the third column is the average IQ in that state. The states are sorted by their approval rating from highest to lowest.


Idaho 59% 87
Utah 59% 87
Wyoming 53% 89
Mississippi 50% 85
Oklahoma 49% 90
Nebraska 48% 95
Alaska 47% 98
Alabama 46% 90
Louisiana 45% 90
Georgia 45% 92
South Dakota 45% 90
Indiana 45% 94
Texas 44% 92
Montana 43% 90
North Dakota 43% 92
Kansas 43% 96
West Virginia 42% 93
North Carolina 42% 93
Tennessee 42% 94
South Carolina 41% 89
Kentucky 41% 92
Washington 41% 102
New Mexico 40% 92
Arkansas 40% 92
Arizona 40% 94
Colorado 40% 99
Oregon 40% 99
Nevada 39% 99
Virginia 39% 100
Missouri 38% 98
Minnesota 38% 102
Florida 37% 98
Hawaii 37% 106
Ohio 36% 99
Iowa 35% 99
Wisconsin 36% 100
New Hampshire 36% 105
Maine 35% 100
Pennsylvania 34% 101
California 33% 101
Michigan 32% 99
Maryland 32% 105
Connecticut 32% 113
Illinois 31% 104
Massachusetts 31% 111
New Jersey 30% 111
Vermont 29% 102
Delaware 29% 103
New York 27% 109
Rhode Island 26% 107


Of the 10 states with the highest approval rating for Bush the average IQ is a sliver over 90. Of the 10 states with the lowest approval rating for Bush the average IQ was a bit over 106. That’s a difference of 16 IQ points.

Only four states have average IQs below 90 and all four gave Bush approval ratings over 50%. These four states gave Bush his highest ratings and were the four states with the lowest levels of average intelligence.

Only three states have an average IQ over 110 and all of them gave Bush approval ratings in the low 30s.

You can also look at it this way. Of the states with approval ratings over 50% none had an average IQ over 90. Of those with approval ratings over 40%, but below 50%, only one state had an average IQ over 100. That was Washington were the approval rating is not far from slipping below 40%.

There are 23 states where Bush’s approval rating is below is 40% and all of them, but six, have an average IQ over 100. Of the six that are below 100 the lowest average is 98.

Roughly half the states (27) give Bush an approval rating over 40%. Of those 27 only one has an average IQ over 100. Of the 23 states where Bush’s approval rating is below 40% only six have average IQs below 100 and none of them fall under 98.

Draw your own conclusions.