Unemployment and Political Partisanship: Support for the Null Hypothesis

Abstract

Analysis of survey data from faculty at fifteen colleges and universities in a large Midwestern metropolitan area supports earlier speculations that certain attributes unique to academia are predictive of differential participation in several aspects of socio-political life. Scholarly commitments and working in a field that studies socio-political issues per se are associated with liberal attitudes, casting votes for liberal candidates, and overt involvement in radical political activities. Tendencies for these associations were observed in both secular and church-related schools. Contrary to critics of the recent Ladd and Lipset studies, there is a clear tendency for faculty with liberal covert attitudes to translate them into overt participation in liberal and radical political activities.