On the eve

 In 1965, there was a Harris poll of college students.  One of the questions involved showing people a list of authors and asking if any were among your favorites.  The authors, listed in order of number choosing them, were William Faulkner, JD Salinger, Ian Fleming, James Baldwin, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Edward Albee, Henry Miller, John Updike, CP Snow, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Jean Genet, William Burroughs, John Cheever, and Doris Lessing.  Baldwin was known for his writings on race and the civil rights movement, and Fleming was a genre novelist (James Bond)--the others could be called "literary" authors.*  I made an index of the number of literary authors that students named as favorites (capped at 4)--about 30% scored 0, 30% 1, 24% 2, 8% 3, and 8% 4 or more.  The survey was mostly about college affairs, but there were a number of political questions, and I looked at their association with score on the literary authors index and with picking Fleming as a favorite.  Baldwin took clear positions on some of the issues, so picking him was an obvious signal of political views--I was interested in whether general taste in literature was associated with political views.

The results:

Vote (or preference) in 1964 election: 
   literary authors:  more likely to support Johnson
   Fleming:  no  clear difference

Party ID:
   literary authors:  more likely to be Democrats or Independents
   Fleming:  no clear difference

Have your views on politics changed a good deal, some, or only a little in college?
    literary authors:  more likely to say a good deal or some
    Fleming:  no clear difference

Vietnam (carry war to North Vietnam; negotiate and get out; hold the line)
   literary authors:  more dovish
   Fleming:  more hawkish    

Should "girl students" be able to obtain contraceptives at the school infirmary?
   literary authors:  more likely to say yes
   Fleming:  no clear difference

Should laws on abortion be relaxed, tightened, or kept the same?
   literary authors:  more likely to say relaxed
   Fleming:  maybe some preference for tightened or kept the same

Approve of Mississippi Freedom Summer
    literary authors:   more likely to approve
    Fleming:  less likely 

Approve of Negro and white students living in the same dormitories:
    literary authors:  no clear difference
    Fleming:  no clear difference

Approve of Negro and white students eating in the same cafeterias:
    literary authors:  no clear difference
    Fleming:  no clear difference

For the preceding two questions, overwhelming majorities approved.  

Approve of Negro and white students belonging to the same social clubs
    literary authors:  no clear difference
    Fleming:  less likely to approve

Overall, there was strong approval, but 21% of students who chose Fleming as a favorite author disapproved, compared to only 9% of those who didn't choose him.

Approve of Negro and white students dating each other:
    literary authors:  more likely to approve
    Fleming: less likely to approve

Approve of "intermarriage between the races"
    literary authors:  more likely to approve
    Fleming:  less likely to approve

There was a pretty consistent tendency for people who liked more literary authors to take liberal positions.  With Fleming, it was less consistent, but when it made a difference, choosing him as a favorite was associated with more conservative positions.  Why?  There's a saying (usually attributed to Robert F. Kennedy, Sr., but apparently George Bernard Shaw said it first):  "some men see things as they are and ask why; I dream of things that never were and ask why not?"  This leaves out a third group (and probably the largest one):  those who see things as they are and say "that's just the way it is."  That is, people who are curious about things are more likely to be critical; conversely, people who just want to be more entertained are more likely to favor keeping things as they are.**  

The more general point is that the association between intellectualism and left-of-center political views is deeply rooted.  

*Sartre also wrote on politics, but I think that at that point he was better known for his novels and plays.

**See also this post.  

I couldn't resist

 As I mentioned in my last post, I have a number of new posts planned (dealing with confidence in institutions and the relation between college education and politics), but this isn't one of them.  A few days ago, a New York Times op-ed by Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner mentioned a Gallup question that goes back to the 1940s:  "looking ahead for the next few years, which political party do you think will do a better job of keeping the country prosperous — the Republican Party or the Democratic Party?"  and I couldn't resist taking a closer look.  The difference between percent saying Democrats and percent saying Republicans:

Rauch and Wehner say "In the post-World War II period, Democrats — still remembered for ending the Great Depression — held a seemingly impregnable prosperity advantage, forcing Republicans to fight every national election uphill."  That had been my impression too, but I'm not sure that the figure bears it out.  In the 1940s and 1950s, the parties were about even.  The Democrats pulled ahead after the recession of 1958, and built their lead in the Kennedy-Johnson administration, but those changes could plausibly be explained as a reaction to short-term economic conditions.  On the other hand, the Republicans never managed to get more than a small lead, so maybe the public did have a tendency to favor the Democrats after taking account of current conditions.  But since the late 1970s, it's been close, as Rauch and Wehner point out.  Also, there seems to have been less variation over time:    between 1964 and 1968, it went from +41 for the Democrats to +2, and between 1972 and 1974 from -5 to +30.  In the last 25 years, the range has been from -14 to +20).    That's probably a reflection of the growing strength of partisanship--people are more likely to say that their party is better, regardless of current conditions.  A possibly related point is that the number of people who name a party (rather than saying that they're both the same or that they don't know which would be better) has increased:  

That may be influenced by changes in interviewing techniques, but the shift has been so large and steady that it seems likely that there's an underlying change in propensity to choose a party--that is, a decline in the number of real independents.  Finally, in recent years, Republicans have had an advantage:  they've led in 13 of the last 15 surveys.  

[Some data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

Where was I?

It has been a long time since my last post.  I've been away for the past couple of weeks, at the International Sociological Association Forum of Sociology and then vacationing.  I have a number of posts planned, but also an accumulation of other things that need to get done before I can work on them, so for anyone who is eagerly awaiting another post, here are the slides for my presentation: