Your job title may reveal more about your political leanings than you think.
A new analysis from app maker Verdant Labs calculated the likelihood of various occupations to identify as either Democrat or Republican. The company presented its findings in the chart below:
To make the graphic, Verdant Labs aggregated data from the Federal Election Commission. The company collected donors' job titles and noted where they gave their money. The formula that the analysts used is surprisingly simple:
Mark Edmond, founder of Verdant Labs, told The Huffington Post he is surprised no one had performed the analysis before.
“It took some work to process and present it, but the raw data is sitting right there, available from the U.S. government via the Federal Election Commission’s website,” he said.
Edmond said he was struck by how polarized some professions seem to be. For him, this raised questions. Why is an air traffic controller more likely to be a Democrat than a pilot? Why is nearly the entire entertainment industry Democratic, while the majority of surgeons are Republican?
Some other interesting findings: Truck drivers are 12 times more likely to be Republicans than taxi drivers, prosecutors are 17 times more likely to be Republicans than public defenders, and economics professors are 7 times more likely to be Republicans than English professors.
Edmond said it was also interesting to see how “unsurprising” many of the results were.
“Most of us probably already have the notion that, say, coal miners lean to the right and environmentalists to the left, and it's amusing to see how much that's confirmed by the numbers,” he said.
The Verdant Lab graphic is one of three it made as part of data analysis it completed for Nametrix, a baby names app. Edmond said the app offers information about names, including things like likely professions and political affiliations.