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Did you read the article? He goes back and talks about the founding cultures of these regions. The partisan nature of it is also a consequence of that rather than politics causing the divides.

The author brings up racial divides several times and show variance graphs based on several races, but is obviously not comprehensively in this short article.

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The sub caption refers to “Centuries-old settlement patterns — and the attitudes they spawned about government.” The implication is that more government would increase life expectancy. The founding cultures are a real thing, but they don’t map in a stable way to partisanship. The south and Appalachia were core parts of the FDR coalition.

I suspect what you’re actually seeing is differences in food and lifestyle traditions.

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