Or so it seems (original source here):
- “Professional athletes and executives have given $445,334 to the
two nominees – 55.8 percent to McCain and 44.2 percent to Obama,
according to ESPN analysis of figures from the Center for Responsive
Politics, a nonpartisan research group.” - “The difference this election is that pro sports donors are more
divided. In the past two presidential elections, the Democratic nominee
has struggled to muster at most 16 percent of pro sports donations.”… - “McCain has lots of friends in the dugout, but his biggest fans are
in football. Six of McCain’s top 10 pro sports donors are with NFL
teams, led by the San Diego Chargers, Dallas Cowboys and Houston
Texans.” - “NBA staff topped Obama’s list of pro sports donors at $24,360.”
I can think of a few hypotheses to explain these results:
1. Sports figures don’t want high marginal tax rates for the upper income brackets.
2. Currently the disproportionate representation of African-Americans in sports is throwing more support to Obama than a Democratic candidate normally would receive.
3. Perhaps athletes are less likely to come from coastal elites, who are becoming increasingly Democratic.
4. Republicans have historically shown less interest in regulating professional sports than have Democrats.
5. The sport of football most embodies the ethic of martial virtue and so football players and executives are especially drawn to McCain.
Is there more?
coastal elites? What, the big 10 is recruiting point guards from Choate?
I find the dichotomy between athletes and performers interesting. Athletes are performers in a sense, but maybe because their rise involves triumphing in an arbitrarily fair competition over rivals in relatative obscurity, they are less inclined to the populism of entertainers who arise solely by pleasing the throngs.
What’s also interesting is how little and from which sports the most comes from. Let’s roughly rank them football, baseball, then basketball. Hmmm, I wonder if it correlates with how much a sport has to lose by government involvement. If I had to rank the impact of doping over genetic advantages I’d rank them football, baseball, then basketball.
1) they are extremely religious. most of them, especially the non-african americans, would be republican anyway.
2)signalling: “i am so rich i vote republican now”. if true, this one would be very strong amongst african american athletes who would most certainlyt vote democratic otherwise.
“How does 5 work? I get that McCain was a soldier and Obama not but Bush did better running against Kerry with the boot firmly on the other foot.”
Kerry was not viewed as a warrior, but as a man who married a very rich woman. McCain is one with his POW image.
A few years ago, in his book Next Man Up, John Feinstein spent a season following the Baltimore Ravens. He noted on several occasions that the players and staff were largely Republican, despite being predominately black. As I recall, he attributed this odd combination to economic and religious factors: the well-paid players and coaches had a strong reason to support the party that called for lower tax rates on the wealthy, and being heavily Christian they were more in tune with Republican social policies.
What was left unanswered is why Christianity is so strong among NFL players. Indeed, it’s fairly strong among professional athletes in general.
Mixing apples and oranges, athletes and executives.
Once they are disaggregated I suspect you will find
athletes overwhelmingly support Obama.
In our voter-reg study of 11 California schools, among Phys Ed faculty we found 11 Dems vs. 10 Repubs, one of the lowest D:R ratios of all departments.
See p. 247 of the following:
http://www.criticalreview.com/2004/pdfs/cardiff_klein.pdf
Hypothesis: The entire 55.8% of donations to McCain came from Curt Schilling.
…and Obama is shown to be playing basketball in his college years, but not football.
Executive + athletes is a useless category, especially if one then goes on to speculate about athletes alone.
Next!
I’m guessing the big difference between pro athletes and entertainers is largely due to social issues and gender splits. The vast majority of pro athletes are male, entertainers are about evenly split/lean female. Females lean Dem, males Rep. There are a lot of homosexuals in the entertainment industry, so there is much more sympathy for gay rights, even among the fiscally conservative. I doubt there are more Midwesterners and Southerners playing pro sports than there are in entertainment.
As for Republicans not being interested in regulating pro sports. I seem to recall the steroid witch hunt as well as regulation of boxing largely coming from Republicans.
Charles Barkley once said:
“My family got all over me because they said Bush is only for the rich people. Then I reminded them, ‘Hey, I’m rich’.†
(He’s supporting Obama.)
Maybe the McCain support is due to the higher marginal rates under Obama. I wonder how many highly paid athletes will retire as a result of their marginal rates going up a few percent.
Those 5 just about sum it up. It’s not much of a surprise with the 2 candidates available and the stats along the party/racial lines, but stands in contrast to what “Hollywood”, in most cases, aligns their voice and wallets with.
Professional athletes, although something that would never happen, would make great spokespersons for the candidates. Next to Nike, Gatorade, Schick and Cereal endorsements, they could act out flashy commercials for their chosen party.
Do you have a list of conservative professional athletes?
Thanks!
It’s kinda interesting with the basketball. National College Basketball, and high school tends to be Republican, while the NBA itself is Democrat.
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