Ian Frazier's latest, Hogs Wild ("They're feral, destructive, and spreading"), didn't make it into the New Yorker's online edition. I wonder why?

The presence of feral hogs in a state is a strong indicator of its support for Bush. Twenty-three of the twenty-eight states with feral hogs voted for Bush. That's more than four-fifths; states that went for Kerry, by contrast, were feral-hog states less than a fifth of the time.
The solidly feral-hog South was, of course, solidly for Bush. The small islands there without wild hogs--Little Rock, Raleigh Durham--voted for Kerry. Democrats who predicted a Kerry win in Florida in '04 might have been less confident had they known that all of Florida's sixty-seven counties, even its urban ones, have feral hogs. Texas, a gimme for Bush, is the state in the Union with the most feral hogs. All the Northeastern states voted for Kerry. None of the Northeastern states have feral hogs--with one exception. That is New Hamphshire.... Is it merely coincidence that New Hampshire (Kerry fifty per cent, Bush forty-nine percent) is the Northeastern state Bush came closest to winning?

Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois are among the states that have acquired feral-hog populations since 1982. Of the twenty-two counties (all rural) that have feral hogs in those states, seventeen voted for Bush in '04. Ohio and Indiana both have more feral hog counties than Illinois; Bush won [SIC] Ohio and Indiana, lost Illinois.

A prominent feature of the red state--blue state maps is the sweep of red coming up from Texas and the South through the center of the country. Experts say that feral hogs are starting to do the same.

Coincidence? You be the judge.

Frazier has a labored explanation for why California, in which 57 of 58 counties have feral hogs, still votes Democratic. I'd like to think that, as so often, California is just ahead of the rest of the country....

Reward good behavior and buy the New Yorker so they can pay Seymour Hersh to keep reporting!

UPDATE Welcome, Brad DeLong readers!