Northern states, Canada share values
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| Fri, 12-12-2003 - 2:38pm |
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/152194_canadapoll12.html
Northern states, Canada share values
Poll says split is actually within U.S.
Friday, December 12, 2003
By SHAWN MCCARTHY
THE (TORONTO) GLOBE AND MAIL
NEW YORK -- Americans from the northern states often have more values in common with their Canadian neighbors than they do with their cousins from southern states, according to a leading U.S. pollster.
Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, rejected assertions by many of his colleagues that Canada and the United States are on divergent paths leading to a widening values gap.
"When we look deeper into the data, we find the gap between Americans and Canadians is not a national gap, it's a regional one," Kohut told the Canadian Society of New York this week.
For example, the United States is both more religious and more secular than Canada, with religious intensity on the rise in the South and Southwest and church adherence on the decline in the Northeast and on the West Coast, he said.
Americans from the North, particularly New England, are less religious, more tolerant of homosexuality and less likely to regard a husband as the dominant head of the family than their counterparts in southern states.
On such issues, northerners' views are strikingly close to the norms in adjoining areas of Canada, although Kohut said that in some regions of Canada -- notably Southern Alberta -- moral and social views are more in tune with those of the Southern United States.
A number of analyses have mentioned a growing social divide between the United States and Canada, highlighted by the power of the evangelical right in the White House and the Liberal government's move to decriminalize marijuana and allow same-sex marriages.
Last week, The New York Times carried a front-page story describing a "chasm that has opened up on social issues that go to the heart of fundamental values." But Kohut said that chasm is as pronounced within the two countries as it is across the border. The Pew Center conducted a series of polls last month, testing U.S. attitudes toward homosexuality and other social issues.
On gay rights, there is a "general liberalizing trend" in the United States, he said, adding that regions with large evangelical populations are lagging the more secular areas.
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Laws about sexual acts have been on the books for YEARS. Those are those laws that no one pays any attention to. Got news for ya...MOST STATES have them. Oh yeah...they apply to heterosexuals as well. Try again. As for the don't ask/don't tell...GIVE ME A BREAK. I could give a rats reat who you want to have sex with. It is NO ONE'S business who you sleep with. It is unprofessional as well as stupid to discuss whom your sleeping with.
Gee, seems to be I've heard of several cases over the years where these 'old laws' have been enacted - usually to make life difficult for someone who is usually gay/lesbian.
Do you have a source for that because I read that was not the case. Certainly not in every nation (if you equate "republican" to mean "conservative")
Some of the most liberal people I know tend to be in academia...in fact, I frequently hear on these boards conservatives bemoaning the liberal colleges and universities.
The most conservative people I know are all farmers. Most never even made it out of high school.
I'm specifically speaking about US politics. It is a bit confusing because we've been discussing Reps & Dems and Red America & Blue America and the North & the South, and while some of these categories overlap, they are not the same.
People in the North tend to be better educated than people in the South; Blue America tends to be better educated than red America, but a higher percentage of Republicans are college educated than Democrats.
Statistically, you're more likely to be a Republican and/or conservative if you're:
* a man
* a college graduate
* in the top income bracket
* an evangelical Christian
* living in a rural area
* a Thinker-Sensor
Statistically, you're more likely to be a Democrat and/or liberal if you're:
* a woman
* a senior citizen
* gay
* nonwhite
* living in an urban area
* a Feeler-Intuitor
http://usconservatives.about.com/library/weekly/aapartydemographicsa.htm
"Sociological Factors Voter studies allow us to draw a picture of the American voter in terms of social class and other sociological factors. For example, upper-class and middle-class voters are more likely to vote Republican than are voters of lower economic and social status, who tend to be Democrats. Professional and business people and college graduates have been more likely to support Republicans than Democrats. Jews, Catholics, and African Americans generally vote Democratic. In general, the Democrats still draw their strength from the big cities of the North and East. Voters in rural areas in the North are more likely to be Republicans, and the Democrats can no longer count on the South in presidential contests. (pp. 331-334)" http://www.a-s.clayton.edu/trachtenberg/p1101l11.htm
This is from a really interesting report from New Democtrats Online
http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/whca/aldo2001.html
These upscale trends are mirrored among presidential primary voters. In the 27 states for which there are Democratic presidential exit polls for 1992, (the last time the Democrats had a nomination contest), on average 38 percent of the primary voters had a college or a post-graduate degree, compared to only 20 percent of the voting age population.14 For Republicans, the educational bias is even more pronounced. In the 26 states for which there are Republican presidential primary exit polls in 1996, 47 percent of their primary voters had college or post-graduate degrees, compared to only 21 percent of the voting age population.15
Renee
But now that I work in an academic environment, I'm starting to see the opposite. The overwhelming majority of people I come in contact with (academics with advanced degrees in a variety of areas) are liberal...
But I don't necessarily equate conservative with Republican and liberal with Democrat...
Renee
That's what I had found myself.
Other than "hardcore" businessmen, at least here, the longer one has spent in school, the more likely they are to hold liberal values. I have found a certain tendency of those who consider themselves to be conservatives to have a rather black/white view on things. The more educated a person is, the harder it is to see things that way.
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Not being American, I'm still trying to get my head around this. I find that most Americans equate Republicans with conservatives and vice versa, but I'm also seeing that this is necessarily not the case.
Not being American, I'm still trying to get my head around this. I find that most Americans equate Republicans with conservatives and vice versa, but I'm also seeing that this is necessarily not the case.
That's because there's such a wide spectrum in each party.
Renee
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