Comments | ontd_political: Labour supporters are cleverer than Tories, Canadian study claims.

atomic_joe2 in ontd_political

Labour supporters are cleverer than Tories, Canadian study claims.

Feb 04, 2012 16:41

If you are clever, you vote for Labour and Ed Miliband. But if you are not so bright the chances are you will back the Tories ( Read more... )

conservative party, uk: labour party, politics

Comments 5

quizzicalsphinx February 4 2012, 23:26:41 UTC

What's funny is that I saw this same study cited in the States with the headline "Study Finds Democrats are Smarter than Republicans."

spyral_path February 5 2012, 07:17:27 UTC

I came here to say the same thing. Hearing about that study took away some of the mystery about why anyone would vote republican when it usually means voting against your own best interests.

romp February 5 2012, 07:57:41 UTC

The authors found a strong link between low intelligence both as a child and an adult, and right-wing politics.

Right, you have to have critical thinking modelled to you and you have to be capable of it if you're going to question what you're fed.

octoberstarlite February 5 2012, 10:33:06 UTC

I'd love to show this to some of the people I used to work with in Hertfordshire who used to say I was stupid with my inferior Welsh education and that was why I was a supporter of Labour. I always did think most of them were thick as shit too...

mephisto5 February 5 2012, 10:52:20 UTC

The study says they consider socially conservative and authoritarian attitudes to be 'right wing', but given Labour's history with e.g. anti terrorism laws, it is quite clear that Labour would fall into the right wing category. So, no, this study doesn't say Labour voters are more intelligent than Tories.

Secondly, this study uses self reported racism. It cannot be used to make generalisations about the existence of racist views, only people's willingness to report them- rather than saying that more intelligent people are less racist and therefore left wing, a better conclusion might be that more intelligent people are better able to hide their racism and therefore the study perceives them as left wing.

From the study:
"Parental socioeconomic status for participants during childhood, as well as participants’ personal socioeconomic status and education level in adulthood, were obtained in both the NCDS and the BCS. Parental and personal socioeconomic status were rated on 4-point (BCS) and 6-point (NCDS) scales based on social ( ... )