Are new hampshire and Maine libertarian?

[Brittain33]

Maine tops the charts for taxes as a share of per capita income. That's a measure of both how high taxes are and how much poorer the state is than places like New York or New Jersey that would otherwise compete. It's hard to call that libertarian.

What distinguishes Maine and New Hampshire, I suppose, is lower rates of religiosity than most other parts of the country. That translates loosely into libertarianism on a few fronts.

[Brittain33]

Did you just say that Maine has a lower amount of religiosity than normal? That's crazy and you know it.

I'm pretty certain New England states have lower religious observance than other states. Definitely true for New Hampshire. Do you have data to the contrary?

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/03/09/number_of_ne_catholics_tumbles/

"Silk said the study found that Irish-Americans, along with people of Jewish ancestry and Asian-Americans, are disproportionately represented among those who report no religious affiliation.

"The other thing is that New England Catholics have become sort of like New England Protestants - not particularly attached" to religion, he said. Northern New England is now less religious than the Pacific Northwest - long the nation's least religious region - the study found."

[Brittain33]

Talk to New Hampshire Republicans or conservative/libertarian independents (and I have) and they'll say just the opposite, that its the "Massholes" that are ruining their state.

Talk to anyone in New Hampshire or Maine about any trend they dislike and you will hear that "Massholes" are ruining their state. It proves nothing.

[Brittain33]

100 years ago I will bet that Northern New England would have beat many other regions of the country in religiousity. Why has this been almost completely reversed since then? The children of overly religious parents breaking away yet keeping there affliations to there churches. I mean there is almost nothing Puritanical about the Congregationalist or Unitarian churches anymore.

I think it reflects national trends. Mainstream Protestantism, ethnic white Catholicism, and all branches of Judaism other than ultra-Orthodox have seen big drop-offs. Evangelical Protestantism, both native and immigrant, are where you see the biggest increases and they're largely absent from New England outside of some evangelical congregations in Maine and immigrants in the Boston area. New England denominations aren't behaving much differently than they are elsewhere in the U.S., but their proportions are very different.

The influence of the Catholic Church has declined substantially because of generational change (in addition to liberalization, people move more so they're less bound to their home parishes) and because of sex abuse scandals.

Holmes... if you want to see why Catholic observance in Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island has dropped off... many of these congregants have cousins in Quebec, and the trends there are even more marked.

[Brittain33]

I am not going to dispute your point, but I find it funny because the only affluent Masshole I know of who has left Massachusetts to live in that part of the state is Mitt Romney. (Of course there are others.)

Not quite accurate. A large part of the migration is Massachusetts residents retiring to their second homes, which are generally not in the Southern part of the state, but in the Lakes Region. If you look at the areas that have swung the most, it is in Belknap, Carroll, Merrimack, and Grafton. What these hold in common is that almost no one works in real positions, but in the tourism/temporary resident industry, especially in the former two. The type of affluent Massacushetts residents who have flooded in here are very socially liberal.

In addition, most are economically "liberal" as well. Most support the income tax not because they like taxes, but because most of their income is made in Massachusetts, they would not have to pay it, whereas they do have to pay local property taxes. So most favor getting rid of the property taxes in favor of the state income one. They are the bank-rollers and backers of the left-wing of the Democratic party in the state. This incentive structure by the way also applies to commuters in the south.