That makes sense. Public goods (eg from govt spending) have more impact, higher ROI in densely populated areas. So policies that are genuinely stupid for rural TN make perfect sense in MA

Cool chart! Definitely implies democrats get elected in highly educated states / smart people vote democrat (virtuous cycle). But! Could there be other factors skewing the data? Don’t K-12 teachers in blue states needs an advanced degree? Aren’t there more colleges (per capita) in MA than any other state? Just having all those teachers and professors could move the needle without contributing to the blue-state=smart story.

Data point for DC likely has very high leverage. How would the linear parameters and R squared values look if you exclude DC? What would that imply?