Higher Education

Report finds Oklahoma professors overwhelmingly support Democrats

November 5, 2024

Ray Carter

Based on campaign contributions, university professors are overwhelmingly left-wing—and Oklahoma is no exception.

According to a recent report, “Educators Overwhelmingly Support Democrats, Even in Republican States,” 93 percent of political contributions made by professors nationwide went to Democratic candidates in 2022.

In Oklahoma, the share of professor contributions going to Democrats was 92 percent.

“Both professors and K-12 teachers are to the left of the American public, judging by the distribution of their campaign contributions,” wrote Jay P. Greene, senior managing fellow at the Educational Freedom Institute, who authored the study. “The leftward bias of teachers is significant, but the partisan imbalance for professors is gigantic.”

For the report, the Education Freedom Institute contracted with Data Orbital, a data/research firm, to gather campaign contribution information from Federal Election Commission reports, which include information on contributors’ occupations.

In total, Data Orbital identified 437,783 campaign contributions—280,227 contributions from professors nationwide and 157,556 campaign contributions from teachers that went to Democratic or Republican candidates or committees during the 2022 election cycle.

“The results show that university professors lean much more to the left than do K-12 teachers, and this monolithic support for Democratic political candidates among professors hardly varies with the partisan composition of the state in which they are located,” Greene wrote. “While decidedly liberal, K-12 teachers are less so than professors, and the extent of their leftward tilt tends to vary with the partisan make-up of each state.”

Among professors nationwide, 93 percent of contributions went to Democratic candidates or committees compared to 68 percent of contributions made by K-12 teachers.

Mississippi was the only state in which a majority of campaign contributions from professors went to Republicans in 2022.

In contrast, there were 11 states in which a majority of K-12 teachers’ campaign contributions went to Republican candidates or committees with Oklahoma being one of those 11.

The report found that 1,240 Oklahoma professors made campaign contributions in 2022. Of that total, 92 percent donated to Democratic candidates and just 8 percent supported Republicans.

That was in marked contrast to K-12 teachers. The report found that 1,364 contributions were made by Oklahoma K-12 teachers in 2022. But just 31 percent of those contributions went to Democratic candidates and 69 percent went to Republicans.

The report noted the group of K-12 teachers includes those who work for private schools, who may be much more conservative than many of their public-school counterparts. And, while conservatives may view the reporting data on K-12 teachers favorably, the 1,364 contributions identified would comprise only a small share of all teachers in Oklahoma, likely less than 3 percent. According to the National Education Association teachers’ union and its state affiliate, the Oklahoma Education Association, Oklahoma had 49,355 individuals working as instructional staff in public schools in 2022.

In contrast, the share of Oklahoma professors making political contributions in 2022 may have been as high as 25 percent, or one in four professors. According to the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, the total number of full-time faculty in Oklahoma’s 25 colleges and universities was 4,931 in the 2020-2021 school year.

Greene noted the campaign contribution data highlights serious issues for the credibility of higher education in all 50 states.

“If a quality education involves exposure to a diversity of perspectives, the status quo is incredibly deficient in this regard,” Greene wrote.

But fixing that problem will not be easy, he noted.

“The national lock that left-leaning professors hold over who is hired as new professors, who is able to publish in top journals, and who receives tenure, helps solidify the extremely high and unvaried rate of support for the Democratic party among faculty,” Greene wrote.

[For more stories about higher education in Oklahoma, visit AimHigherOK.com.]