Well, government jobs anyway. According to a new Gallup poll, the South leads all other regions of the country in the proportion of people who would prefer working for the government than for a business. Nationwide, the number is 35 percent; in the South, it’s 42 percent. (The East comes in second, at 37 percent.)

This is odd, given that the South is the most Republican region of the country, and that just 26 percent of Republicans, as opposed to 44 percent of Democrats, would prefer a government job. Or maybe not, given that Southerners have a long tradition of denouncing the gummint even as they feast on federal handouts. I used to live there.

Unfortunately, Gallup doesn’t include religion in the survey.