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Richard Heyduck's avatar

Seeing as Republicans keep getting elected, AND the professions listed lean so heavily Democratic, which professions aren't covered that make up the difference?

Are there professions where Independents stand out compared to pthers?

Ryan Burge's avatar

Retired folks.

JonF311's avatar

The list of job types was hardly comprehensive. A lot of blue collar stuff was left out, as well as the world of the hospitality industry. Oh, and the whole gig economy. The list was weighted toward the middle and upper middle classes.

Eric W Berg III's avatar

Episcopal and Anglican are lumped together. I suspect there's a significant difference in partisanship. Is there a way to separate the data from the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States from the Anglican Church in North America?

James Brinkruff's avatar

Not exactly earth shattering but my concern is change over time. Is there any overlap with Helen Andrew’s theory of the feminization of society? Law, medicine, clergy? Those mainline liberal denominations have more women pastors. Correlation or causation?

Gordon's avatar

Why in the second graph are so many industries skewed Democratic? We know from voting that the split is closer to 50/50 for the total population? What accounts for the difference in the impression given by this graph?

MLP's avatar

As I understand the current national surveys, about 40% of folks identify as independents , and around 30% are in each of the major parties. But Republican-leaning and Democratic-leaning are about 46-48% each. Does the dataset separate out independents, or use the Republican-leaning/Democratic-leaning categories? Since you use the work "leaning" a couple of times, I'm assuming it's the latter.

This is really fascinating, thanks for writing about it.

Ryan Burge's avatar

VRscores are based on public records and modeled voter data—things like primary participation, donor history, and past voting behavior. Those data can tell you whether someone consistently behaves like a Democrat or a Republican.

What they can’t do is detect people who truly lack a partisan pattern. Independents, by definition, don’t leave a consistent behavioral signal. Some vote in Democratic primaries, some in Republican ones, some switch back and forth, and many don’t participate in primaries at all.

As a result, VRscores assigns people to the party they most often behave like, not the party they say they are. That means many self-identified Independents end up modeled as “lean Democratic” or “lean Republican,” while truly unaffiliated voters get absorbed into the residual category rather than flagged as a distinct group.

JonF311's avatar

Why are Catholics, who are quite numerous in the US, left out of the final by-denomination graph? Are the subsumed under "Other"?

Ryan Burge's avatar

The title of the graph is - "Partisan Lean by Protestant Denomination"

Why would it include Catholics?

I just pulled out Catholics separately - their partisan lean is 2.4% Republican.

JonF311's avatar

OK, thanks. I didn't notice the graph title, and there were graphs that included Jews and Muslims as well.

Eileen Beal's avatar

I thought it would be more than that, due to all the "issues" the R's lean into.

RE: Helen Andrew’s theory of the feminization of society? Law, medicine, clergy?....hum, an interesting twist I'd not thought about.

Now I will be doning so.