{"id":1139,"date":"2020-11-01T21:00:44","date_gmt":"2020-11-02T02:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/?p=1139"},"modified":"2020-11-08T15:45:38","modified_gmt":"2020-11-08T20:45:38","slug":"republican-views-political-policy-and-figures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/?p=1139","title":{"rendered":"Republican Views: Political Policy and Figures"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Republican Students Lean Left But Dislike Liberal Figures<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Daliya Wallenstein<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

A methodological note on the statistics in this article: For numbers reported from the <\/em>Palette survey used in comparison to Pew Research Center findings at the beginning of this article, students who answered \u201cI don\u2019t know enough to answer this question\u201d were removed from the percentage. This was done to more easily compare the numbers, since Pew removed \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d responses from the published graphs from which <\/em>Palette pulled the statistics for this article.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The majority of students who responded to the survey identify as Democrats. Within the 48% of the student body who responded to the survey, just 35% identified with the Republican Party. However, many of these students\u2019 views align closer with the views of the Democratic Party than with the Republican party. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Republican students at AJA approve of the concept of bigger government more than average Republicans. As many as 69% of Republicans said that \u201cgovernment is almost always wasteful and inefficient,\u201d according to a 2017 Pew Research Center poll<\/span><\/a>, while only 58% of Republican AJA students agree. Compared to an average pool of Republicans, the Republican students within AJA also support government regulation more. The Pew study found that just 31% of Republicans said that \u201cgovernment regulation of business is necessary to protect the public interest,\u201d yet up to 50% of Republican students believe so. According to the same national survey, only 36% of Republicans said \u201cstricter environmental laws and regulations are worth the cost.\u201d In contrast, 50% of Republican students would approve of costly environmental laws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Republican students also lean left in the matter of immigration. Around 60% of these students say that \u201cimmigrants strengthen the country because of their hard work and talents,\u201d compared to only 42% of the Republicans in the study. And while just 39% of Republicans said \u201cit is best for the future of our country to be active in world affairs,\u201d a whopping 82% of Republican students are in favor of international involvement — 26% more than even Pew\u2019s sample of Democrats. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Republican students in AJA differ greatly from Republicans in the Pew study on homosexuality. Just 51% of Republicans in the study believed \u201chomosexuality should be accepted by society,\u201d while 91% of Republican AJA students were in favor, with only one response in opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On other questions, Republican students fit more in line with the average Republican. According  to a recent national poll<\/span><\/a> conducted by The New York Times<\/em> and Siena College, 91% of Republicans would vote to reelect President Donald Trump. Within AJA, 84.6% of Republican students would do the same \u2014 giving President Trump a slightly less, but similar, level of support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When questioned whether \u201cthe government should spend more to help the needy even if it means going deeper into debt,\u201d only 24% of Republicans asked by Pew approved of this additional spending. Similarly, only 27% of Republican AJA students agreed with this allocation of resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Republican students and the general population of Republicans view social inequality roughly the same. In the study, only 36% of Republicans believed that \u201cour country needs to continue making changes to give black people equal rights with white people,\u201d a proportion relatively in line with the 38.46% of AJA students who agreed. Furthermore, 63% and 64% of Republicans in the study and at AJA, respectively, said that \u201cobstacles that once made it hard for women to get ahead are largely gone.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only in one case did Republican students lean more to the right \u2014 and in this case, less populist \u2014 than the general Republican population. Up to 46% of national Republicans in the study said \u201cthe economic system in this country unfairly favors powerful interests.\u201d However, only 33% of Republican students believe in this imbalance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite a tendency to lean left, Republican students often view liberal figures as \u201cstrongly unfavorable\u201d — to the extent that  Republican students are much more likely to view liberal figures as \u201cstrongly unfavorable\u201d than to view Republican figures as \u201cstrongly favorable.\u201d The majority (58%) of Republican students (excluding those with a neutral opinion or who didn\u2019t know enough to answer) find Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee and California Senator Kamala Harris strongly unfavorable, and exactly half of the Republican students view Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as strongly unfavorable. However, only less than half of Republican students find Vice President Mike Pence strongly favorable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This trend could relate to the fact that Republican students recognize liberal figures more than Republican figures: For example, when asked their opinion of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R), 66.67% of Republican students answered that they \u201cdon\u2019t know enough to answer this question\u201d — the same percentage of Republican students who said they find former Vice President and Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden \u201cstrongly unfavorable.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDespite a tendency to lean left, Republican students often view Liberal figures as \u2018strongly unfavorable.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

While two-thirds of AJA Republicans did not know enough about Leader McConnell to form an opinion, only 8% of them couldn\u2019t supply an opinion on Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (Leader McConnell\u2019s most direct counterpart in the House of Representatives). A similar, though much less pronounced trend, appeared on the other side of the political aisle of AJA students: 47% of AJA Democrats either had a neutral view or didn\u2019t know enough to answer their opinion of Speaker Pelosi, compared to a slightly smaller 42% who said the same about Leader McConnell. Furthermore, more AJA Democrats (58%) than Republicans (25%) answered with an opinionated view on the Republican Leader McConnell, while more AJA Republicans (83%) leaned one way or the other on Democratic Speaker Pelosi than AJA Democrats (53%).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The three columns on the left show favorability among AJA Democrats. The columns on the right show favorability among AJA Republicans.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

From the national partisanship and negativity in politics, it would not be unreasonable to assume that students hear more reasons to dislike a political figure than to support one. Furthermore, due to response bias in the survey, it is possible that the more moderate, less partisan students did not fill out the survey. This would account for nonrepresentative, hyper-partisan opinions on political figures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Republican students are overwhelmingly the most likely to agree with their parents on political matters (67% of them are the same as at least one parent, as opposed to 21% of Democrats and none who identify as independents). Lowerclassmen Republicans are even more likely to view politics similarly to their parents — 66.67% of these students say their political views align with both of their parents, and the other third say their political views are the same as one parent and more conservative than the other \u2014 meaning every single 9th or 10th grade Republican holds the same political views as at least one parent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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However, as seen from these statistics, Republican students lean more liberal than the average Republican. Growing up in a conservative household, it is possible that these students identify as Republican based on the familiar party name, not the party\u2019s ideology. Or, perhaps, as seen from the strong dislike of liberal figures, perhaps these students are not so much Republican as anti-Democrat. Whatever the case, the views of Republican students in AJA do not fully align with standard Republican opinions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republican Students Lean Left But Dislike Liberal Figures – Daliya Wallenstein<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":1152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[40],"class_list":["post-1139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-election-2020","entry","rows"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/gop-elephant-2.jpg?fit=1500%2C1346&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1139"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1153,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions\/1153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}