Rhody Confirmation Bias: An Anecdote

This past Friday, Justin wrote a piece for The Current about Rhode Island's business-unfriendliness (worst in the nation). Not that causation=correlation or anything, ahem, but he ended the piece with this bit:

The page for Rhode Island also presents data and rankings based on the U.S. Census. Notably, the state had the second worst debt per capita in 2011 ($9,113) and the highest Democratic voting percentage (61.1%). (emphasis mine)

Earlier in the week, I heard a couple people in the office talking about how Governor Chafee's stance regarding the Pleau case was nuts and how they were very disappointed in him. In the past, they (like most of us) have complained about how bad things are in the state. As for Chafee, they had liked him as Mayor of Warwick, after all (and they like Avedisian, too!), but they don't know what happened to him. They even voted for him when they usually vote Democrat (though, of course, they're "unafilliated")! Just goes to show that they get screwed whenever they vote for someone who's not a Democrat, I guess. Right? Right?

It's no wonder some of you (and I'm getting there...) think this place is hopeless.