Liberals vs. conservatives, smart vs. dull

One of the things I’m interested in is the perception by some that self-identified conservatives can mobilize better as a collective unit on the American political scene. To test that proposition I often poke around the General Social Survey. For example, it seems to be a common assumption among many liberals that women tend to be more supportive of abortion rights than men. This isn’t born out by the GSS data. There’s no sex difference. Until you correct for ideology. It turns out that among liberals women are more supportive of abortion rights…while among conservatives men are more supportive of abortion rights! If people socialize only with their own ideological subset then the perception of the relationship between sex and ideological opinions will differ a great deal.

Below I decided to attempt to ascertain differences between liberals and conservatives on “hot button” issues as a function of intelligence. I used WORDSUM to probe this. I classed those who scored 0-5 as dull, those who scored 6-8 as not dull, and those who scored 9 and 10 as smart. I also limited the sample to the year 2000 and later, and only non-Hispanic whites.

I’ll give you the results without comment.

 

	Liberals	Conservatives
Abortion for any reason acceptable
	Yes	Yes
Dull	46	29
Not Dull	65	27
Smart	79	26
Homosexual relations
	Always wrong	Always wrong
Dull	52	78
Not Dull	15	70
Smart	7	57
Ban Bible prayer in schools
	Approve	Approve
Dull	39	28
Not Dull	65	36
Smart	85	54
Allow anti-religionist to speak
	Yes	Yes
Dull	73	69
Not Dull	93	82
Smart	99	96
Humans developed from animals
	Yes	Yes
Dull	53	44
Not Dull	79	33
Smart	94	51
Belief in God
	Atheist & agnostic	Atheist & agnostic
Dull	6	5
Not Dull	21	4
Smart	31	9
Trade took away American jobs
	Yes	Yes
Dull	29	39
Not Dull	36	41
Smart	11	11
College educated
	Yes	Yes
Dull	11	16
Not Dull	40	33
Smart	72	59