The Intelligence of Politics

By Red Nick

The dispute over who is the most intelligent in the political world is almost as old as politics itself. Many partisans will make baseless claims that their group is the most intelligent. The point of this brief essay is not to decide who is the smartest, but rather who is the dumbest. Please keep in mind that the terms liberal and conservative are often used as catch-all phrases in studies, and will also be used as such in this essay. So, for example, someone who is “very conservative” could be either a fascist or an American Republican. Also keep in mind that when this essay compares American Democrats to Republicans, it is not trying to say Democrats are better. It is just using the Democrats as someone to compare the Republicans to simply because there is very little data on members of non-mainstream American parties (although the claims in this essay are not restricted to Americans only).

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data from a large sample of American test subjects. The data included information on religion and political views. Kanazawa’s work showed that people who identified themselves as “very conservative” had an average IQ of 95, and those who identified themselves as “very liberal” had an average IQ of 106. The data also showed that atheists had an average IQ of 103, but religious people had an average IQ of only 97. It goes without saying that a large portion, probably a majority, of conservatives are very religious.

"The adoption of some evolutionarily novel ideas makes some sense in terms of moving the species forward," said George Washington University leadership professor James Bailey, who was not involved in Kanazawa’s study (he only reviewed it). "It also makes perfect sense that more intelligent people -- people with, sort of, more intellectual firepower -- are likely to be the ones to do that" (Landau source).

A book by John T. Rourke called International Politics on the World Stage shows a chart containing the IQ of the past nine US Presidents as of the George W. Bush era. The IQ data showed that the Democrat (liberal) with the lowest IQ, Lyndon Johnson, had a higher IQ than the lowest Republican (conservative). The Republican with the lowest IQ, George W. Bush, had the lowest IQ of all the Presidents in the chart. Conservative hero Ronald Reagan had the third lowest IQ (Rourke, 84).

Sociologist Markus Kemmelmeier compared the SAT and ACT scores of those who are against gay marriage and abortion (the conservative position) to those who were in favor of such (the progressive position). The data showed that those who were against gay marriage and abortion scored lower on the SAT and ACT tests than those who were in favor of same-sex marriage and abortion (Hutson source).

Lazar Stankov, a visiting professor at Singapore’s National Institute of Education, published “Conservatism and Cognitive Ability” in the peer-reviewed journal Intelligence. Here is a quote from the article:

“Conservatism and cognitive ability are negatively correlated … At the individual level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with SAT, vocabulary, and analogy test scores. At the national level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with measures of education … and performance on mathematics and reading assessments” (Richwine source).

The General Social Survey has a ten item vocabulary test called WORDSUM. It has been claimed that this test shows the relationship between vocabulary and intelligence to a certain extent. The test showed that 20.8% of those who identified themselves as “extremely liberal” had high vocabulary scores, but only 13.8% of those who identified themselves as “conservative” had high vocabulary scores (Half Sigma source).

As we can see from the information presented earlier in this essay, right-wingers have the lowest IQ rankings. They also have the lowest test scores. We must keep in mind that, sadly, there are exceptions to this rule. However, the data does not lie. Because conservatives are so unintelligent, there should be no doubt in the mind of the reader that right-wingers are subhuman trash. The world would be a much better place if these animals were disallowed many of the political rights that they currently have because they lack the brain power to make good decisions.

Works Cited:

"Half Sigma." Half Sigma. 16 Jun 2006. Web. 26 Feb 2010. http://www.halfsigma.com/2006/06/liberals_smarte.html.

Hutson, Matthew. "Conservatives are Dumber—And Smarter—Than Liberals ." Psychology Today 26 Sep 2008: Web. 26 Feb 2010. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brainstorm/200809/conservatives-are- dumber-and-smarter-liberals.

Landau, Elizabeth. "Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ." CNN 26 Feb 2010: Web. 26 Feb 2010. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/26/liberals.atheists.sex.intelligence/.

Richwine, Jason. "Are Liberals Smarter Than Conservatives?." American (2009): Web. 26 Feb 2010. http://www.american.com/archive/2009/october/are-liberals- smarter-than-conservatives.

Rourke, John. International Politics on the World Stage. 12. 84. Print.