If you design a house, you are likely to be a Democrat; if you build it, you are probably a Republican. If you swagger around town in a big hat and a badge, you’re probably a Republican; if the big-hatted swaggering takes place around a public park, you’re more likely to be a Democrat. And the beer wholesaler probably votes red, while the bartender who taps the key and pours the pint probably votes blue.
These are a few of the odd pairings that show up on a comparison of the parties, “Democratic vs. Republican occupations,” which just went up on the Verdant Labs site and is based on records of campaign contributions by party.
Some of the chart confirms what we already knew: people who work in fields built around money or exploiting natural resources tend to be Republicans, those who labor in the worlds of ideas, education and the arts lean Democratic. The reddest professions seem to be “fossil fuels,” “farming & forestry,” “surgical practice,” and “insurance”; the bluest are “libraries,” editors of books and publications, “film & stage prod.,” and “social and environment.”
But there are some surprising findings. Why the big differences in professions that have a lot in common – carpenters vs. plumbers, say, or Episcopalian priests vs. Catholic priests, or midwives vs. surgeons? And the “transportation” category ranges like mad, from truck drivers, who are 12 times more likely to be Republicans than taxi drivers.
We’ll hazard some guesses here: If you make an enormous amount of money, you have rational financial reasons to vote red. (If you own a restaurant, you are four times more likely to be Republican than the people who work there.) If you are unionized, you’re likely to go blue. If you are a woman, you probably lean blue as well; ditto if you have the kind of job that requires a lot of education but doesn’t pay very much. And the rightward drift of Catholicism over the last few decades is complicated business, but probably a lot of it has to do with Roe v. Wade.
There is probably another, more sweeping reason for some of the divergence. The UC Berkeley linguist and cognitive scientist George Lakoff has argued that politics is about more than just ideology but has to do with an entire worldview, based in values and in a respective (and often unconscious) view of the ideal family. The family works as as metaphor for the state and society.
One side – the political right – grows out of what he calls “the strict father model”; Lakoff explains its assumptions in his influential book “Don’t Think Of An Elephant”:
The world is a dangerous place, and it always will be, because there is evil out there in the world. The world is also difficult because it is competitive. There will always be winners and losers. There is an absolutely right and an absolute wrong. Children are born bad, in the sense that they just want to do what feels good not what is right. Therefore, they have to be made good.
Hence the conservative and Republican preference for force and punishment (law enforcement, the military), the competition of the marketplace and sports, enforcement of morality, and so on.
Most liberals and Democrats, he argues, prefer a nurturing-parent model (which is likely to be gender neutral), and value things like fulfillment, opportunity, fairness, communication, community-building and so on.
This might help us understand why the talk show host (whose job is basically paternal) is so much more likely to lean Republican than the comedian he brings on. Or why prosecutors are 17 times as likely to be Republican than public defenders.
We’re still a little baffled by some of this, though. Like, why are roofers so much more Republican than house painters or construction workers who toil on the same home. (Is the roofer closer to God?) A dentist is more likely to be Republican than someone in the military? (The stern father again? “Floss! Floss, you little brat!”)
Yoga instructors lean blue pretty hard, but there are still some Republicans: We understand that a healthy mind and body transcends party affiliation. But do the Republican yogis eschew the downward dog position for a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” pose?
And it all leaves us scratching our heads as to why urologists are so much more likely to give money to Republicans than pediatricians. If you work with kids, you’re probably liberal, if you work with penises and kidneys, you’re likely to be conservative. We could try to figure this one out. But perhaps some things just can’t be known.
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