Poking around the GSS for another reason I stumbled onto something weird. Something which I’d seen hints of, or seen referred to before, but never followed up myself. It seems that support for abortion-on-demand and the death penalty peaked concurrently in the span between 1980-2000. This is evident in two GSS variables, ABANY and CAPPUN, which ask if you support a woman’s right to an abortion for any reason and the death penalty for murder. Additionally, I decided to look at attitudes toward homosexuality using HOMOSEX as a reference as a point of contrast. Unlike abortion or the death penalty attitudes toward homosexuality have been changing in the same direction for the past 30 years. Additionally, the magnitude of the change seems to be much greater than in regards to the other two controversial social issues, and especially abortion, which has exhibited notable stability.

I was particularly interested in differences by religion, so  I limited the sample to whites and broke it down by Protestant, Catholic, Jew and None. To reduce sample size volatility I clustered by decade, so that “1970s” is inclusive of every year in the 1970s that the GSS asked the question for that variable.

The only thing I note beyond the concurrency is that the more socially liberal groups, Jews for example, seem to exhibit more fluctuation by decade. Conservatives are conservative in part because they reflect older norms on issues where they are conservative. The issues which defined liberal vs. conservative in the 1960s, for example attitudes toward desegregation, are no longer salient because conservatives how now aligned themselves with liberals (there are other issues where the reverse may be true, especially when it comes to the failure of Great Society. I suspect that many, though not all, 1960s liberals would admit that AFDC as it was implemented before the Clinton era reform was not a success in defeating the culture of poverty). It is also notable that in the 1980s Jews were more pro-death penalty than Catholics or those with no religion. I think this might have to do with the massive urban crime wave which was peaking back then. I remember how much preparation for street crime people went through in the 1980s when visiting New York City. Jewish concentration in large urban centers where violent street crime was common might explain the shift toward the death penalty.

Next, I wanted to compare the relationship of support for death penalty and abortion rights. The columns below indicate those who favor or oppose capital punishment for murder, and the rows indicate support for or opposition to abortion on demand. At the bottom you also see a ratio of those who are pro-choice and pro-life among those who support to the death penalty.

So first, it seems that among Roman Catholics being pro-life suggests a small but significant tendency to oppose capital punishment above expectation. The seamless garment isn’t a total illusion, though do note that pro-choice and pro-death penalty Catholics still outnumber anti-death penalty anti-abortion Catholics. The death penalty for murderers is really popular. Among Protestants the two views seem independent, as there wasn’t a correlation in either direction. In contrast, Jews and those with no religion go the other direction as Catholics. Those who are pro-choice are more likely to oppose the death penalty, and those who are pro-life are more likely to support the death penalty. Also, look at the really huge ratio between the proportion of Jews who support the death penalty and abortion rights, over half, and those who oppose both, around 1 in 50!

Note: I limited the data to the year 2000 and after, and there isn’t much of a change in direction, though the magnitude is tweaked a bit.

Addendum: Abortion rates have been dropping since 1990.

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Political punditry is rife with “fake facts.” Basically, empirical assertions which are false but assumed to be true. Perhaps the readership of political journalism is stupid. Perhaps the writers of political journalism are stupid. Perhaps both. No idea. So a new “series,” which I will label “fake fact,” facts assumed to be true by the stupid and ignorant which are wrong, and have been shown to be wrong by political scientists for a long time.

Consider this Politico article, Dems may lose Catholics over abortion. Here’s a fact:

According to exit polls, President Barack Obama won the support of 53 percent of Catholic voters, a seven-point increase over the showing of the Democrats’ 2004 nominee, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a Catholic. Among Latino Catholics, who are often more conservative than their white counterparts on social issues, Obama did even better, winning more than two-thirds of their support, a 14-point improvement over Kerry’s totals, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center.

Obama beat Kerry by by:
5 points for males
6 points for women
2 points for whites
14 points for Latinos
12 points for the young 18-29
5 points for less than $50 K
6 points for more than $50 K

etc. etc. He swung the whole electorate, as one would expect. As for Catholic views about abortion, ABANY for the GSS below (Yes = yes to abortion on demand)…. (all except blacks are after year 2000)

THIS IS LIMITED TO HISPANICS:

THIS IS LIMITED TO BLACKS:

DEMOCRATS:

REPUBLICANS:

Of course, one can object that a lot of these people “aren’t real Catholics.” In some circumstances this is an important consideration, but since I believe all religion is fiction anyhow I will take people at their word as to their religion.

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As a follow up to the post below on Sarah Palin and Creationism, it strikes me that those on the Right & Republicans seem more divided and emotive on this issue than abortion. More specifically, libertarian and secular Rightists seem more likely to express their displeasure about Creationism than abortion. Why? A lot of it probably has to do with identity markers. Even if you are a pro-choice Republican, you know that the party’s position is pro-life, just as if you are a pro-life Democrat you know that the party’s position is pro-choice. Some of this was evident with the Stupak Amendment, where liberals blew a gasket. I personally support abortion rights and do not believe that a first trimester abortion should be made illegal. But I can understand why those who are pro-life would fight to prevent public funds, or the appearance of public funds, from going toward the provision of abortion. In contrast, many Left-liberals seem to be complaining about the amendment as if is a horrible deprivation of basic female health services, like a pap test. This is an instance of Left-liberals living in their own ideological bubbles, even if most Americans do not think abortion is murder, they do not conceive of it is as just another health service. (well, that’s obvious, as there are whole lobbies who are focused on abortion, pro and anti)

Moving to Creationism, there never seems to be a debate about this issue among Democrats. And yet black Americans are by and large Creationist. The difference between the political parties and ideologies isn’t that great. My own hunch is that the difference here between the two parties has to do with the degree of unanimity among the elites.

To explore these issue I looked to the GSS. In particular, the variables:

ABANY
EVOLVED
POLVIEWS
PARTYID
DEGREE

For PARTYID I looked only at Democrats and Republicans. For POLVIEWS I only looked at liberals and conservatives. For DEGREE, I created two categories, those with 4 year college degrees or higher, and those without. ABANY & EVOLVED are both dichotomous yes/true vs. no/false. I also limited to the sample to 1998 and later. Here are the exact questions for ABANY & EVOLVED:

Please tell me whether or not you think it should be possible for a pregnant woman to obtain a legal abortion if: The woman wants it for any reason?

…

Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals. (Is that true or false?)

The table below shows the difference between college and non-college educated among the two political parties and ideologies when it comes to evolution & abortion:

The data above show that there is a difference between college educated and non-college educated in both variables, both as a raw percentage difference and as ratio. In both cases those with college degrees support abortion on demand and accept that human evolution is true more than those without college degrees. But, the difference between the elites and the masses among the Democrats/liberals is greater than among Republicans/conservatives, in particular on abortion, where among Republicans/conservatives there is convergence. Though the Republican/conservative education gap isn’t as large as for Democrats/liberals on evolution, it is far greater than for abortion.

The following table now compares the ratios of opinions within a particular category (e.g., college educated Republicans). The closer the ratio is to 1, the more balanced the opinion (i.e., 50% support abortion on demand and 50% oppose abortion on demand in a particular class means a ratio of 1).

I put in bold ratios between 0.8 and 1.2, which indicates a balance of opinions within a demographic segment. When it comes to evolution, liberals and Democrats who are not college educated are divided, as are liberals without college degrees on  abortion on demand. When it comes to evolution, college educated Republicans and conservatives are divided! This to me explains why there is no controversy about evolution in the Democratic party, the Democratic elite is totally unified, and can ignore the masses. By contrast, the Republican masses are unified against evolution, while the elites are split. When it comes to abortion Democrat and liberal elites are exceptional in their support for abortion-on-demand. This goes back to my suspicion that the peculiar manner in which pro-choice Democrats talk about abortion emerges out of an ideological bubble where they simply never encounter anyone who might think that an abortion is a more morally charged health service than say a biopsy.

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