RE: Recent PEW study

Wenatchee WA

Description

You're going to need to cite that study. Because, if you think about it for a moment, a few questions arise, aside from the fact that I can find no such study. Republicans claim similar things based on other non-existent studies, which they also (obviously) don't cite. How would PEW know what the IQ of study participants was? An IQ test is usually an hour or longer. PEW runs studies over the phone. Did PEW administer an IQ test over the phone? If so how did they know participants weren't cheating or getting outside help? IQ tests have to be proctored for that reason and the overwhelming majority of people have never had an IQ test or taken any comparable test so even if people were honest about their own intellect (which they aren't,) self reporting wouldn't work. There is a PEW study that asks participants random political questions over the phone, usually 10-20 questions, and then makes claims about how informed members of each party are about current political events, which they call "Political IQ" but that isn't the same thing as actual IQ, it's something PEW made up to try and measure how engaged members of each party are with the political process. To the best of my knowledge there has never been a study which found that either democrats or republicans were smarter. Democrats tend to be better conventionally educated than Republicans, but that isn't what IQ is. IQ is a measure of problem solving speed, not education. Albeit you have to have certain basics to actually solve the problems, so if you don't speak English, or have dyslexia or dyscalculia or never learned simple concepts then an English language IQ test won't be accurate, but party affiliate doesn't seem to have much of a correlation with IQ, or, if it does, I haven't found the study and would appreciate a citation if you have found one. Personally, I lean left, but that's because of my life experiences, not because of my IQ. With that said, as a matter of odds, some Republicans are idiots, just as some Democrats are. I think there's some sampling bias here because we are much more aware of the idiot Republicans because claims that involve Jewish Space Lasers or chickens eating Georgia election ballots are so dumb that they tend to stick with us a lot more than whatever members of ANTIFA are upset about at the moment. Trump won because religion is in decline, which conservative religious people find scary and motivating. Democrats were also annoyingly arrogant under Obama and likely went too far with certain policies, which also motivated Republican voter turnout. One example of a bad democrat policy would be letting male rapists self identify as women and transferring them to the general population in women's prisons, where they, as one might expect, rape the women. https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/man-who-claims-hes-female-accused-of-raping-inmates-at-womens-prison/ The main factor that determines party affiliation seems to be how scared people are. People who fear change, who fear "the other" are more likely to be Republicans. People who trust others, who invite change, are more likely to be Democrats. Too much fear is bad, but so is too much trust. Both parties fail when confronted with challenges that are the opposite of their world view, which is why it would be best if we could work together, instead of just hating on one another all the time. We probably can't anymore, but it'd sure be nice. I don't fault you for spreading this, it's pretty hard to keep a level head when the loudest members of the other party are insulting jerks all the time.