It might be interesting for you to look at how many scientists are liberal compared to educated folks in general. Scientists is a subset of PhDs and Masters' degrees, and from what I remember, you're more likely to be liberal the more educated you are.
I remembered that there was a post about this on fivethirtyeight.com a while back, so I dug it out of the archives. Although the graph only shows those with any post-graduate education, it does show that since 1980 the Democratic share of the vote has increased among those with a post-graduate education. Just by inspecting the graph, the share of the Democratic vote in 2008 matches the number of scientists who self-identified as Democrats. Back to my previous post, the loss of highly educated voters probably has to do with the rampant anti-intellectualism among conservatives. I am sort of worried about this, for a variety of reasons, too. By losing many of the highly educated voters, conservatives are losing the people who could come up to effective policy alternatives to the Democratic agenda. An effective policy alternative (i.e. not the recently released healthcare "proposal" by Boehner) is exactly what the Republican party needs, too, if it ever wants to become a party interested in governance. Unfortunately, we're stuck with a minority party seemingly only interested in empty protest. I don't think that's very healthy for our Republic.
How are we defining "liberal" and "conservative"? By party lines (democrats vs republicans) or by ideology (liberals support larger government, more social services and conservatives support smaller government, free market, etc.)? The first study you cited in your previous post used the term "democratic" and then switched to the term "liberal." Though there is overlap between the ideology and the parties, there are still some differences. I align myself with the Democratic party but I admit that sometimes they can be a bit too much. Likewise, I am certain that there are some conservatives who think Fox News is crazy.
ReplyDeleteIn general, I see "liberals" as more willing to change the status quo to improve the current institutions (even if sometimes they are mislead and a bit too fanatical) and "conservatives" as less willing (ditto). I believe higher education gears students toward studying the mistakes of the past. Instead of weighing the pros and cons of current institutions, students are taught that the status quo must be tinkered, hence swaying them toward being liberals.
I must admit that I am basing this opinion off my own experiences in human rights oriented sociology and history classes. I think only two of them were reasonably balanced in studying the pros and cons of the current state of human rights and the rest were kind of fanatical about how everything needed to be scrapped and rebuilt.
I agree that it is sad that Conservatives are loosing bright, reasonable policymakers. I once read up on Barry Goldwater and his policies. Surprisingly, I agreed with his policies (or at least acknowledged their validity).
I suppose switching to party as opposed to ideology was a bit misleading, but that was the best I could find about the changes in political views among those with post-graduate educations. I'm sure with a deeper look we could find more specific information about the differences between scientists and other highly educated people. One thing that worries me is that the difference between the Democratic and Republican parties used to do more with region than ideology. So, the change seen since 1980 might be more a regional realignment than any ideological change.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, one of the worst losses for the Republican party on the policymaker front is Bruce Bartlett. I really enjoy reading all of his blog posts about tax structure or economics at Capital Gains and Gains.