&gt; So how do you determine in what direction states are moving<p>Who cares?<p>&gt; Is not as if states are independent of people.<p>But people are independent of states. Or to bring the conversation to a less retarded level: plenty of states are very, very sparsely populated and they tend strongly to one party. Measuring their redness or blueness is not interesting because their population is a rounding error. The number of red states vs. blue states does not tell you the direction of the country, it&#x27;s a predictor of very little except governorship and the U.S. Senate.