A reason why the political orientation gap might be less worrying than it appears at first sight is that it probably stems partly from the overwhelmingly young bent of EA. Young people from many countries (and perhaps especially in the countries where EA has greater presence) tend to be more left leaning than the general population.
This might be another reason to try onboarding older people to EA more relative to the pool of new members, but if you thought that would involve significant costs (e.g. having less young talented EAs because less community building resources were directed towards that demographic), then perhaps in equilibrium we should have a somewhat skewed distribution of political orientations.
I agree this may stem partly from EA’s very strong age skew, but I don’t think this can explain a very large part of the difference.
Within the US, Gen Z are 17% Republican, 31% Democrat (52% Independent), while Millenials are 21% Republican − 27% Democrat (52% Independent). This is, even among the younger group, only a ~2:1 skew, whereas US EAs are 77% left-leaning and 2.1% right-leaning (a ~37:1 skew). Granted, the young Independents may also be mostly left-leaning, which would increase the disparity in the general population. Of course, this is looking at party affiliation rather than left-right politics, but I think it plausible (based, in part, on LW/SSC/ACX data) that even right-leaning EAs are non-Republican voting, so the results may be more skewed than this.
Looking at ideology, US 18-29 year olds are around 23% Conservative, 34% Liberal (41% Moderate), which is also significantly more balanced.
Of course, there is also the education gap (with EAs being disproportionately highly educated), but among college graduates we still see only 31% conservative, 20% liberal, and 27% conservative vs 36% liberal for postgraduates.
One could also argue that elite colleges specifically are even more left-leaning. But, as we note, although the EA community is skewed towards elite colleges, a very large percentage of respondents are not from particularly highly ranked colleges (though this is likely less so looking purely within the US), so it does not seem like this could also explain a large part of the difference.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that in some of these cases the explanation of the difference may flow in the reverse direction: e.g. it could be that features of the EA community make it more appealing to political liberals which cause it to attract more young people, rather than vice versa.
Thanks for putting numbers to my argument! I was expecting a greater proportion of left-leaning individuals among the college educated, so this was a useful update.
Alejandro—I think you’re right that the leftward skew is partly explained by the youth-skew in the EA age distribution, plus the commonly observed correlation between age and conservatism. I also agree that more active recruitment of older people could help balance this out somewhat. (I’ve critiqued EA’s implicit ageism a number of times in EA Forum comments).
What do you mean by ‘CB resources’ though? Not familiar with the term.
A reason why the political orientation gap might be less worrying than it appears at first sight is that it probably stems partly from the overwhelmingly young bent of EA. Young people from many countries (and perhaps especially in the countries where EA has greater presence) tend to be more left leaning than the general population.
This might be another reason to try onboarding older people to EA more relative to the pool of new members, but if you thought that would involve significant costs (e.g. having less young talented EAs because less community building resources were directed towards that demographic), then perhaps in equilibrium we should have a somewhat skewed distribution of political orientations.
I agree this may stem partly from EA’s very strong age skew, but I don’t think this can explain a very large part of the difference.
Within the US, Gen Z are 17% Republican, 31% Democrat (52% Independent), while Millenials are 21% Republican − 27% Democrat (52% Independent). This is, even among the younger group, only a ~2:1 skew, whereas US EAs are 77% left-leaning and 2.1% right-leaning (a ~37:1 skew). Granted, the young Independents may also be mostly left-leaning, which would increase the disparity in the general population. Of course, this is looking at party affiliation rather than left-right politics, but I think it plausible (based, in part, on LW/SSC/ACX data) that even right-leaning EAs are non-Republican voting, so the results may be more skewed than this.
Looking at ideology, US 18-29 year olds are around 23% Conservative, 34% Liberal (41% Moderate), which is also significantly more balanced.
Of course, there is also the education gap (with EAs being disproportionately highly educated), but among college graduates we still see only 31% conservative, 20% liberal, and 27% conservative vs 36% liberal for postgraduates.
One could also argue that elite colleges specifically are even more left-leaning. But, as we note, although the EA community is skewed towards elite colleges, a very large percentage of respondents are not from particularly highly ranked colleges (though this is likely less so looking purely within the US), so it does not seem like this could also explain a large part of the difference.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that in some of these cases the explanation of the difference may flow in the reverse direction: e.g. it could be that features of the EA community make it more appealing to political liberals which cause it to attract more young people, rather than vice versa.
Thanks for putting numbers to my argument! I was expecting a greater proportion of left-leaning individuals among the college educated, so this was a useful update.
Alejandro—I think you’re right that the leftward skew is partly explained by the youth-skew in the EA age distribution, plus the commonly observed correlation between age and conservatism. I also agree that more active recruitment of older people could help balance this out somewhat. (I’ve critiqued EA’s implicit ageism a number of times in EA Forum comments).
What do you mean by ‘CB resources’ though? Not familiar with the term.
Oh, sorry. I’ll expand the abbreviation in the original comment. It’s ‘Community Building resources’.
OK! Thanks for the explanation.