Cameron Strouth

WRT 205

Primary Research Results

I sent out a short 3-paged survey to my floor groupchat and posted it on

Facebook. I got 53 responses, most of which were helpful… most. Some responses

were extremely immature (hilariously so) and thus discarded. The first page dealt with

general information and asked for the respondents age, race/ethnicity, gender, and their

political identity (such as conservative or liberal). The second page dealt with

background information and asked how they would describe their economic

background, if they grew up in a single parent household, if they finished high school, if

they went to a public or private school, and if they are in/going to college. The final page

listed somewhat trending political topics (such as abortion and trans rights) and asked

whether they agreed with it or not.

The results were both obvious but somewhat eye-opening at the same time.

People who came from a lower socio-economic background tended to identify as

democratic and held more liberal views. And on the other side, people who came from a

better off socio-economic background were republican and held conservative views. Of

course, this make sense. Democratic ideals often include welfare policies that help

people who are worse off in life, while Republicans frequently support programs towards

the free market – which don’t usually help people right away.

There were obviously outliers here, but they were grouped enough that I’d call

them exceptions to the trend. Out of the 33 surveyed who responded as democratic, 8

were from a well-off background. However, the two things all these people had in
common were the pursuit of higher, liberal education. The other exception to the trend,

again, had to do with people who were well-off, 7 of the 33 who responded identified

themselves as black.

Except for those two exceptions (and three outliers), the data trended exactly

how I thought it would. Those who were well-off veered towards being Republican, while

those who weren’t as well-off gravitated to Democratic ideals. There were other trends,

such as younger people were more likely to be democratic and those who didn’t go to

college were often Republican. The other big thing is that 75% of the white males who

took the survey all identified as Republican and “Highly-Conservative”.

So, considering I’m a freshman in college who has never taken a statistics

course and learned everything I knew about data analysis from social media, it’s

probably best I look for studies from people who actually know what they’re doing. Bill

Frey from Debt.org has a section on their website that sources pew research data and

other academic studies. Their study basically reconfirms what I believed and more.

Their demographic breakdown has many categories, starting with location. Highly

populated areas (think cities) are predominately democratic, while suburban areas trend

republican and rural areas are dominated by republicans. More women identify as

democratic; although that depends more on marital status. Married women are split

more evenly between the two parties while the majority of unmarried women are

democratic. Building on that, LGBTQ overwhelmingly support democratic candidates.

The study goes on to say that an individual becomes less-likely to be democrat

with every additional dollar they earn. However, there’s an interesting trend where the

75% of the ultra-wealthy are democratic. On the trend for education, Democrats gain
more support from those with no high school diplomas and a post-graduate degree.

Republicans garner more votes from those who graduate high school, go to college,

and graduate college (which is different from what my survey trended). Democrats also

tend to be slightly younger than republicans.

The final three sections; race, religion, and social welfare, show the biggest

differences. The majority of the republican party (87%) are white, whilst the democratic

party is incredibly diverse. About 30 years ago, the republican and democratic parties

were split almost evenly when it came to religion, but since the late 90s the democratic

party has become less and less religious (except for Jewish voters, which has remained

around 80% of them supporting the democratic party). As for social welfare, there’s a

35-point difference in between republicans and democrats. Republicans often give more

to charity, while democrats are much more supportive of government-assistance

programs.

So, in conclusion, my survey “wonkly” highlights a trend between socio-economic

trends and political identity. The general idea is that people who are well off are

republican, while those who aren’t are democratic (except for the large exceptions).

Reflection
 Initially, I had a different survey that set out to discover implicit bias between

people… but then I realized it was pointless. A republican is obviously going to respond

better to republican talking points, just as a democrat will have a nicer reaction to

democratic talking points. So, I transitioned to how socio-economic background makes

you more likely to lean towards a specific political standing.

The point of the survey was to highlight that link – and while it does mostly, it fails

in some ways. The first way it fails is the sample surveyed. The people surveyed don’t

properly represent a population, which skews the results. For instance, 15 out of the 53

actual responses identified as African American, which is no-where near their actual

population amount. Another issue was that the majority (43) of people surveyed were

from a city (mostly Philadelphia and Boston), which makes the survey lean towards

liberal politics.

Another major issue with the survey was the questions. For it to have been a

proper survey, there should have been A) more questions, and B) more pointed

questions. For example, I asked how people viewed their economic status was growing

up. My guess is that people like to dramatize their childhood. So, if I really wanted an

accurate representation, I’d need them to find the district they grew up in and look it up.

Of course, that’s somewhat unrealistic to ask someone on Facebook to do. Since I

wanted people to take the survey, I had to sacrifice accuracy. Overall, I’m happy with

the survey, the trends it did show were consistent even if some of the specific trends

were skewed.