That Vermont is among the most liberal places in the United States is not exactly a revelation. But a fun little project from Amazon.com reveals a new slice of political leanings in the Green Mountains.

With the helpful disclaimer “Just remember, books aren’t votes,” the Internet’s leading purveyor of books and other stuff created its own red state-blue state map, based on the books its customers bought in the past 30 days (e.g. Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope is a “blue” book, while Mitt Romney’s memoir Turnaround is a “red” book). Crunching the numbers, Amazon found that 58 percent of book purchases in Vermont come down on the liberal side. That’s the highest percentage of any state in America, although Washington DC beats Vermont — a whopping 67 percent of the books purchased there are considered “blue.”

Vermont is in pretty rare company as a “blue” state on this map. Just four states plus the District of Columbia purchase more liberal books than conservative ones on Amazon, while 45 states prefer right-leaning books. (California comes down smack in the middle with a 50-50 split.) Overall, 57 percent of political books sold on Amazon are considered conservative.

Another fun stat: the most conservative state, Mississippi, is more “red” than Vermont or D.C. are “blue” — there, 73 percent of the books sold lean right. Bet Bill McKibben won’t pay a visit there on his next book tour.

After the jump, find out what Amazon says are Vermont’s top-selling “blue” and “red” books.

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Tyler Machado was the digital media manager at Seven Days. He mostly worked behind the scenes making sure the website, email newsletters and social media feeds stayed in tip-top shape.

4 replies on “Vermont is the Most Liberal State in the Union — When It Comes to Reading”

  1. I think the problem with this kind of research is that it reproduces the
    notion of “preaching to the choir,”: by assuming (unfortunately
    probably correctly) that people who espouse certain views read arguments
    that further support their views, rather than challenging their own, or
    even better, working to understand others.

  2. It should be no wonder that these sorts of echo chambers exist on websites that track the user in the ways that Amazon does. One who clicks on “red” stuff more tends to see (and therefore purchase) more “red” stuff. So, given the limited screen real estate, time, and money of their users’, Amazon pushes what we “want” (as determined by our viewing history) and we purchase accordingly.

    Other readers who liked this also viewed:
    Amazon personalized picks for you:
    etc, etc.

  3. Actually it just shows that VT is particularly partisan and close minded. While nearly the entire rest of the country is reading about Mitt Romeny, likely to learn more about him, how he came to be who he is, and whether he would make a good president. In VT most people just don’t care, vote for Obama and move on.

  4. Many of us “flaming liberals”, rather than _buy_ everything we’re interested in, like to patronize that bastion of “communism”, our local library.

    Which puts these stats in a slightly different light – the country ain’t all “red”.

    (And I would like to personally thank whoever got that color to stick, for “Republicans” – same color as “Red China”, etc.)

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