# Is your name “democratic” or “republican”? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [September 16, 2024, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369 "2024-09-16T22:16:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2024, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/1 "2024-09-16T22:16:15Z")
This article says whether certain common names are most likely to lean Democratic or Republican (by registration). Although one might guess this is close to 50-50, it ain’t. Just as many medical specialties lean one way or the other, there are differences between common, “ethnic” and “traditional biblical” names. The article link is here. Gift links have been pretty limited recently so will consider adding more on request, to unknown effect. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/09/13/popular-names-republican-democrat/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/09/13/popular-names-republican-democrat/) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2024, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/2 "2024-09-16T22:44:34Z")
Something’s fishy, here. Among all "Daniel"s, there’s a 23-point Democratic lean. But among all male "Daniel"s, there’s a 7-point Republican lean. Now, part of that can be explained by the fact that men, overall, lean more Republican than women… but the overwhelming majority of "Daniel"s (which is distinct from “Danielle” or the like) are male, so the “all Daniels” figure should be very, very close to the “all male Daniels” figure. Their tables also show that, among the most common names, there’s a very strong Democratic lean (out of the top 30 surnames, one is Republican, one is completely neutral, and the other 28 are all Democratic, for instance), and they never explore the reason for that. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2024, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/3 "2024-09-16T23:08:42Z")
My first and last name both lead Republican. I probably should have guessed. Not a huge lean though. ---
**Author:** ![FinsToTheLeft](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finstotheleft/32/2930_2.png) [@FinsToTheLeft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinsToTheLeft)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2024, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/4 "2024-09-16T23:51:51Z")
My anglicized last name is -14 Dem leaning. Our original Ashkenazi last name is -45! ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2024, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/5 "2024-09-17T00:47:32Z")
Yeah, I would expect the numbers to be far closer to even than they seem to be, especially for common first names. It’s one thing if you name your kid “Reagan”. If it might be true there are many Mormons monikered “Mark”, moreover maybe multiple multistate “Marks” mitigate modest municipal moments. Said otherwise, most states are reasonably close to parity and cities probably trend Democratic, so the effects for common names should be pretty small. Generational effects might matter more if monikered “Muriel”…. even if some men lean Republican and some women don’t these days. Most people with my first name are about my age too. Like wearing belted onions it was the fashion at the time. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2024, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/6 "2024-09-17T00:51:16Z")
Interestingly, my first and last names have the exact same -5 Democratic lean. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2024, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/7 "2024-09-17T00:57:17Z")
Interesting, but they got me wrong. Or maybe I’m an outlier. ---
**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:** [September 17, 2024, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/8 "2024-09-17T01:00:56Z")
My last name skews 41% in the Democratic direction. My first name skews 5% in the Democratic direction. ---
**Author:** ![Tatterdemalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/43a26b/32.png) [@Tatterdemalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tatterdemalion)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2024, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/9 "2024-09-17T01:02:14Z")
There are French and German forms of my name. In the German form, which is what I use, it has an 8 point Republican lean, and in the French form it has a 28 point Dem lean. Maybe I should start using the French form. ---
**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:** [September 17, 2024, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/10 "2024-09-17T01:05:21Z")
Out of sheer curiosity, “Donald” is a 22 Republican lean and “Trump” is a 32 Republican lean. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2024, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/11 "2024-09-17T01:16:29Z")
Paywalled, but it sounds like BS anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2024, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/12 "2024-09-17T01:18:45Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > Interesting, but they got me wrong. They got _me_ wrong too, but if I think of other people likely to have my names, I would believe there was a slight lean to R. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2024, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/13 "2024-09-17T01:40:48Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Their tables also show that, among the most common names, there’s a very strong Democratic lean (out of the top 30 surnames, one is Republican, one is completely neutral, and the other 28 are all Democratic, for instance), and they never explore the reason for that. That actually seemed … less surprising once I looked at the list and thought about it? There are more Ds than Rs in the US to begin with, so you’d expect a name that isn’t correlated with any other marker of partisan affiliation to have a slight D lean, maybe in the 2-5 point range. (Indeed, this is true for a few of the names in the top 30: Anderson, Clark, Smith.) But most names _are_ correlated with another marker of partisan affiliation: ethnicity. It’s not too hard to figure out why, for example, Garcia and Rodriguez would skew D, but I suspect that while there are plenty of white people in the US with the other names on this list, black people are _overrepresented._ (This is really obvious with “Williams,” “Jackson,” and “Robinson,” all of which have an overwhelming D lean, but most of the other non-Hispanic names in the top 30 are very common names of English origin. Which means they’re the sort of names that were probably common in the antebellum South as well.) FWIW, my own last name (mostly held by Irish-Americans who immigrated in the 1840s or later) skews D by 3 points, which is pretty much in line with the country as a whole. (My _first_ name is D by 38 points, which I was not expecting; but “people with female names that are traditional but not super-common” might actually _be_ a fairly reliable D demographic, now that I think about it.) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2024, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/14 "2024-09-17T01:56:29Z")
> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > but I suspect that while there are plenty of white people in the US with the other names on this list, black people are _overrepresented._ (This is really obvious with “Williams,” “Jackson,” and “Robinson,” all of which have an overwhelming D lean, but most of the other non-Hispanic names in the top 30 are very common names of English origin. Which means they’re the sort of names that were probably common in the antebellum South as well.) Another one I noticed was “Washington”. There are very, very few of them with a familial link to George, but Presidential names were a common choice among newly-freed slaves who didn’t want to use their former master’s name, so Washingtons are overwhelmingly black. Though, “Jackson” and “Johnson” and “Jefferson” were also often chosen, for the same reason, so while those names are fairly common for whites, they’re probably still disproportionately black. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2024, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/15 "2024-09-17T02:02:17Z")
Where is everybody finding a place to check their name in the linked article? I scrolled and scrolled and couldn’t find anything. ETA: Ah, i found it. The formatting was mangled totally in Chrome, but opening the link in Safari cleaned it up. So my first name is a 0. Dead middle-of-the-road. My last name is not in the database (including the more detailed one). Neither my wife’s first nor last names are in the database, either. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2024, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/16 "2024-09-17T02:09:31Z")
The tables are searchable, which is a nifty bit of code. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2024, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/17 "2024-09-17T02:53:14Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Something’s fishy, here. Among all "Daniel"s, there’s a 23-point Democratic lean. But among all male "Daniel"s, there’s a 7-point Republican lean. Where are you seeing an “all” table? There’s a last name table, then women’s first names, then men’s first names. Women’s first names shows -23 for Daniel, and men shows +7 for the same. Maybe you conflated the women’s table for all? ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2024, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/18 "2024-09-17T03:11:01Z")
I’m Republican to the core, apparently. First name (that I don’t go by): +16 Red Middle name (that I go by): _not found_ Nickname for middle name: +7 Red Last name: +7 Red Probably a measure that all my names are solidly Scottish/Anglo; hence traditional / conservative. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2024, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/19 "2024-09-17T03:16:43Z")
Jeffrey and Jeffery have a 6pt split from one another (+21 R vs +27 R) with Jeff in the middle at +25 R Sounds like grounds for a religious schism ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2024, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369/20 "2024-09-17T03:28:00Z")
Did you see the link for the [detailed table](https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/rNcfq/5/)? You can search on any name. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-your-name-democratic-or-republican/1007369.md?page=2)