Long time reader Ian comments:
A comparison with “the American public” isn’t really appropriate – to even be in the pool where you’re thinking about an academic career, you need to have a college degree. And that population if memory serves, is far more liberal than the population at large. More realistic would be a comparison with the population of people who have graduate degree....
Roughly about ~20% of Americans self-identify as "liberal," and ~40% as conservative. The General Social Survey has a variable POLVIEWS, which asks individuals to assign themselves to a position on a political spectrum, from "extremely liberal" to "extremely conservative," like so: 1 = Extremely liberal 2 = Liberal 3 = Slightly liberal 4 = Moderate 5 = Slightly conservative 6 = Conservative 7 = Extremely conservative So in other words, the higher the integer, the more conservative the individual. The GSS has a variable, EDUCATION, ...
