The Political Attitudes of Professionals

In the 1960s and 1970s, political events and polling data indicated a significant rise in liberal and dissenting political attitudes among American professionals. These data seem to run counter to the historically typical connection between social privilege and conservative politics. The major purpose of this paper is to provide a descriptive portrait of the politics of professionals since 1960, through a review of American survey research. Business executives and nonprofessional workers are used as the principal comparison categories. Professionals are conservative on most economic policy issues and on commitments to American “core values.” Like business executives, they are comparatively liberal on civil rights and civil liberties issues. Like nonprofessional workers, they are comparatively liberal on welfare state and business support issues. They are more liberal than either business executives or nonprofessional workers on personal morality and military force issues. Within the professional stratum, important lines of political cleavage exist by occupational category, cohort, and type of employing organization. The anomaly of relatively high levels of liberalism in this high status group is explained with reference to two factors: (1) The rise and fall of issue-based political coalitions; and (2) cumulative changes in the occupational and class structure.