6 ms·

Heavily Democrat: - Of 12k donors from University of California faculty, only 6% donated to Trump, 94% to Biden - MIT, 5% Trump, 95% Biden - Stanford, 5% Tru

• mindslight 6y ago
  A straightforward conclusion from that data would be that universities are overwhelmingly conservative, having donated to the more conservative candidate. But really it just shows the futility of discussing things in terms of group affiliations when one of the major parties in the middle of an upheaval.
  • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    A straightforward conclusion would be that you are spinning that data really hard to try to make it support your narrative.
    • mindslight 6y ago
      I didn't spin anything. The comment I was replying to said that 95% of faculty donations went to Biden. Biden was the conservative candidate - he respects institutions, supports gradual changes to the status quo, and goes to church regularly. What I was doing was being a bit facetious, by using the plain definition of the word conservative rather than the contemporary stretched definition referring to a movement that is better described as radical populism. And I obviously don't believe that colleges are full of conservatives - that was a reductio ad absurdum. My actual point is that it's foolish to be looking at that 2020 presidential race as a proxy for conservatism on college campuses, especially tolerance of conservatism, when the candidate calling himself "conservative" is nothing of the sort. Put another way, shunning Trump supporters is in no way shunning conservatives.
      • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        A fair point - once you bother to make it. You could have made the same point in your previous point without sounding like you went full-on troll, though...
• hooande 6y ago
  This is a weak proxy in this case. Could be ideological conservatives that didn't want to donate to a particular candidate
• athms 6y ago
  >Heavily Democrat You are making an assumption that Republicans only donated to Trump and not to Biden. The Bloomberg article is about donations based on profession and large employers, not political affiliation or party.
  • esyir 6y ago
    He did. He's also probably correct. I'm pretty sure R/D affiliation is a fantastic feature for tracking the end target of any specific donation. A small subset of R's might donate to Biden, but those are likely swamped by the general split across party lines.
    • athms 6y ago
      > He's also probably correct. Then prove it. Linking to an article to support an argument is fruitless if it doesn't support the argument.