Making lemonade out of Chronicle report's lemons: These graphs purporting to show blue states are as charitable as red speak for themselves.
"When the Chronicle of Philanthropy released an analysis of charitable giving in America earlier this month, it included one surprisingly consistent finding: Red states contributed the most. As we reported at the time, 19 of the 20 most charitable states voted for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2012. But, it turns out, the Obama states weren’t exactly slouches. In a new, Thursday blog post, Nathan Dietz, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy, reviews a number of measures of civic engagement — beyond simple cash donations — and finds little red-blue divide." -- Niraj Chokshi, the Washington Post