Comments on: Speaking of Books: An Ideological Divide?

by: The Florida Masochist

Wed, 22 Aug 2025 15:25:46 +0000

Blame it on Karl

Many people both conservative or liberal, prefer to read what they want to hear. In other words, people read books, blogs, magazines etc that affirm their beliefs. Speaking for myself, I like to read very divergent opinions.

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by: Perry

Wed, 22 Aug 2025 14:27:19 +0000

On the other hand, leading conservative blogs are much more literate than their lefty counterparts (whether you look at things like books quoted, writing level, rhetorical maturity or what have you). But as you say the distinction probably disappears if you control for educational level.

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by: Buckland

Wed, 22 Aug 2025 14:02:25 +0000

Do you have a reference on the “liberals more educated” statement? I’ve seen it before, but the only time I actually looked into at the numbers it was somewhat of a mixed bag.

Here’s my memory of going through some numbers once.

Didn’t finish high school — big liberal advantage.

The high school grads — slight conservative advantage.

Bachelor’s — Big conservative advantage.

Master’s — Big liberal advantage (predominately teachers)

Ph D — Mixed bag, slight liberal advantage.

[I may be confusing Dem/Rep with Lib/Cons can’t remember]

If my memory of the numbers is close, I’d say that the liberals occupy the ends of the spectrum, with the conservatives in the middle rather than liberals more educated.

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by: R. Alex

Wed, 22 Aug 2025 14:01:53 +0000

I suspect that if one compared libs and cons of similar educational level, that the reading issue would end up being similar regardless of ideology.

Depends on how you define “educational level”. If you look at liberals and conservatives with bachelor’s degrees it may still favor liberals because they’re more likely to be English lit majors over business majors with the former being more likely to be avid readers.

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by: superdestroyer

Wed, 22 Aug 2025 12:14:09 +0000

The liberal versus conservative label helps the researchers make their preconceived point because they probably lumped virtually all blacks and hispanics into the conservative column because they go to church more than whites and do not support liberal social causes like gay marriage.

If you lumped the blacks and hispanics in with white liberals (basically the current Democratic party) you would get a different and not so sound bite worthy result.

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