A lot of research has attempted to correlate demographic differences with political preferences. Generalizations (sometimes backed by data) are that younger people and minorities tend to prefer Democrats, and older white people tend to prefer Republicans. Besides the more traditional divisions of age (generational cohort), race, gender and income, other social divisions have been identified […]
Brynne VanHettinga
The Patchwork Quilt of Voting Patterns
Having just been through a national election, many of us have seen those maps that show states as being either red (Republican) or blue (Democratic). However, when voting patterns are displayed at the county level, the states do not appear so monochromatic. For example, Texas is a quintessentially “red” state, but there is a string […]
Fighting Over Scraps
Recent articles in The Washington Post describe co-worker hostility faced by veterans working in federal agencies, purportedly because of federally mandated hiring preferences. Some ascribe this hostility to cultural differences between military and civilian workers. Combat vets, who are used to making and responding to rapid decisions, have little patience for the bureaucratic process, where decisions […]
