Inductivist

Are jocks conservative? Honestly, I haven't followed sports much since I was a kid, but I have a lot of respect for it since, at least when it is functioning as it should, sports teaches conservative values: self-discipline, work ethic, competitiveness, merit, personal responsibility, rejection of excuses, etc.

So, this makes me wonder if athletes are, as a group, politically conservative. Off the top of my head, I can think of more famous Republican athletes--Gerald Ford, Jack Kemp, J.C. Watts, Steve Largent--but then there is Bill Bradley on the other side.

The General Social Survey asked 1,210 white Americans two questions: whom they voted for in 2000, and how well the term "athletic" describes them. Below, I compare those who said "very well" and "not at all":


Percent who voted for Bush in 2000

Athletic men 63.5
Unathletic men 46.7

Athletic women 62.5
Unathletic women 54.9

The difference is more striking for the men--I'm getting a mental image of the wimpy liberal guy here--but athletic women are also more likely to vote Republican. There weren't enough blacks to analyze, but based on the few cases, it looks like the percent of them that votes Democrat falls into the 80-90 percent range if they're athletes. Evidently, there is some connection between sports culture and conservatism.

More evidence that white NFL players are discriminated against: In the fall of 2005, I did an analysis of NFL stats to assist Steve Sailer who wrote a piece for VDARE about possible discrimination against white players. Using data from Caste Football on the number of white starters and nonstarters, I found that over a three-year period, teams with more white benchwarmers were noticeably more likely to win games. The number of white starters didn't matter much, but each additional 2.2 to 5 white nonstarters (depending on the year) resulted in an extra win. Caste Football’s J.D. Cash has suggested that perhaps white utility players are more likely to master the playbooks for multiple positions, and Steve added that perhaps benching black athletes who often have large egos poisons the atmosphere and lowers team spirit.

In the scientific spirit of replication (and the fact that tomorrow is the Super Bowl) I ran the numbers again for the year that is now coming to an end. Looking at the regular season, we see the same pattern observed in previous years: the percent of white starters does not seem to matter (r=.06) but the correlation between nonstarters and wins is noteworthy: .20. An example based on estimating a regression model will make more intuitive sense: if Jacksonville, who had only 5 white non-starters, were like the Jets who had 15, they would have won an estimated 2 additional games. This may not sound like all that much, but as Sailer wrote, in a game of many complex factors, identifying a factor that might turn an average team into a playoff contending team is a big deal.