Politics

Ranking Occupations by Ideology

By Paul Blumenthal

This is a really clever infographic by Adam Bonica showing the ideological placement of occupations through an examination of their campaign contributions:

This covers only the 2008 election cycle and shows that, by and large, most occupations fall into the Democratic category aside from the obviously traditionally conservative oil and gas and auto dealer industries. What I would love to see here is what this graphic would look like over time. How would this look in the 2006 cycle or, better yet, the 2002 cycle? I’m pretty sure that you would find major fluctuations in the ideological placement of these industries depending on which party is in charge of Congress. Even more so, the size of the party’s majority would matter too.

Full post as published by Sunlight Foundation on March 19, 2010 (boomark / email).