Thanks as always to The Other McCain for the Rule Five links.
Meanwhile: Guess what! 2016 Trump supporters score significantly better than Clinton supporters on a battery of verbal ability and general science questions. Excerpt:
On the verbal ability test (WORDSUM), not surprisingly the median number of vocabulary questions correct was the same for both Clinton and Trump supporters: 6 out of 10 words correct. The mean verbal ability score for Trump supporters was 6.15 words correct, while the mean verbal ability score for Clinton supporters was 5.69 correct, a difference of nearly a half a question on a 10-question test. This moderate difference is statistically significant at p<.0005.
Further, Trump supporters score significantly higher on verbal ability (6.15 correct) than the rest of the public combined (5.70 correct), whereas Clinton supporters score significantly lower on verbal ability (5.69 correct) than the rest of the public combined (5.98 correct).
This should not be too surprising. On the 22 General Social Surveys using the verbal ability scale since 1974, for every single one, conservative Republicans score significantly higher than the rest of the public combined. As for Republicans overall, they score significantly higher in verbal ability than Democrats in all five decades, including for the 2010s combined.
And:
Testing the hypothesis that Trump supporters have greater science knowledge than those who supported Clinton in 2016, on six questions Trump supporters offer the correct answer significantly more often than Clinton supporters: those about lasers, radioactivity, viruses, the father’s contribution to the biological sex of the child (BOYORGRL), whether “according to astronomers” the universe began with a huge explosion (BIGBANG1), and that the earth goes around the sun and that it takes a year to do so (combined EARTHSUN and SOLARREV).
On one science knowledge question—whether the center of the earth is hot (HOTCORE)—the superior performance of Trump supporters over Clinton supporters is borderline significant (1-sided Fisher’s Exact Test p=.05-.10).
On two questions, the structure of atoms (ELECTRON) and continental drift (CONDRIFT), Trump supporters score slightly, but insignificantly, better than Clinton supporters. On none of these nine science questions do Trump supporters score worse than Clinton supporters.
When one compares Clinton supporters to the rest of the public combined, Clinton supporters perform significantly worse than the rest of the public on the same six science questions on which Trump supporters perform better than Clinton supporters.
Indeed, less than half of 2016 Clinton supporters (49.6%) are able to answer correctly both of two related questions: whether the earth goes around the sun or the sun goes around the earth (EARTHSUN) and whether that takes a day, a month, or a year (SOLARREV). Remember these two questions are multiple choice! You would have a 50-50 chance of guessing correctly on the first part: whether the earth goes around the sun or vice versa. Sadly, the general public didn’t do hugely better than Clinton supporters, with only 57.1% (compared to 49.6%) knowing that the earth goes around the sun and that it takes a year to do so.
I’ve been chuckling about this ever since I read it.
It’s a common stance among, well, honestly, all kinds of people, to blithely assume someone is stupid because they disagree with you on any given issue. I’ve always hated that outlook. But go read this whole article; as someone whose livelihood depends on the dispassionate analysis of data and examination of objective evidence, it seems here that the methodology involved is pretty solid; 2016 Clinton supporters are significantly less well-informed than 2016 Trump supporters.
And the author admits upfront to having supported the 2016 Clinton candidacy.
While I have never done any methodological analysis of this issue, it seems to me that the big-city urban Left is particularly prone to this; they operate on the pro forma conclusion that the folks who choose to live in the rural/semi-rural regions of those deplorable fly-over states must do so because they’re a bunch of dumb rubes, crazy rednecks, and the like. But the Old Man, who lived five miles from the paved road on a big patch of timber for much of his life, was one of the most intelligent men I’ve ever known; entirely through an addiction to reading, he could intelligently discuss the causes of, and the tactics and strategy of, the American Revolution and the Civil War. He could also intelligently discuss cosmology, geology, paleoanthropology and a host of other topics. He could quote Greek philosophers at some length, and improved my farm-country schooling considerably by insisting I read Plato and Aristotle while still in my early teens. Add to that the fact that he was an artist of some renown in the upper Midwest, and had his own spot on a wall in the Iowa state Capitol where one of his paintings was on display from about 1968 to the mid Eighties.
No ignorant hillbilly there.
Now, the legacy media will ignore this article and it’s implications; it doesn’t fit The Narrative. But that doesn’t make it any less true.
