What's your political orientation?

PS: Why does firefox not recognize the word statist?

 

My thought is that to guarantee housing, jobs, etc. a significant amount of government control is going to be required. A guarantee is different from a program to assist, at least in my reading of his post.

 

That makes a lot of sense, but while that may be beyond "liberal" I think that it may push into the bounds of socialism as opposed to statism. I agree that a guarantee is a much larger commitment than simply assistance, but in and of itself it does not control personal behavior and does not directly cause statism, although it could be an unfortunate side-effect as time progresses and government grows.

 

Fiercely independent and highly recommend

Independent Voting

 

Independent voting is always the best policy, especially in our extremely inadequate two party system.

 

Being independent of any party is not necessarily related to your political orientation. You can be a fiercely independent libertarian or a fiercely independent conservative.

 

My guess is that most on here will know how I voted.

 

True. There are a great many who are fed up with both Dems and GOP.

 

I'm mildly conservative, moderate Republican, RINO - whatever you want to call it. I believe in limited but active government.

I wouldn't ever vote for the current Republican party because I can't identify with too many things the party stands for. I would, however, consider voting Republican on a state level.

Since I'm not a US citizen, no one cares who I'd vote for anyways. Makes my life easier. I can complain, but I don't have to decide whom to vote for.

 

Conservative Democrat that leans Republican from time to time so I don't consider myself a die hard anything. All I can say, is that I am NOT liberal.

 

I'm somewhat surprised by the results of this unscientific poll of DegreeInfo users. I figured everybody would lean more liberal due to academia's leftist slant.

 

yea, cause conservatives can't be educated.....

 

I'm pretty confident that the leftward slant of academia is real. I'm not exactly sure how to phrase a search term to come up with the statistics, but if you wish to take the time, you will find there's truth to that particular stereotype; however, I'm quite confident that the correlation is a bit more complex than "educated people are liberal". Also interesting are the differences between degrees, artistic degree holders tend to be liberal while people with more math oriented degrees such as engineering are more likely to be conservative. I wish I could find this page! I was reading about it just a week ago!

One possible explanation: I believe that conservatism is often a cynical outlook (others disagree strongly) because it's a skepticism of government's ability to succeed (dissenters would say it's actually trust in an individuals ability to succeed, but I believe that is generally secondary if present at all). I would imagine that educated people with secure jobs and a friendly outlook on life may prove less cynical of government because, perhaps, they are less cynical in general.

There are two potential reasons I can see why this forum bucks the academic trend.

1. We are unconventional, and many of us are older and have formed our opinions pre-academia.

2. There is significantly less peer pressure in an independent online setting, so no bandwagon effect.

---------------
I've attempted to write as unbiasedly as possible, I know it's not perfect, or even necessarily well done, but please know a sincere attempt was made not to piss anybody off .

 

Rickyjo,

Good post, if you find the supporting article I would be interested in reading it. In the South it doesn't matter what your degree is in so much as the culture itself. I know many folks with liberal arts degrees who are much more conservative than me.

Perhaps we need to define "conservative" and "liberal" in more detail.

I think you are accurate with your points on why this board might be different than expected with the poll.

Thanks for contributing.

 

Thank you so much

I'm looking for some supporting articles now.

I know my two bullet points are largely speculation, but I bet it would make an interesting research paper.

 

I just found a third potential reason more people are calling themselves conservative than liberal.

"Conservatives" Are Single-Largest Ideological Group

Apparently twice as many people call themselves conservative as liberal on a national scale, this is likely inaccurate as a higher portion of democratic party members term themselves "moderate". I just skimmed the article because this wasn't actually the poll I'm looking for.

Also interesting:
Party affiliation is extremely different than self-labeled political spectrum identity.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/114016/state-states-political-party-affiliation.aspx

 

Well, this isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination but here is the stats on Mccain vs. obama
Election Polls -- Vote by Groups, 2008
The correlation is there, but not as strongly as I expected. I would rather have partly or ideology stats than election, but this will do for now. The big difference is between college and high school grads. Please read the article, this snippet does not tell much of the story.

College
55=O 45=M

High school
47=O 53=M​

Those who did not complete high school swung strongly back in favor of Obama.

I'm wondering what "only college" means. Are those people who dropped out, got a GED and later completed a degree? Is that a group that could identify more strongly with some of us?

I think that another statistic I'd like to find is university teachers, the conservative pundits claim constantly that they are the truly liberal ones (yes I listen, no I don't usually identify with them).

 

Uh, no -- because academics are, in general, overwhelmingly liberal. Conservatives represent a mere 9% of professors:

Why Are Academics So Liberal?

And those with college degrees are more likely to be liberal.

What an odd retort you've made, both unrelated to the spirit of what I said and uninformed on the facts of academic liberalism. Perhaps you can use the edit feature to remove it? If you do, I'll remove your quote from this post as well to spare you the embarrassment.

 

I am wondering if the reason could also be that online degrees are more geared towards business versus liberal arts?