The graph below was inspired by David Zetland's claim that...
...most Americans have neither visited foreign countries (compare passport holding with state voting here) nor follow news from those countries.
Comparing passport holdings to state voting give us this possibly spurious and possibly informative graph:
Each additional percentage point increase in passport holdings in a state decreases the percentage voting for Trump by 0.70 percentage points on average (Y=0.775-0.6991X). This isn't a claim that passport holdings cause decreased Trump support, but rather that the correlation is striking. State-by-state passport holdings explain 54% (R2=0.5402) of the variation in state-by-state Trump support. Of course, passport holdings could be (and likely is) acting as a proxy for some other set of characteristics or beliefs that cause decreases in Trump support. Unfortunately statistics can't really tell us the underlying cause of the negative correlation.
Could it be that people who hold passports have a more worldly view while those who do not hold a passport hold a more nationalist view?
Could it be that only wealthier individuals hold a passport?
Could it be that passport holders are more likely to be cat people and cat people are more likely to vote against Trump?
The statistics can't tell us the answer.
But the correlation is intriguing.
