Corruption vs. Republican: An interesting correlation

(Cross-posted with Scientia Publica)

Hey Kids,

Okay. I know this isn't a shameless, juvenile attack on some idiot douchebag (like my usual MO), but I thought this was interesting.  Hell, if I'm right here I might have to start going plural in my Daily Douche award.

USA Today has a graphic showing the most corrupt states in the US.  From the article:

On a per-capita basis, however, Illinois ranks 18th for the number of public corruption convictions the federal government has won from 1998 through 2007, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Department of Justice statistics.

Louisiana, Alaska and North Dakota all fared worse than the Land of Lincoln in that analysis.

If you look at their map and compare it to this year's election results, you notice a correlation stand emerge.  The "top-tier" corrupt states overwhelmingly went for McCain (10/16) and tend to be more Red in general.  In fact, if my numbers are correct, the 2008 Red States had an average of 3.93 (+/- 2.34 standard deviation) convictions per 10,000 people.  In contrast, Blue states had only 2.72 (+/- 1.31) convictions.   That's 44% more convictions in Red States than Blue.

Now being trained in statistics, I involuntarily react to these comparisons by saying "correlation does not equal causation!"  So I'm willing to take this with a grain of salt.  It could be that Red States just get more convictions, but given the current state of the Department of Justice, I think not.