But it isn't necessarily for the reasons it appears to be on the surface. The "reason" Republican states receive more Federal aid than they contribute in taxes may very well be the result of a complex web of interacting causes and connections that are only remotely associated with ideology, and I'm sure that even that reason would look very different to opposed partisan analysts studying the subject. You can count on both Republican and Democratic researchers coming up with very different explanations for this phenomenon.

Statistics can be used to shed light on a specific case or incident, by comparing results in situations that are well controlled, that is, EXPERIMENTAL controls. But those situations are not common in social sciences research, its near-impossible to rule out the effects of extraneous factors. And statistical comparisons certainly can't be used to determine the validity of a particular ideology applied to all cases in general.