The outlier depends on the axis
Which slice of the electorate stands furthest from everyone else — and does the answer change between economic and social questions?
Party × income × college cells placed by their economic and social index means; whiskers are 95% bootstrap intervals on both axes.
GSS 1972–2024: all 18 party × income × college cells on both indices. The economic outlier is affluent college Republicans (+0.74); the social outlier is affluent college Democrats (+0.92).
- Democrats
- Independents
- Republicans
College degreeNo degreeDot size: income third, low → high; a thin line joins each group’s thirdsWhiskers: 95% bootstrap intervals
Economic items
Social items
GSS cells: Economic index and Social index · 18 rows
| Party | Income third | Degree | Economic index | Across: lower 95% | Across: upper 95% | Social index | Up: lower 95% | Up: upper 95% | N across | N up |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democrats | Low-income | No college | -0.35 | -0.37 | -0.33 | -0.02 | -0.04 | 0 | 12,047 | 12,063 |
| Democrats | Low-income | College | -0.42 | -0.48 | -0.37 | 0.82 | 0.76 | 0.88 | 1,583 | 1,551 |
| Democrats | Middle-income | No college | -0.18 | -0.2 | -0.15 | -0.01 | -0.03 | 0.02 | 7,739 | 7,810 |
| Democrats | Middle-income | College | -0.29 | -0.33 | -0.24 | 0.73 | 0.68 | 0.77 | 2,828 | 2,738 |
| Democrats | Affluent | No college | -0.1 | -0.14 | -0.06 | 0.14 | 0.1 | 0.18 | 3,468 | 3,499 |
| Democrats | Affluent | College | -0.21 | -0.24 | -0.17 | 0.92 | 0.89 | 0.96 | 3,523 | 3,444 |
| Independents | Low-income | No college | -0.24 | -0.28 | -0.21 | -0 | -0.04 | 0.03 | 4,618 | 4,507 |
| Independents | Low-income | College | -0.1 | -0.21 | 0.03 | 0.35 | 0.22 | 0.47 | 391 | 376 |
| Independents | Middle-income | No college | -0.08 | -0.12 | -0.04 | 0.04 | -0 | 0.08 | 2,495 | 2,445 |
| Independents | Middle-income | College | 0.07 | -0.02 | 0.15 | 0.27 | 0.18 | 0.37 | 636 | 622 |
| Independents | Affluent | No college | 0.08 | 0.01 | 0.16 | 0.06 | 0 | 0.12 | 1,051 | 1,038 |
| Independents | Affluent | College | 0.22 | 0.15 | 0.3 | 0.46 | 0.38 | 0.54 | 717 | 689 |
| Republicans | Low-income | No college | 0.08 | 0.06 | 0.11 | -0.33 | -0.36 | -0.3 | 6,329 | 6,245 |
| Republicans | Low-income | College | 0.44 | 0.35 | 0.52 | -0.21 | -0.3 | -0.11 | 885 | 845 |
| Republicans | Middle-income | No college | 0.29 | 0.27 | 0.32 | -0.36 | -0.38 | -0.33 | 5,801 | 5,730 |
| Republicans | Middle-income | College | 0.58 | 0.54 | 0.63 | -0.25 | -0.29 | -0.2 | 2,052 | 1,993 |
| Republicans | Affluent | No college | 0.48 | 0.44 | 0.51 | -0.27 | -0.3 | -0.23 | 3,669 | 3,634 |
| Republicans | Affluent | College | 0.74 | 0.71 | 0.79 | -0.09 | -0.13 | -0.06 | 3,302 | 3,208 |
Cells: party (D/I/R, leaners folded in) x income (weighted within-year terciles, GSS realinc; ANES income_5cat collapsed) x college (BA+ vs not). Economic index: weighted z-scored mean of government-role/redistribution items; higher = economic-right. GSS items: helppoor, helpsick, helpnot, goveqinc, natfare, natheal, natsoc. ANES items: jobs_7pt, health_ins_7pt, spend_welfare_incr, spend_poor_incr, spend_social_sec_incr, spend_schools_incr, spend_environment_incr, aid_blacks_7pt. Social index: weighted z-scored mean of moral/social items; higher = socially permissive (left). GSS items: abany, homosex, gunlaw, grass, prayer, premarsx, fefam, pornlaw, cappun, divlaw. ANES items: favor_death_penalty, guns_harder, favor_gay_adoption, favor_lgbt_protection, abort_legal_4cat. Items: each item z-scored then signed by its own weighted correlation with party (Republican-increasing); orientation verified empirically, not hand-coded. Tiles show each item’s absolute correlation with party; its sign only reflects how the question was coded. Intervals: seeded weighted bootstrap, 600 reps, 2.5/97.5 percentiles. Suppression: cells with n<150 or Kish effective N<100 suppressed. Both indices are z-scored, so the rules at zero mark each survey’s pooled average. The GSS moved to web administration in 2021; those years are pooled here with earlier interviews.
General Social Survey 1972–2024 (NORC) and ANES Cumulative Data File 1948–2024 · weighted party × income × college cells
Reading notes
Indices are weighted means of z-scored items pooled across decades; intervals are 600-rep bootstrap percentiles, indicative rather than design-based. Cells below n = 150 or effective n = 100 are suppressed. The GSS moved to web interviewing in 2021. Item-level cells exist for the GSS only and carry no intervals.
Source & method
For each survey, joined the economic and social index cells on (party with leaners folded in, income tercile, college degree) into 18 cells, each carrying both means with their 600-rep weighted-bootstrap 95% intervals, n and Kish effective n; kept the keys of the two outlier cells the article names. Kept the 17 GSS item-level cell means (7 economic, 10 social) with n, question wording and each item's correlation with party. Five item cells are absent from the source (suppressed upstream; all college-educated Independents in the low or middle income third) and stay missing; the transform would also blank any item cell below the source's n = 150 floor, and none falls below it. Dropped the party × income gradient summaries and the ANES item-direction tables — the ANES publishes no item-level cells. Values keep the source's three decimals.
Capture provenance
- box:Politics / analysis/the-outlier-quadrant/data.json
- Modified 2026-06-17 · SHA-256 b8545f150371ba32800faf925402f102004cc8a721a8f635931d5a674b8a0bef
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- Aggregates of the General Social Survey (NORC at the University of Chicago) and the ANES Cumulative Data File (American National Election Studies), both free to use with citation; computed by the article's analysis pipeline.
