# Conservative dopers -- why do you think the SDMB leans left? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 29, 2016, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218 "2016-09-29T16:57:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2016, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/101 "2016-10-02T04:36:39Z")
> [@Knowed\_Out](#): > > I’m talking about a fundamental aversion Conservatives have to science, and by extension, liberals. That’s the root of the left-leaning political nature of this board. Are 13% percent of the SDMB conservatives atheists? I’d probably be considered conservative by many on the boards and I’m not religious at all. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2016, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/102 "2016-10-02T06:51:36Z")
While I could be wrong, it’s been my impression that most of the scientists in the early atomic age and computer age were mostly conservatives. I note also that conservatives seem to have no problem adopting and using new products born of science and technology, such as cars and airplanes and radios and computers and so forth. It seems to be mostly when science comes into conflict with religion that science and (some) conservatives come to a parting of the ways. And it’s hard to keep a straight face when listening to liberals lay claim to intellectual superiority when they’re responsible for things like “social promotion” in school, where people get passed from grade to grade automatically and without having learned anything, which can result in people graduating from high school unable to read or write at a first or second grade level. Or when they foster and promote social change that results in huge numbers of children born out of wedlock and adults dependent on the government for their subsistence. And most of all for the naivety and gullibility that lead to the creation of communism, which of course resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people over the last century and the repression and privation that those who survived were forced to live under. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2016, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/103 "2016-10-02T07:09:34Z")
Wondering if you could possibly find a broader brush… Communism? Really? How about “ideologically entrenched?” “Utterly judgmental?” “Overstatement in service of rationalization of opposition?” ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2016, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/104 "2016-10-02T09:55:45Z")
Does the SDMB really lean _strongly_ left? There are many right-wing or right-of-center people active in political and economic threads. In addition to active Republicans there are several former Republicans who left the Party recently with reluctance. Yes, there are more on the left than on the right, but that is true of any random group of well-educated people; and this will be amplified to some degree by the birds-of-a-feather or echo-chamber effects. Was there a 2012 poll, Romney vs Obama? What were the numbers? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2016, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/105 "2016-10-02T10:14:32Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Yes, there are more on the left than on the right, but that is true of any random group of well-educated people; and this will be amplified to some degree by the birds-of-a-feather or echo-chamber effects. Underline mine: not all, not any, not everywhere. By my local standards I’m a conservative; in Spain, PSOE voters tend to be less educated than those of PP. Officially, PSOE is to the left of PP, although for some reason PSOE politicians are the ones fascinated with copying American social policies. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2016, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/106 "2016-10-02T19:51:03Z")
OK, so maybe I should have said religious instead of conservative, but the two factions tend to flock together for political reasons. I was just trying to explain one reason for the left-leaning tilt of SDMB. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2016, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/107 "2016-10-02T20:28:34Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Does the SDMB really lean _strongly_ left? Yes. > [@](#): > > Yes, there are more on the left than on the right, but that is true of any random group of well-educated people… Depends on what you mean by well-educated. Republicans dominate for those with bachelor’s degrees; Democrats among the high-school dropouts and post-graduates. > [@](#): > > Was there a 2012 poll, Romney vs Obama? What were the numbers? If it was like every other Presidential poll on the SDMB, Obama got at least 75%. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2016, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/108 "2016-10-02T20:49:25Z")
Just my own likely faulted perception I will give. I get the impression that left leaning folks with good educations tend to think that not so well educated people need more of their lives and decisions managed for them. I am a conservative yet consider myself to be extremely sensitive to the plight of many minorities. My solutions are nothing like the solutions I see on the left. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2016, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/109 "2016-10-02T21:49:33Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > …Depends on what you mean by well-educated. Republicans dominate for those with bachelor’s degrees; Democrats among the high-school dropouts and post-graduates… Cite please? Pew 2015 says: Post-graduate experience 56% Dem - 36% Rep College degree but no post-grad experience 48% Dem - 43% Rep > **[Party Identification Trends, 1992-2014](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/04/07/party-identification-trends-1992-2014/)** > > Pew Research Center has been tracking the party affiliation of the general public for over 20 years. Explore the party ID data for two dozen demographic subgroups, categorized by gender, race, education, generation, and religious affiliation. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2016, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/110 "2016-10-02T21:54:32Z")
There’s an adage which seems to hold true here: the right think the left are wrong; the left think the right are evil. One only has to look at the portrayals of the candidates in the various elections: the Democrat candidate is a saint against whom no word may be uttered; the Republican candidate is a demon in human flesh. The same holds this side of the Atlantic too with Labour and not-Labour, most especially Tories and UKIP. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2016, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/111 "2016-10-02T21:57:47Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > There’s an adage which seems to hold true here: the right think the left are wrong; the left think the right are evil. One only has to look at the portrayals of the candidates in the various elections: the Democrat candidate is a saint against whom no word may be uttered; the Republican candidate is a demon in human flesh. The same holds this side of the Atlantic too with Labour and not-Labour, most especially Tories and UKIP. Not according to many of the conservatives in my office – Obama is an evil Muslim atheist Manchurian-candidate terrorist, and Hillary conspired to murder hundreds (including the Benghazi victims) for vague and undefined reasons. And most of the liberals I know think George W was dumb but not evil. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2016, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/112 "2016-10-03T00:04:19Z")
> [@Totenfeier](#): > > To go absurdly broad, I think that, to American liberals, the main problem with people is that they are _ignorant_ and need to be _educated_, whereas, to American conservatives, the main problem with people is that they are _immoral_ and need to be _controlled_ and, if possible, _saved_… > [@Quartz](#): > > There’s an adage which seems to hold true here: the right think the left are wrong; the left think the right are evil… With regard to this, there’s a notable phenomenon of “belief clustering” that corresponds to what we call the right & left of the political spectrum: > [@](#): > > [Tragic vs. Utopian View of Human Nature – Ben Casnocha](http://casnocha.com/2009/10/tragic-vs-utopian-view-of-human-nature.html) > Beliefs cluster. If you find out someone is an environmentalist, she probably also is sympathetic to rehabilitating offenders, affirmative action, generous welfare programs, and gay marriage, is a secularist and a professor or student. If you find out someone favors a strong military, he probably also “supports judicial restraint, laissez-faire economic policy, is more likely to be pragmatic than idealistic, censorious than permissive, meritocratic than egalitarian, and gradualist than revolutionary.” If you find out someone is religious, she probably also supports lower taxes. It’s clearly not as simple as one side being consistently more aligned with “rationality” or science either now or throughout history. But there’s a perceptive analysis of this clustering that perhaps **Totenfeier** hints at above, originating with Thomas Sowell, described and expanded by Steven Pinker in _The Blank Slate_ as quoted below. The political right are associated with the “Tragic/Constrained” worldview, and the political left to the “Utopian/Unconstrained” worldview: > [@](#): > > In the Tragic Vision, humans are inherently limited in knowledge, wisdom, and virtue, and all social arrangements must acknowledge those limits. “Mortal things suit mortals best,” wrote Pindar; “from the crooked timber of humanity no truly straight thing can be made,” wrote Kant. The Tragic Vision is associated with Hobbes, Burke, Smith, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, the jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the philosophers Isaiah Berlin and Karl Popper, and the legal scholar Richard Posner. > > In the Utopian Vision, psychological limitations are artifacts that come from our social arrangements, and we should not allow them to restrict our gaze from what is possible in a better world. Its creed might be “Some people see things as they are and ask ‘why?’; I dream things that never were and ask ‘why not?’” The quotation is often attributed to the icon of 1960s liberalism Robert F. Kennedy, but was originally penned by the Fabian socialist George Bernard Shaw (who also wrote, “There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough”). The Utopian Vision is also associated with Rousseau, Godwin, Condorcet, Thomas Paine, the jurist Earl Warren, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, and to a lesser extent the political philosopher Ronald Dworkin. Another blog post giving a good summary here: > **[Sowell’s Visions](https://fee.org/articles/sowells-visions/)** > > Different views of man and nature tend to explain a lot about why certain beliefs cluster together. Understanding a person's underlying view of the world, then, can produce more understanding and more meaningful discussion. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2016, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/113 "2016-10-03T00:17:31Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Not according to many of the conservatives in my office – Obama is an evil Muslim atheist Manchurian-candidate terrorist, and Hillary conspired to murder hundreds (including the Benghazi victims) for vague and undefined reasons. And most of the liberals I know think George W was dumb but not evil. Dubyah by himself is the epitome of the good ol’ boy. Not particularly bright, but you have trouble not liking him in the end. Now add the Sturm und Drang twins and it’s a completely different story… ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2016, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/114 "2016-10-03T00:20:57Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Cite please? > > Pew 2015 says: > Post-graduate experience > 56% Dem - 36% Rep > College degree but no post-grad experience > 48% Dem - 43% Rep > > [Party Identification Trends, 1992-2014 | Pew Research Center](http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/07/party-identification-trends-1992-2014/#education) I suspect that the difference is that Shodan is looking at degrees as a percentage of the population of Dems and Pubs rather than the orientation of the population of only degree holders. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2016, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/115 "2016-10-03T00:27:26Z")
Hmm I wouldn’t consider Rousseau utopian so much as romantic. Voltaire, maybe. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2016, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/116 "2016-10-03T01:26:16Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > Hmm I wouldn’t consider Rousseau utopian so much as romantic. Voltaire, maybe. The concept does’t map precisely to what you might otherwise call Utopianism, and that’s not really it’s purpose. It might have been better to stick with Sowell’s less loaded terms constrained/unconstrained. It’s an attempt at something akin to factor analysis, or principal component analysis, where a thinker’s position in the population on the Utopian-Tragic axis (aka the Unconstrained-Constrained axis) is claimed to be an important explanatory factor for variance in beliefs within the population. So it’s not a question of “is Utopian the best adjective to describe Rousseau”, it’s a much narrower “what’s his numeric score on the Utopian-Tragic metric”. On that basis, I think it’s pretty clear where he lies. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2016, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/117 "2016-10-03T04:33:17Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > I suspect that the difference is that Shodan is looking at degrees as a percentage of the population of Dems and Pubs rather than the orientation of the population of only degree holders. Many or most surveys (including Shodan’s evidently) cite ‘any college’ rather than ‘college degree.’ The Republicans do better in that category, compared with ‘college degree’ where, as Riemann points out, D’s outnumber R’s. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2016, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/118 "2016-10-04T17:28:33Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > ISiddiqui was claiming that because science as a system supposedly rests on a series of subjective precepts that it is not valid I did? That’s news to me. The entire conversation (including the one with **Riemann** ) has to do with political/religious idea discussion. You can even see that **Riemann** and my discussion continued onward with the discussion of cultural bias and which _ideas_ are superior. Though **Riemann** did attempt to talk about the more extremes of speaking of biases in geology and I rejected that reading out of hand as a reductio ad absurdum. So, basically, what **sleestak** is more in tune with the discussion we were having. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2016, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/119 "2016-10-04T18:02:00Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > There’s an adage which seems to hold true here: the right think the left are wrong; the left think the right are evil. One only has to look at the portrayals of the candidates in the various elections: the Democrat candidate is a saint against whom no word may be uttered; the Republican candidate is a demon in human flesh. The same holds this side of the Atlantic too with Labour and not-Labour, most especially Tories and UKIP. I would generally agree that that is the perception, although on some issues, like climate change and evolution, the left thinks the right is wrong, and on abortion, the right thinks the left is evil. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2016, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218/120 "2016-10-04T18:41:32Z")
I don’t see, on climate change or abortion, any difference between how the two sides see each other, at least on the SDMB. The left thinks the right would rather preserve oil company profits than save the world, and that the right wants to return to the days where women had no rights and were considered chattel. Regards, Shodan [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservative-dopers-why-do-you-think-the-sdmb-leans-left/767218.md?page=7)