PoliticsI was poking around Fund Race 2008 and was curious how different scientist professions were giving in regards to political parties in the USA. Below is what I found....
| profession | Repub # | Dem # | Repub $ | Dem $ | Ratio # | Dem $ |
| mathematician | 18 | 98 | 13740 | 72837 | 5.44 | 5.3 |
| physicist | 86 | 532 | 65722 | 425105 | 6.19 | 6.47 |
| chemist | 172 | 397 | 111058 | 247742 | 2.31 | 2.23 |
| biochemist | 23 | 117 | 16567 | 100415 | 5.09 | 6.06 |
| biologist | 27 | 278 | 13809 | 156868 | 10.3 | 11.36 |
| geologist | 321 | 294 | 321835 | 195143 | 0.92 | 0.61 |
| electrical engineer | 321 | 374 | 184539 | 244717 | 1.17 | 1.33 |
| mechanical engineer | 155 | 149 | 109542 | 86466 | 0.96 | 0.79 |
| civil engineer | 555 | 419 | 488337 | 284625 | 0.75 | 0.58 |
| chemical engineer | 123 | 97 | 87113 | 54524 | 0.79 | 0.63 |
| economist | 205 | 798 | 239043 | 784461 | 3.89 | 3.28 |
I suspect that geologists are explicable when you note how many are employed in natural resources industries (e.g., oil).
Comments
You should have checked "astronomer" (53/5). Adding in astrophysicists (26/0) gives a net ratio of 15.8, a record.
Of course, if we picked the president I'm guessing the results of the last couple of elections would have been substantially different. :-)
Posted by: ethan | June 10, 2008 4:53 PM
that makes sense. space scientists have their heads in the clouds.... ;-)
Posted by: razib | June 10, 2008 5:10 PM
And biologists are apparently the cheapest scientists, whereas economists have a lot of money to throw around (comes with the territory, I guess).
Posted by: Brian | June 10, 2008 5:27 PM
"chemist" is a little surprising, since most of the ones i know tend to lean republican. i'm not surprised by the ratio under "civil engineer", though:
Q: how do you know that God is a civil engineer?
A: just look at human beings! what other type of engineer would put the plumbing through the playground?
thanks for this post. very interesting.
Posted by: Tevebaugh | June 10, 2008 7:08 PM
I think that the numbers are seriously skewed by GW Bush. With an old fashioned rational conservative (e.g. GHW Bush) I think that there'd be many more Rs.
In general, more practically / materially oriented people tend R. In a different survey you published, nurses and HS teachers showed up much more R than I would have expected, given the two groups common interest in government spending on health and education. But these two professions include a lot of job-oriented, practical people. (A second factor, especially in nursing, might be religious motivations.)
Posted by: John Emerson | June 10, 2008 7:10 PM
As a geologist, it all comes down to mining and petroleum geology.
Neither are friendly to the environment. And some of the biggest professional-scientist audiences to global-warming skepticism come from petroleum geologists. The Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists is one of the last professional organizations to have a completely backward stance on AGW.
Posted by: Miguelito | June 10, 2008 7:50 PM
I used the Huff Po's FundRace as an assignment in my interactive design class last semester. The assignment was to coax unexpected data from a select.
Congratulations Razib!
Posted by: Bob Calder | June 10, 2008 8:00 PM
The trends seen here will almost certainly reflect the acceptance of ID/creationism. [Dissenters from Darwinism]
Posted by: natural cynic | June 10, 2008 8:06 PM
Take a look at these numbers:
Profession==============R#====D#===(Ratio)=====R$======D$===(Ratio)
programmer____________522__1,135__(2.17)__374,480___74,7653__(2.00)
computer programmer__416__1,176__(2.83)__259,097___785,734__(3.03)
software programmer____14____26___(1.86)____6,703____12,157__(1.81)
computer engineer______58___134___(2.31)___29,138___117,078__(4.02)
software engineer____1,030__2,926__(2.84)__742,473__1,843,831__(2.49)
computer scientist______48____238__(4.96)___36,868____204,255__(5.54)
Posted by: R Hampton | June 10, 2008 8:32 PM
Notice that (except for the electrical and software engineers) that engineers lean towards the GOP as well. I think it comes down to two factors.
First, the percentage working in industry. The Republican Party has, throughout its history, been the party of business; thus people working in industry (well, at least the management) would be more GOP-friendly.
But that wouldn't explain the chemists or the computer experts, who probably work in industry at rate as high (or higher) than geologists and engineers. I think it may have to do with the culture common with geology and engineering. I notice , in my limited experience (undergraduate Earth Sciences), that the geology and engineering undergraduates seem to be more conservative than the student body at large. Also, many of the geology majors start in engineering.
Posted by: Christopher | June 10, 2008 9:53 PM
I didn't realize that economics was considered one of the sciences.
Posted by: deang | June 10, 2008 10:20 PM
remember that these are self-reported professions. i think by and large someone who is working as a mathematician is working in math in a really obvious way. OTOH, i think 'biologist' might cover lots of different categories (various types of techs all the way to research scientists). 'software engineering' is a catchall field where you have people doing 'blue-collar' code-monkey stuff and then search industrial hard-core professionals. ee, civil, me and ce engineering are totally different because unlike software engineering they're fields constrained by licensing regimes and an expectation that you have an undergraduate background in engineering (though obviously people from physical and mathematical science backgrounds do move horizontally into engineering as well).
Posted by: razib | June 11, 2008 12:22 AM
Here's a pie chart from the American Geological Institute showing the proportion of geologists in various industries. Oil and mining account for 55% of all geologists. And those two industries skew much more Republican, I imagine, than "industry" in general - environmental regulation affects them directly. (And the oil industry geologists not only imagine that their jobs are threatened by attempts to slow anthropogenic global warming; they learned in their sedimentary geology classes in the 1970's that climate has fluctuated for hundreds of millions of years, and they make the unreasonable assumption that anything that was natural in the past must be natural in the present.)
That would also explain why they tend to be Republicans, but not anti-evolution. They also studied paleontology and historical geology in school; they aren't going to have patience with people who think the Earth is 6000 years old.
Posted by: Kim | June 11, 2008 8:38 AM
Isn't it also the case that conservatives tend to be richer and therefore to donate more?
Posted by: David Marjanović | June 11, 2008 12:45 PM
Isn't it also the case that conservatives tend to be richer and therefore to donate more?
well, not in absolute levels in this cycle. this is also below the $2500 donations cap.
Posted by: razib | June 11, 2008 12:49 PM
Academic geologists, however, are overwhelmingly liberal. At least, anecdotally. I've only ever met one conservative geologist in academia; most of them are liberals ranging from apathetic to firebreathing, slanted heavily toward the latter.
Posted by: octopod | June 11, 2008 1:07 PM
Well, the GOP has been as unfriendly to the academy as its been friendly with mammon.
As an aside, I also suspect that the geoblogers lean leftward, and are probably disproportionally academics.
Posted by: Christopher | June 11, 2008 1:44 PM
I worked in a computer lab once alongside both programmers and electrical engineers. The former were all flaming liberals while the latter were all diehard conservatives. It made for some interesting conversations.
Posted by: Kevin W. Parker | June 11, 2008 3:25 PM
I agree with John Emerson about the skew due to GW Bush. I think there is a second very important skew, which is the race between Obama and Clinton. I suspect numbers were closer in many professions three months ago, and will be closer again in three months.
This really isn't a very good way to estimate political preferences by occupation. These stats are only what they are, a snapshot during an unusual political season.
Posted by: infopractical | June 11, 2008 5:23 PM
This really isn't a very good way to estimate political preferences by occupation. These stats are only what they are, a snapshot during an unusual political season.
but it shouldn't shift the rank order.
Posted by: razib | June 11, 2008 5:24 PM
Since the profession name is self-reported, I wouldn't be surprised if academics are over-represented in these samples. Those with postgraduate degrees in the listed fields may have very different job titles if they are employed in the private sector.
It's also useful to speculate how many of these donors are simply squaring themselves with the conventional political wisdom of a Democratic victory. What did the numbers look like during the last election? I'd be very interested to see a statistical analysis of donations per party correlated with expectations of that party winning.
Posted by: Staash | June 12, 2008 8:26 PM
So, it's all about the money and funding, eh?
Any talk about voting for something like education in evolution and creationism isn't important.
The geology case shows voting left or right often is I bet 90% all about FISCAL conservatism not SOCIAL conservatism isn't about social issues or gay marriage, that all takes a backseat to whatever party secures your paycheck.
Posted by: deadpost | June 15, 2008 2:58 PM
What's the statistical difference between 52% geological republicans and 48% geological democrats with that sample size?
Posted by: Silver Fox | August 20, 2008 1:31 PM