"Why America Keeps Getting More Conservative."

Despite that article title, Richard Florida — Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management — stresses that he's only identifying correlations to "the deep cleavages of income, education, and class that divide America."

Why is it, for example, that working class correlates to conservatism?

Conservative political affiliation is strongly positively correlated with the percentage of a state's workforce in blue-collar occupations (.73), and highly negatively correlated with the proportion of the workforce engaged in knowledge-based professional and creative work (-.61). Both are also associated with the tilt toward conservatism in the past year.

All these liberal, knowledge-based professionals ought to be able to apply their big brains to the puzzle of why the working class folk they'd like to think they champion.

The ongoing economic crisis only appears to have deepened America's conservative drift - a trend which is most pronounced in its least well off, least educated, most blue collar, most economically hard-hit states.

A deep drift, in the deep cleavage of America.