Always? I’m dubious. FDR was a Democratic lawyer and he felt like an outsider among his “class.” More generally, the law has been a means for smart young ethnics to rise, and that indeed has a correlation to being a Democrat. They too, therefore, were outsiders and antagonists of the in-crowd, the Republican lawyers who worked for large corporations and old money. Those lawyers had a reputation for being the most conservative of conservatives. I guarantee that if most professionals were Republican in 1960, their lawyers were even more so.
I’m not sure, but it is my impression that Judis had a broader definition of professional in his 2002 piece and a narrower one in his 2015 article. I’ll note that neither was laden with charts and tables. What we need is a Pew style treatment.
All that said, I say the classic professional is a doctor or lawyer: both have post-graduate degrees. Architects too. But I would consider a computer programmer to be a professional as well, and they might not have even graduated from a 4 year college.
At any rate, I’ll summarize. The evidence suggests that the professional class has grown since 1960 and has trended Democratic. It’s possible that part of the Professional class -those whose highest degree is a BA or BS- may have pealed off in favor of the Republicans in 2014. Or not. Managers often have BAs or MBAs after all.
Small hijack, but only 3% of Silicon Valley startup founders are Republican. 43% are Democratic and 21% are Libertarian.
“Libertarians are good, but they don’t stop nazis or build roads.”
To be clear though, Startup CEOs are white collar, but I would not call them professionals. They are managers.
Libertarians may not build roads, but they do tend to come up with REALLY disruptive ideas that better people’s lives(while threatening established rent seekers).
Well it was a joke. But disruption is done by tech startups who according to preliminary data are plurality Democrat but 21% Libertarian.
I guess Milton Friedman supported his share of disruptive ideas though, like the negative income tax that became the earned income tax credit, the all volunteer military, opposition to rent control (which admittedly is widespread among economists of all stripes), support for same sex marriage and the Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet.