Guest post from Peter St. Onge via his Substack:
Tucker Carlson recently tweeted — er, posted — that “Women and weak men are the most susceptible to evil.”
The left was scandalized, but science is on Tucker’s side, assuming by evil he means authoritarianism.
According to a new study, if you eat healthy and go to the gym, chances are you vote right-wing — as in, small government. This builds on a 2021 study that found giving Democrat men testosterone injections turns them Republican.
No only is this hilarious, it gives us insight to why left vs right exists in the first place.
Strong Men Make Good Times
Interestingly, the more hours in the gym, the more they rejected government.
So, yes, there’s something to the soyboys for Kamala memes.
Meanwhile, across countries women tend to vote left, and men tend to vote right. In the US, for example, there’s about a 15 point gap between men and women.
Interestingly, it’s only single women: Married women actually vote Republican by 5 points — the same as men. While single women vote Democrat by 48 points.
In other words, the Democrat party is, to a first approximation, single women.
Not all have cats, but many do.
Why do Single Women Vote Left?
Folk explanations include they see government as daddy, or they’re low-income and want handouts. Abortion is cited in the US, but it’s not a major issue in most countries where single women also vote left. It could just be that single women tend to be the least informed on public policy, so maybe they’re easier for media to manipulate.
But an interesting theory comes from a 2002 book called Darwinian Politics by Paul Rubin, a professor at Emory.
He posits that humans have two political instincts: to resist dominance by outside groups, and to resist in-group domination. As in, are the barbarians invading vs are the millionaires hogging all the cute girls.
He finds that conservatives tend to focus on out-group domination, so they favor policies that make us stronger: low taxes for economic growth, anti-drug laws, work requirements for welfare, strong armies.
While the left tends to focus on in-group domination, so they favor forced equality, big governments that can cut down the mighty, and fetishize niche-groups to unite the weak in a grand coalition against the strong.
Common Ground
What’s interesting here is that both instincts — out-group and in-group — are universal human traits. We all care about both, but we vote depending on how we see the relative threats.
So if you’re living in North Korea, you’re probably more concerned about in-group domination. If you’re living in Israel at the moment you’re probably more concerned about the out-group. And, either way, men of course have more testosterone — hence more out-group focus.
Not only does this explain the enduring appeal of left vs right — at least since Plato and Aristotle.
It also explains media focus: right media tends to focus on universals — is the country stronger, wealthier, healthier. Are the kids doing alright. It’s a politics of protection — conserving.
While left-wing media acts like we’re in civil war between classes, genders, races, religions, sexual preferences.
It’s a politics of fear which, apparently works exceptionally well on single women who may not have an on-call provider or protector.
What’s Next
The solution, of course, is to give people more control over the lives. From school-choice to making it easier to start — or keep — a business, people who control their destiny vote to keep that control instead of voting to be led to the slaughter.
Every week I write an article on the top stories in economics with regular deep dives into history like the Fall of Rome, the Weimar hyperinflation, or FDR’s Great Depression.
