A chart that circulated online during the first months of 2004 purported to show that American states whose populations possess higher average incomes and higher average IQs voted for Gore in the 2000 Presidential elections. Their poorer, lower-IQ counterparts voted for Bush. The implication was that smart people vote Democratic, and stupid people vote Republican.
The source of this chart was said to be an academic book,
IQ and the Wealth of Nations, by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen. However,
IQ and the Wealth of Nations was not the source. The real source was a person using the screen name 'Robert Calvert' who had posted the data to a Mensa newsgroup in 2002. Apparently this person made it all up.
The phony chart lingered in newsgroup obscurity for two years until rediscovered around April, 2004. At which point it circulated widely. Major newspapers and magazines, including the
St. Petersburg Times and the
Economist, printed it before it was exposed as a hoax.
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