Where white conservatives and NAMs find common ground

There are those on the right who, attuned to the (liberal) zeitgeist, attempt to bring NAMs into their political ranks by emphasizing the putative social conservatism of blacks and Hispanics. Rick Santorum recently illustrated this, and the late Richard Nadler epitomized it.

As the US becomes increasingly multiracial and multicultural, our democratic system will increasingly turn into a spoils system, where votes are determined by the demographic characteristics of the candidates in question, who, once elected, will use their power to redistribute wealth away from out-group members to the in-group members who elected them. Even at the federal level, where this is less of an issue than it is at more local levels of government, it is certainly detectable.

While that is related to this post's purpose, the focus should be on the data. The following table shows the percentages of SWPLS (liberal and very liberal whites), white conservatives (conservative and very conservative whites), and NAMs (blacks and Hispanics) who agree with a host of political and social statements. The 20 items are broken up into four categories; those in which SWPLs and NAMs are on the same page, those in which NAMs fall midway between SWPLs and white conservatives, those in which whites of all political persuasions are lined up against NAMs, and those in which white conservatives and NAMs are aligned against SWPLs. For contemporary relevancy, all responses are from 2000 onward:

SWPLs and NAMs agree	SWPLs	WhtCons	NAMs
The death penalty should be given to those who commit murder	50.4	84.8	48.2
Pornography should be made illegal	19.8	52.2	33.1
Expresses a great deal of confidence in the US military	36.3	67.8	42.9
Favors increases nuclear power generation in the US	66.4	86.6	50.0
The government should spend more on health care	85.5	59.5	87.7
Immigration into the US should be increased	14.9	6.7	11.9
The government should raise taxes to reduce income inequality	67.5	24.0	55.6
NAMs fall in between SWPLs and white conservatives
The government should spend more to protect the environment	79.7	26.6	55.9
The government should spend more on the military	15.2	55.7	38.4
The government should spend more on culture and the arts	48.1	6.2	31.0
Background checks should be required for gun ownership	87.0	70.5	79.9
Environmental threats are exaggerated	14.9	67.5	32.5
Whites band together against NAMs
Special preferences should be given to minorities in hiring decisions	22.8	6.1	37.9
The government should spend more on unemployment benefits	34.3	20.1	54.5
White conservatives and NAMs agree
A woman should be able to have an abortion for any reason	69.7	21.8	35.3
Marijuana should be legalized	66.4	22.6	31.7
Same sex marriage should be allowed	81.5	14.5	28.7
Prayer should be permissible in public schools	35.3	68.9	68.2
It is okay to spank a child for disciplinary purposes	52.3	81.0	77.4
Terminal patients should be allowed to die if they choose to do so	86.3	50.4	53.4

Even though white conservatives and NAMs are more closely aligned with one another than either is with SWPLs on multiple social issues, pocketbook concerns trump moral values, especially among those who are not affluent, and of course NAMs disproportionately are not. SWPLs want to take from whites and give to NAMs to achieve social justice and NAMs want to take from whites and give to themselves to realize a higher material standard of living. Even on issues that are not of great interest to NAMs, like the arts (a liberal cause) and the military (a conservative cause), NAMs tend to favor more spending than the opposing white group does. Politically, the best strategy for Republicans is probably to highlight Democratic attitudes on things like religion, drug legalization*, and abortion and hope that reduces NAM voters' enthusiasm for going out and voting.

GSS variables used: RACECEN(1)(2, 15-16), POLVIEWS(1-2)(6-7), YEAR(2000-2010), ABANY, GRASS, MARHOMO, PRAYER, SPANKING, LETDIE1, SPENVIRO, SPARMS, GUNSALES, GRNEXAGG, AFFACT, SPUNEMP, CAPPUN, EQWLTH, PORNLAW, SPARTS, SPHLTH, CONARMY, LETIN, NUKEELEC

* Because of its pervasiveness among the (largely NAM) underclass, lots of whites presume that non-whites are amenable to the idea of decriminalizing drug use. I've spent enough time around blacks to know that among those who aren't users, the stuff is not smiled upon. Blacks living in the hood see its consequences firsthand and they don't like it anymore than you or I do.

Scared of nuclear power, dummy?

Prior to the release of the 2010 GSS data set, finding questions on the perceived danger of nuclear power generation required going back as far as the early nineties. In response to a commenter, I attempted just that. Now, more contemporary responses are available, albeit still prior to the Japanese tsunami.

Responses are on a 5-point scale that has been inverted from the GSS for ease of viewing. A 1 indicates the belief that the perils of nuclear power are minimal, a 5 that nuclear power is extremely dangerous. Respondents are broken up into five categories; Really Smarts (wordsum score of 9-10, comprising 13% of the population), Pretty Smarts (7-8, 26%), Normals (6, 22%), Pretty Dumbs (4-5, 27%), and Really Dumbs (0-3, 12%). The average (mean) response for members of each group is shown. One standard deviation for the entire respondent pool is 1.14 (n = 1301):

IQ group	Danger
Really dumbs	3.82
Pretty dumbs	3.64
Normals	3.55
Pretty smarts	3.21
Really smarts	2.87

Although there is some perception that SWPLs-types oppose expanding nuclear power generation because of the environmental dangers it putatively imposes, catastrophic anthropogenic global warming concerns mitigate this. Nuclear power is the only way to viably produce power on a large scale without significant carbon dioxide emissions, so opposing nuclear power while simultaneously maintaining good standing in the Gaia church means putting modernity on the very weak backs of wind and solar, or simply looking like a luddite. So it comes as little surprise that more intelligent people are more supportive of nuclear power generation than less intelligent people are.

Parenthetically, over the 16 year interval since the nuclear question was posed in the GSS, the pretty smarts and really smarts have become even less fearful of nuclear power than they had been, while the sentiments of the other three groups have remained the same.

Will the Fukushima Daiichi evacuation and closure change that? Smarter people will more easily discern that had the emergency generators required to cool the reactors been on higher ground (they could handle 20-foot high waves, but needed to handle 50-foot high waves last March), no meltdown would've occurred--an unfortunate shortcoming, but an irrelevant one for most of Europe and the US. Germany has announced that it will close all of the country's nuclear power plants by 2022, but other European nations haven't followed suit (and if that remains the case, Germany will probably end up buying energy generated by nuclear power from places like France in the future).

GSS variables used: NUKEGEN, YEAR(2010), WORDSUM(0-3)(4-5)(6)(7-8)(9-10)

Smarties fear nuclear power less than dummies do

In the comments of the previous post, a reader asserts a common perception (or misperception, apparently) concerning green luddites:

I'm glad to learn that the (self-described) "smarties" are now in favor of all that nuclear stuff they used to decry. I wonder if Hallmark makes a "I was stupid 'cause I was smart--I'm sorry!" card.

With the popularity among "smarties" of Red & Green anti-vivisection, anti-science, and anti-technology the "Scientists often pry into things they ought to leave alone" should have elicited close to 90% not 5.1%.

The GSS asked a couple of questions concerning the potential dangers of nuclear power generation--one about those posed to a respondent's family, the other posed to the environment in general--in 1993 and again in 1994. Responses are on a 5-point scale that I've inverted for ease of viewing. A 1 indicates the belief that the perils of nuclear power are minimal, a 5 that nuclear power is extremely dangerous. Respondents are broken up into five categories; Really Smarts (wordsum score of 9-10, comprising 13% of the population), Pretty Smarts (7-8, 26%), Normals (6, 22%), Pretty Dumbs (4-5, 27%), and Really Dumbs (0-3, 12%). The average (mean) response for members of each group is shown. One standard deviation for the question regarding the respondent's family is 1.10 and 1.04 for the question pertaining to the environment in general:

Group	Family	Environment
Really Smarts	2.94	3.15
Pretty Smarts	3.12	3.32
Normals	3.38	3.51
Pretty Dumbs	3.48	3.63
Really Dumbs	3.68	3.82

The tendency is clear--the more intelligent a person is, the less likely he is to fear nuclear power. The notion that hostile sentiments toward nuclear power disproportionately come from (or at least previously came from) affluent SWPLs is incorrect. That the most vociferous opponents are high-IQ types claiming to represent many other high-IQ types of the same mind may still be accurate, as that seems to be the case for protest movements in general (in addition to being sharp, it is my impression that they also tend to be underachieving leftists with little social prestige). But in aggregate, smarties are more technologically progressive than the masses are.

GSS variables used: WORDSUM(0-3)(4-5)(6)(7-8)(9-10), NUKEFAM, NUKEGEN