Quote (thesnipa @ 22 Apr 2020 19:24)
do you have a source for career bureaucrats leaning left?
Take this article from October 2016:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/302817-government-workers-shun-trump-give-big-money-to-clinton-campaignQuote
Of the roughly $2 million that federal workers from 14 agencies spent on presidential politics by the end of September, about $1.9 million, or 95 percent, went to the Democratic nominee’s campaign, according to an analysis by The Hill.
Employees at all the agencies analyzed, without exception, are sending their campaign contributions overwhelmingly to Clinton over her Republican counterpart. Several agencies, such as the State Department, which Clinton once led, saw more than 99 percent of contributions going to Clinton.
Employees of the Department of Justice, which investigated Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of State, gave Clinton 97 percent of their donations. Trump received $8,756 from DOJ employees compared with $286,797 for Clinton. From IRS employees, Clinton received 94 percent of donations.
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David Schultz, a Hamline University Professor of Political Science, said government employees have historically favored Democratic candidates over Republicans both in their voting habits and political contributions made in their personal time.
And while the degree to which federal employees shunned Trump in 2016 was extreme, it's not entirely explained by anti-Trump- instead of an anti-GOP-bias:
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The 2012 GOP presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, received 14 percent of donations from the same group of agencies surveyed for Trump. Trump received just 5 percent.
Even in 2012, when the Republican nominee was a conventional conservative candidate, federal workers preferred the Democratic nominee by a roughly 6 to 1 ratio. So the "Trump factor" doesnt come anywhere close to explaining how extremely tilted donations from federal employees have been in Democrats' favour.
Even the Pentagon and Homeland security overwhelmingly backed Clinton over Trump, although one might have suspected these agencies to lean more toward the conservative party:
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Throughout his campaign, Trump has portrayed himself as a strongman who would toughen up America’s defenses — both militarily and at the border — and who would take care of veterans. It’s probably no coincidence, therefore, that Trump performed best in donations among employees of three agencies: Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.
But even employees of these more Trump-friendly agencies have overwhelmingly contributed to Clinton’s campaign. From Defense employees, Trump received 341 donations for $43,575. Clinton got 2,392 donations for $225,560, giving her 84 percent of the money. From Homeland Security employees, Clinton got 90 percent of the donations, and from Veterans Affairs she took 88 percent.
The explanation for federal employees' preference of Democrats over Republicans is relatively straightforward and already given in the article:
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“Government employees are, on balance, more moderate or more liberal as opposed to the general population,” Schultz said. “Not across the board, but in general.”
Government employees are “more likely to believe in government as opposed to, let’s say, a privatization program,” he added, “programs that we would view as hostile to government.”
Republicans typically campaign on promises to slash government payrolls, which helps explain why recent GOP presidential candidates have received the smaller share of donations from government workers.
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There's another article from 2017 describing how explosive growth of population numbers and people with federal jobs in Northern Virginia counties like Fairfax and Arlington has tipped the balance of Virginia politics, and that Virginia Republicans in fact arent doing that much worse recently than they did in pre-Trump times. This growth mostly took place during the Obama years btw.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/359622-the-swamp-strikes-back-the-federal-bureaucracy-wins-in-virginiaThis post was edited by Black XistenZ on Apr 22 2020 05:14pm
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