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The widening political divide over science

Gauchat (2012) reported that political conservatives in the United States lost confidence in the scientific community from the 1970s to 2010, but political liberals and moderates did not. As a result, a political divide opened up so that by 2010 conservatives had the lowest level of confidence in science. This analysis extends the trends through the 2018 General Social Survey (GSS). I find that political conservatives, Republicans, and Americans who attend religious services regularly, all report falling levels of confidence in the scientific community. Further, for the period 2012-2018, educational attainment, for conservatives, is not associated with increased levels of confidence in science, except at the graduate degree level (and even there confidence is lower among conservatives). In the Trump era, with an assault on facts and truth defining the president and his party, the growing political divide over confidence in science seems likely to further undermine political processes that rely on common knowledge and understanding. This updates the original 2018 version of this paper with the 2018 GSS data.