The graph below charts 2012 presidential election results into average IQ by county.
This chart uses data from the Associated Press, giving election results by county. I wanted to look at a finer resolution than just by state, since there are a lot of "red" counties in "blue" states and vice versa. I had some difficulty locating IQ data at any resolution higher than a country level. I used data from the site IQLeague.com giving me data for 900 cities which I then mapped into the corresponding counties to get an average IQ by county for about 500 counties. Then I dumped the votes for those counties into their appropriate IQ buckets. I'm not thrilled with this data source for IQ data so if you know of better source for IQ by geography, please let me know.
For reference, the average IQ of Americans is 98. The average IQ for Obama voters in this data is 99.8 and the average IQ for Romney voters is 98.8. The average IQ of the counties represented is 99.2.
Quite frankly, despite the fact that this data shows a slight preference among voters in lower IQ counties to prefer Mr. Romney, and voters in higher IQ counties to prefer Mr. Obama, my take-away is that IQ was not a significant factor in determining the outcome of the 2012 presidential election, or at least that this data doesn't show a significant correlation.
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Many have argued that IQ tests may be biased against certain groups (it's hard to believe that Obama's IQ is only 132).
That said, Obama's support was 56 percent white, 24 percent black. If you like to play the race IQ card, consider that the average IQ of Asians is 110 and Asians voted for Obama two to one over Romney.
Or it 's even easier to make Romney voters look stupid if you play the blue-state/red-state IQ game.
But my point is none of these numbers are meaningful to understand whether there is a correlation between IQ and the 2012 election because these are collectives that cannot be bound to the actual voting in significant ways.
So, again, the conclusion is there is no evidence that shows IQ can be correlated to the 2012 election results, your in appropriate comment not withstanding.
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