Studies of education levels and voting trends confirm that conservatives have lower education levels than average. Several studies, including one recently from a social media site that generates "fake news" on purpose, have conveyed that conservatives are much more gullible and less informed about news, science and education. They also tend to believe fake news stories and don't fact check, where liberal-minded, more educated people question stories.
This is not our opinion, it's research. Below is the proof: Education and Voting and Believing Fake News
Research Center finds a wide partisan gap between highly educated and non-highly-educated Americans. Not only that, but the share of college grads and post-graduates who are "consistently liberal" (based on their answers to a series of policy questions) has grown sharply in the last 20 years.
Split it out by party, and the shift is even starker. Among the post-grad set, more than half of Democrats and Democratic-leaners today are "consistently liberal," up from fewer than one-in-five in 1994. Likewise, among college grads, it jumped from 12 to 47. NPR Reported on these findings in April 2016 (Click to read full article).
"Numerous reports have highlighted how fake news creators began targeting conservative readers after finding them receptive to stories that reinforced their existing worldview. As one fake news creator told NPR, "We've tried to do [fake news with] liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.""
Click here for the Washington Post Story
1) GLOBAL WARMING - Most conservatives deny the science that Earth's climate is warming (97% of scientists KNOW the Earth is warming and that mankind's pollution has and continues to contribute to it). Conservatives disagree with the science because they're being funded by the very fossil fuel industry that has been exacerbating the Earth's warming.
2) DINOSAURS- Conservatives either think dinosaurs didn't exist or they roamed the Earth at the same time as humans. FACT: They were separated by millions of years.
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1) PEW RESEARCH POLL: Education and Voting - A report from the (non-partisan) Pew  |
| This actually provides a good contrast |
Split it out by party, and the shift is even starker. Among the post-grad set, more than half of Democrats and Democratic-leaners today are "consistently liberal," up from fewer than one-in-five in 1994. Likewise, among college grads, it jumped from 12 to 47. NPR Reported on these findings in April 2016 (Click to read full article).
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2) MORE EASILY BELIEVE FAKE NEWS - Why conservatives might be more likely to fall for fake news"Numerous reports have highlighted how fake news creators began targeting conservative readers after finding them receptive to stories that reinforced their existing worldview. As one fake news creator told NPR, "We've tried to do [fake news with] liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.""
Click here for the Washington Post Story
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My (Rob) personal interactions- As someone who works in science I've met a number of people who just can't look beyond their religion to see the reality of science. (That's actually the issue with the Republican Party). It's maddening that people refuse to be educated. Here are some things I've encountered:1) GLOBAL WARMING - Most conservatives deny the science that Earth's climate is warming (97% of scientists KNOW the Earth is warming and that mankind's pollution has and continues to contribute to it). Conservatives disagree with the science because they're being funded by the very fossil fuel industry that has been exacerbating the Earth's warming.
2) DINOSAURS- Conservatives either think dinosaurs didn't exist or they roamed the Earth at the same time as humans. FACT: They were separated by millions of years.
3) AGE OF THE EARTH - The Earth is actually 4.543 billion years old.
In 1898, Marie Curie discovered the phenomenon of radioactivity, in which unstable atoms lose energy, or decay, by emitting radiation in the form of particles or electromagnetic waves. By 1904 physicist Ernest Rutherford showed how this decay process could act as a clock for dating old rocks.
The best estimate for Earth's age is based on radiometric dating of fragments from the Canyon Diablo iron meteorite. From the fragments, scientists calculated the relative abundances of elements that formed as radioactive uranium decayed over billions of years.
SO, where did conservatives come up with 6,000 years old? - Earth was pegged at a youthful few thousand years old by Bible readers (by counting all the "begats" since Adam).
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BOTTOM LINE - WHAT YOU CAN DO: If you're conservative, start reading, learning and become progressive. Otherwise you'll be misinformed about the world around you. Learn science. Question news sources (go to the websites and if it says "satire" it means it's fake). Progressive thinking is responsible for creating inventions, exploration, new technology. Conservative thinking would prevent those things.
TAKE THE QUIZ- How Conservative or Progressive are you? https://www.theadvocates.org/quiz/quiz.php
