If the opinion polls are correct, Sen. Ted Cruz will be shown a thing or two on Tuesday by the New York voters he’s been insulting by going on about fellow Republican presidential contender Donald Trump’s “New York values.’’

Everyone knows what values he meant, Cruz says. We sure do. Cruz meant freedom, respect, diversity and striving. But he disdains those values when it means gays are free, women are respected, and immigrants strive. Unfortunately for Cruz, those all-inclusive values help build prosperity — and win national elections.

Here are some of our New York values:

Hard work. If you can do the job, you can have it. The same goes for a house, an apartment, or even a cake for a same-sex wedding. Offices and entire communities are better off because they’re open-minded to diversity. You can make it here — as long as you can do the work.

Your business is your business. Your family is your family, and, above all, your self is your self. Cruz managed to write 76 pages in 2007 defending Texas’ wish to regulate sales of sex toys — but would repeal the Dodd-Frank law regulating banks that can (and sometimes do) sink economies. Cruz also opposes nearly all gun control. Here’s another New York value, Mr. Cruz: New York City’s homicide rate is less than half of Houston’s.

We’re in it together. New Yorkers feel insulted when GOP operatives assert they would have won the 2012 election if it wasn’t for all these people who really don’t count, don’t like to work, and aren’t really American. In New York, they’re our neighbors. Or us.

Trump, Kasich and Cruz gather at Republican gala

New York values work. To illustrate, just compare the economic health of states that Cruz might carry in November as the GOP nominee and those where, as in Tuesday’s New York’s Republican primary, he likely hasn’t a prayer.

Consider this: Of the 12 richest U.S. states (plus Washington, D.C.), all 12 voted for President Barack Obama twice. The 11 least-wealthy states all voted against Obama. In a related vein, of the 20 states that send the most tax money to Washington, relative to how much they get back in federal spending, 16 voted Democrat blue in the past four presidential elections. And 16 of 20 states that sucked out the most cash were reliably Republican red in their presidential choice.

“ New York values work because they value getting the job done and leaving people alone. ”

Moreover, almost 70% of presidential-campaign donations from Internet-industry figures — the apex of American entrepreneurship — go to Democrats. Pick any entrepreneurial center in America — Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, Austin — and it’s reliably blue.

New York values work because they value getting the job done and leaving people alone. When it’s time for business, we don’t spend our time on the right to bring guns to church or closing bathrooms to the 1,000 or fewer Americans who undergo gender-reassignment surgery each year.

One remarkable aspect of politics since 1990 has been Republicans’ denseness in writing off the precise demographic that economic change had made clearly ascendant by 1970. New York values don’t just hold in New York, but in states along both coasts that have come to the obvious conclusion that freedom and free enterprise go together. Even southern cities like Charlotte, N.C., aren’t toeing the wing-nut line.

If you can do a job that requires you to think independently, let alone create new technology, odds are that you don’t need a politician to police your bedroom. You typically will vote against political parties that start culture wars and declare you the enemy. And if there are more who think like you over time — and in the U.S., there are — your side wins.

Corporate America is speaking out against what Cruz’s “values” remark represents. In Georgia, the governor vetoed a billthat would have guaranteed the right not to attend gay weddings (really), and would have allowed church-related employers to discriminate against gays. Georgia reportedly lost two economic-development prospects over this legislation, and officials feared it would sink Atlanta’s chances to host the Super Bowl.

No need to wonder why: freedom and respect aren’t just New York values, they’re American values.