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These statistics are mainly for my own personal reference, so that I can find them later when arguing for some position or other. But I found them interesting in and of themselves, so there's always the odd chance that some of you might too.
For instance, according to the Pew Research Center's study, a majority of self-identified Republicans support universal health care, even if it means raising taxes.
And, since this issue perpetually comes up on the board, interesting to learn that a University of Michigan professor has evaluated public opinion data from the Arab Middle East over fifteen years and found no statistically significant relationship between personal religiosity and either (a) support for terrorism or (b) attitudes towards democracy. (There's also no correlation between support for terrorism and gender, education, and income.)
And it turns out that the grown children of parents who lost their jobs in the '80s have permanently lower incomes (to the tune of nine percent lower) than the grown children of parents in similar industries who kept their jobs. Now, it's not surprising that well-off families turn out to do just fine. But the grown child of a poor parent who lost his job will do 17% worse than his counterpart in the same income bracket. (This just goes to show that laziness is genetic, or possibly something derogatory about Canada.) Presumably, pace some racist idiots with whom I am acquainted, this would go even more so for the grown children of fathers who lost their jobs due to Hurricane Katrina, plus their residence, the community in which they lived, their possessions, and possibly also the lives of loved ones; whatever hurricane relief goes out to the people of New Orleans is going to be spread out WAY too thin to overcome the decades-long economic reprecussions, and agruably a lot of the infrastructure reconstruction won't do a damn thing for the poorest former-denizens of the city anyway. "Make out like kings" my big fat privileged white limousine-liberal pansy pinko commie ass.
September 16 2005, 21:07:05 UTC 6 years ago
1. The stats on the Ten Commandment Display and teaching of Evolution is downright scary. The only group with significant opposition to the Ten Commandment display is the liberals, and every other group has 15% or so who oppose the idea. Then, a third of the total think that creationism should be taught INSTEAD OF evolution (!!!!!). *sighs*
2. I think this part is worth noticing, too: "Republicans are less cohesive on matters involving economic policies than on cultural and foreign affairs issues. These differences are most obvious with respect to such issues as the desirability of government-guaranteed health insurance, stricter bankruptcy laws, and in attitudes toward tax reduction. Democrats, by contrast, are much more unified on these issues. "
This is not the picture that the moderate Republicans like to paint. They like to claim that they're in bed with the social conservatives in order to get their economic plans pushed through. The statistics showed, however, that there's a great discrepancy in economic views among Republicans, thus raising doubts about the efficacy of the socially moderate Republicans' strategy.