According to the latest Harvard Youth Poll, liberals outnumber conservatives among college educated young people by 3:1. The precise split is 58%-21%.
In other words, among those who profess any ideology at all, only a quarter are conservative.
21 thoughts on “Raw data: Ideology among college-educated young people”
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The old saying: "If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty, you have no brain."
Mind you, this makes me brainless, but I've never been accused otherwise. Have you accounted for shifts in perspective over time? It would be interesting to see if that old chestnut actually has any merit.
That old saying is about the mirror of how it works, people mellow over time, it's only a few who get worse.
I was probably at my most conservative in my late 20's. I've been headed steadily left ever since.
Me too, except that I peaked in my late teens.
I assume that old saw was based largely on greed: As a man gets older, he gets richer and has more stuff and doesn't want to share.
Probably the tik tok swift effect. ಠ_ಠ
I really wonder if the respondents could actually be categorized along those lines seeing as they all are living in America, in American culture, studying and working in America - I guess really what I'm saying is that what is considered Liberal here is fairly conservative elsewhere...
It's really just a census of tribe.
I'd be interested in knowing how this metric has changed over time. Are the college educated getting more liberal or less liberal?
Do we have access to that data?
You can probably add about 20% who would be happy to vote for the right conservatives, but who are otherwise too embarrassed to admit it.
Is there any data at all anywhere to back up your supposition? I don't see it.
Younger folks are more liberal? Shocking! /s
Recently I gave up entirely on Reddit, and I just figured out why. I'm in my sixties, and Reddit users average out to be in their twenties. The comments on my posts bore out that making a thoughtful fact-based post on most sub-reddits was like speaking in an empty chamber or throwing buckets of chum into shark-infested waters. There is actually a sub called "Boomers Being Idiots" -- try making a comment about ageism there!
Whatever their politics, I'd argue that younger people are more doctrinaire and lack the epistemic humility that their lack of experience warrants. Or perhaps that's just because of my experience with Reddit and working with adolescents. My mood has improved since I stopped using Reddit and teaching adolescents, and I suspect there's a link.
You seem to lack epistemic humility.
You're right! But I have experience enough to know that I lack it. Give me time. I only became familiar with the concept in the last few years. In my twenties, I was a flaming A$$h01e, though, so there's been improvement, if my friends and family are anything to go by.
"The precise split is 58%-21%... In other words, among those who profess any ideology at all, only a quarter are conservative."
A quarter? I reject this soft bigotry of low expectations for campus conservatives. 21% is a lot closer to a fringe-y 1/5 of the population than 1/4. Additionally, isn't rounding down the conservative thing to do?
It seems like math and English weren’t your majors in college since you can’t understand words or numbers or both.
I think Kevin's math is 21/(21+58)=26.6% So about a quarter of those who identified either way.
I would guess that of that 21 or 26%, that at least half of those have beliefs that would qualify as "incoherent".
It’s hilarious that you think “liberals” would have coherent worldviews.
99% of ppl can’t tell their ass from a hole in the ground, wether they vote the way you want them to or not.
Part of this is the evolving definition of "conservative".
There was a time when there was a coherent suite of beliefs that one could have that could be called "conservative":
Buckley's famous Three Legged Stool comes to mind, as well as the ideas of Burke and Chesterton about respecting established precedent and things which had proven themselves to work.
But now? American conservatism in 2024 is collapsed to be entirely devoted to culture war issues; There is almost no coherent remnant of any conservative economic policy or foreign policy.
And further, the ideology of today's conservatism demands overturning precedent and tradition since as they themselves say, social liberalism has won its "Long March" through institutions. In their own words, conservatives are a besieged minority and need to destroy those institutions in order to rebuild them.
What college educated person looks at today's world and thinks this is a good idea?
Put very simply, American "conservatives" are not conservative at all by world standards. Insofar as they have a coherent political position, they are reactionaries, seeking to return to some usually imaginary version of "the good old days".
what's the trendline of the split in this poll, presuming they've been doing this for a while?
And this is why so many "conservatives" and people who call themselves "Republicans" hate college students and even college. Why they're pulling their kids out of public schools to "teach" them at home. Why they get onto school boards and try to get books removed from libraries and classrooms.
Education has always been a great force for advancement, a way to level the playing field for Americans. It was something highly valued. Up until now.