Acts of God and Politics

400 Score Years

Acts of God By State

Cause of Death	Dates	Blue States	Red States
Lightning¹	1959-1994	816	2393
Flood²	1998-2002	63	333
Tornado³	1950-1995	815	3328
Earthquake⁴	1950-2003	370	177
Hurricanes⁵
Total		2064	3931

Note that when the Red and Blue States are normalized for population, the number of citizens in each group is approximately the same. This indicates that Acts of God kill twice as many people in Red States as Blue.

Courtesy of Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman
University of Michigan under Creative Commons License

References:

1 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

2 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

3 www.disastercenter.com

4 U.S. Geological Survey

5 U.S. Geological Survey