Liberals smarter than conservatives, Republicans smarter than Democrats

The General Social Survey includes a ten item vocabulary test, coded WORDSUM, which is likely strongly correlated with intelligence. This is an opportunity for us to determine whether liberals and Democrats are smarter than conservatives and Republicans.

For the purpose of this comparison, I consider a high vocabulary score to be 9 or 10 correct answers on the vocabulary test (WORDSUM 9-10).

LIBERALS ARE SMARTER THAN CONSERVATIVES

Of those who consider themselves “liberal” or “extremely liberal” (POLVIEWS 1-2), 20.8% had high vocabulary scores.

Of whose who consider themselves “conservative” or “extremely conservative” (POLVIEWS 6-7), only 13.8% had high vocabulary scores.

REPUBLICANS ARE SMARTER THAN DEMOCRATS

Of those who identify as Republican (PARTYID 5-6), 15.6% had high vocabulary scores.

Of those who identify as Democrats (PARTYID 0-1), only 11.9% had high vocabulary scores.

ANALYSIS

This is an extremely surprising result. Because there is a strong correlation between liberal and Democrat, and between conservative and Republican, I would have assumed that if something were true for liberals it would also be true for Democrats, and the same for conservatives and Republicans.

My hypothesis is that people consider many factors when determining if they are liberal or conservative, including leftist or rightist orientation (leftist being liberal), religiosity (religious being conservative), and attitudes corresponding to what’s considered “Openness” in the Five Factor personality model (with Openness being liberal).

But when people decide which party to vote for, a major factor is how much money they make and/or what social class they consider themselves a part of. People who are of a higher social class or make more money (both of these factors correlating with higher intelligence) are more likely to vote Republican.