Matt Yglesias asks why more selective colleges are more left-wing. There are several reasons, but I think one of them is that liberals just tend to have somewhat higher verbal, and that really matters at the “tails” of the distribution.
Below is some data from the GSS. I limited the sample to non-Hispanic whites (which means it’s from the year 2000 and later), and stratified by low, average and high vocab score (0-5,6-8 and 9-10), and crossed that with political ideology. Then, I also broke it down by those with noncollege education, those with bachelor’s degrees and those with graduate degrees. There’s just a bigger pool of very verbally strong liberals (or, being verbally strong makes you liberal, I don’t know).
| no college | |||
| liberal | moderate | conservative | |
| low vocab | 33 | 43 | 35 |
| average vocab | 57 | 51 | 58 |
| high vocab | 10 | 6 | 6 |
| bachelor’s | |||
| low vocab | 10 | 19 | 18 |
| average vocab | 58 | 65 | 64 |
| high vocab | 32 | 17 | 18 |
| grad degree | |||
| low vocab | 6 | 8 | 11 |
| average vocab | 46 | 57 | 62 |
| high vocab | 49 | 35 | 28 |
Women have an advantage in reading and writing, and out perform boys in achievement:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1905779116
https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-amp0000356.pdf
57.4% of university and college students are female:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/upshot/college-admissions-men.html
Women, including white women are more likely to be Democrats/Liberal:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/08/18/men-and-women-in-the-u-s-continue-to-differ-in-voter-turnout-rate-party-identification/
I think these three aspects play a role.
“There’s just a bigger pool of very verbally strong liberals (or, being verbally strong makes you liberal, I don’t know).”
What possible mechanism in the opposite direction could exist knowing what we do about the heritability of the relevant traits? I just don’t see any plausible mechanism that leads some environmentally caused liberalism to lead to higher verbal ability.
How about correlation to sex? Maybe women tend to be both more liberal and verbally stronger than men?
The demographics of belief in ghosts, demons, psychics, werewolves and vampires. (I’d embed the image directly but don’t know how so I’m linking a Facebook post where I did so.) https://www.facebook.com/ohwilleke/posts/10159997345207938
Conservatives believe in demons more often than others. The youngest people are most likely to believe in werewolves. The vampire believer demographic is in between.
Democrats and people with post-graduate degrees are least likely to believe in the supernatural.
Sorry, I say spurious correlation. What passes for liberal these day has nothing to do with any identifiable liberal political theory. It is simply the weaponized shibboleths of the ruling class.
Yes they are verbal. And it is a basic requirement for their membership in the ruling elite. They require years in educational establishments not to acquire skills, but to inculcate attitudes and habits. I had to go to college for 7 years to become a lawyer. 5 years of that was wasted, unless they were the real purpose.
It is the membership that creates the politics. The verbal skills are a qualification for membership.
You can skip the rest of this it is TL:DR.
First axiom. Most political beliefs are driven by affiliation. Even today, most of the affiliation is ethnic and regional. The vulgar Marxist notion that politics are a residue of economic relations does not survive the most casual inspection.
Second Axiom. Regimes create elites. Every regime has winners and losers. The US is on its third regime.
The first regime was what I call the Planter’s Republic. It was run by and for plantation owning southerners. It was run under the original constitution. Its most fundamental commitments were low tariffs, loose money, and chattel slavery. It collapsed amidst the Civil War.
The second regime was the Commercial Republic run by and for Northern Industrialists. It modified the original constitution with the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Its most fundamental commitments were the Hamiltonian program including railroads, high tariffs, and sound money. It collapsed during the Great Depression.
The third and still existing regime I call the Progressive Republic. It has created new institutions and classes, most notably the Administrative State, the paper money based and Federal Reserve run financial system, the mega universities, labor unions, particularly the public employee unions.
The third regime is run by and for a class of people who are verbal and do most of their work in verbal symbolic fields: such as government administration, finance, law, and media. This work is concentrated in the largest urban areas.
The politics so generated are the tools of the regime elite. Mostly they are adopted with the intention and purpose of impoverishing, demoralizing, and humiliating the lower classes and the remnants of the old order.
Environmentalism (Climate Change) is an all purpose club to economically destroy the classes engaged in agriculture, primary extractive activities (mining, drilling), and heavy industry. Toss in free trade and ship all of the dirty smelly industry to China.
Transgenderism. Nothing more humiliating than mutilating their children. Same sex marriage. See, your families are reactionary.
Racialism. Blame the social problems of the Black lumpen proletariat on the white lower classes whom you have impoverished to further humiliate and demoralize them. Also implements divide and rule. Win, win win.