Why are you conservative? Or libertarian, republican, democrat, socialist?
How do people reach these different conclusions? We like to think that our politics are based on rational analysis. We analyze what conservatives and liberals write, weigh their opinions and draw conclusions based on facts and evidence.
But it turns out that something else is probably going on. I can predict your political party accurately if I only know what you do for a living.
Here’s why I say it: When you give money to a political candidate, the government needs the candidate’s campaign to ask you what your skills are. This information was transferred to the Federal Election Commission.
Verdant Labs took that data and created a database that shows how people’s skills predict their politics.
Eighty-nine percent of people who work in the fossil-fuel industry donate to Republicans. Teachers mostly (79%) vote for Democrats.
64 percent of flight attendants favor Democrats, but pilots (62%) prefer Republicans. What is the reason?
In my new video, Rob Henderson, who studies political psychology at Cambridge University, tries to explain.
For pilots, he said, “Their job is if they take off and land and that everybody lives. Whereas the flight attendants’ job depends more on, ‘How do people feel about you?'” Those differences lead to different political parties. different.
The diversity of work goes on and on. Bartenders mostly give to Democrats (89%), while truck drivers prefer Republicans (69%). Business owners lean to the right (62%). Musicians lean left (86%).
“Left-leaning people tend to be more open-minded, more creative, more interested in abstract ideas,” says Henderson. Perhaps that explains why most artists support Democrats.
“Right-handed people tend to be conscientious, conservative,” says Henderson. That might explain the pilots and business owners.
Psychologists overwhelmingly favor Democrats (91%), while military personnel favor Republicans (60%).
Henderson lived in both of those worlds. “I’m a PhD candidate in psychology at Cambridge,” he said. “Before, my life was very different.”
Henderson served eight years in the Air Force. There, he said, most of his friends were conservative, and he was sometimes ridiculed for holding a liberal position.
“It was all good natured,” he said. “A person can hold different views but still be a good person.”
But now that he is in academia, he says politics is not good. He sees a lot of hate. He thinks it’s because increasingly, the left and the right don’t mix. Recent surveys show that now 80% of us have few or no friends across the street.
It’s hard to make friends with people you’ve never met. In today’s colleges, there are few conservatives. One of the professors’ study found 12 Democrats and Republicans. In social science departments, it was 44 to 1. Communication, 108 to zero!
“People don’t have Republican friends, they don’t have conservatives or liberals to interact with on a day-to-day basis,” Henderson said.
Not spending time with people who think differently makes it easier to hate. To understand the other side, shouldn’t we talk more?
That’s what I try to do in my videos – bring both sides together to argue. Then they learn a little about the other side.
Many still hate each other anyway.
Although grocers overwhelmingly donate to Democrats, beer wholesalers (78%) favor Republicans. Although most truck drivers give to Republicans, taxi drivers (85%) give to Democrats.
Pediatricians (79%) favor Democrats, but urologists (76%) prefer Republicans.
Builders (74%) prefer Democrats, while homebuilders (77%) prefer Republicans. That one I get; Builders hate dealing with Democrats’ stupid rules.
Carpenters (64%) give to Democrats; plumbers (60%) for Republicans. Episcopal clergy (91%) as Democrats; Catholic priests (73%) favor Republicans.
Can you explain? If so, please explain it to the rest of us.
John Stossel is the creator of Stossel TV and the author of “Give Me a Break: How I Exposed the Hucksters, Cheats, and Fraudsters That Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.”
