For example, the “redder” a particular state is (i.e., the more its voters support Republican candidates in elections), the likelier its residents are to be charitable. According to Brooks, fully 24 of the 25 most generous states were red ones (only Maryland was a charitably minded blue, or Democrat-supporting, state). Residents of the five states that cast more than 60 percent of their ballots for President Bush in 2004 gave 3.5 percent of their incomes to charity, nearly twice as much per person as residents of the five states (including the District of Columbia) where Democrat John Kerry received 60 percent of the vote or better. This, says Brooks, occurred even though residents of the deep-blue pro-Kerry states earned, on average, 38 percent more per household than their red-state counterparts.
Brooks also cites a 2004 survey conducted by Syracuse University, which compared the charitable giving habits of people who were identical in age, income, education, gender, religion, race, and political views -- and whose only disagreement was that one group of subjects thought it was the government's job to redistribute income from the rich to the poor, while the other thought that income redistribution was none of the state's business. Those who opposed government income-redistribution contributed, on average, $267 more to charity each year than the income-redistribution advocates. "In other words," Brooks writes, "people in favor of forced income redistribution are privately less charitable than those who oppose it, regardless of how much money they earn."