Cognitive ability and party affiliation: The role of the formative years of political socialization

Abstract

We study the effect of time on the relationship between intelligence and party affiliation in the United States. Our results indicate that time affects this relationship, and that this effect is due to the formative years in which political preferences were developed rather than the time in which the survey was conducted. For people who were born in the 20th century, the later their formative years, the more positive the relationship between intelligence and Democratic, as opposed to Republican, affiliation. The current results shed light on recent conflicting findings about the relationship between intelligence and party affiliation in the US, and suggest that the effect of intelligence on party affiliation changes with time.