In the New York Times article, “View of the World From New Hampshire and Iowa,” Juliet Lapidos details the constituencies in the first Republican primary state contests.  With data from Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge, she breaks down state-by-state demographics, beginning with a look at the large number of white people in both states:

This is not surprising: Iowa is 88.6 percent white, and New Hampshire 92.2 percent white. Compare those numbers to the country as a whole, which is 63.7 percent white.

Large white populations are not the only ways in which these two early-voting states, which play such a significant role in choosing presidential nominees, fail to reflect the United States in the 21^st century.

I asked Andrew Beveridge, a sociologist who has done consulting work for The Times and is the CEO of Social Explorer, to help me put the demographic differences between Iowa, New Hampshire and the United States into perspective.

She lists a number of 2010 census numbers about these state populations and how they compare to the rest of the US, and concludes that:

New Hampshire and Iowa are less ethnically diverse, have less unemployment, and have more married-couple households than the rest of the country. New Hampshire does better, and Iowa slightly worse than the national average on household income and college graduates. Stopping well short of saying that Iowa and New Hampshire aren’t “the real America,” it’s clear that these states aren’t average, either.

She goes on to show what the most “average” states are in each category (racial composition, education, median income, etc.).

For the full rundown of data and analysis, visit the New York Times.