Is Hollywood, MSM and academia held in low regard because of their ideological beliefs or because of the extremity of those beliefs?

I saw this report a few days ago, These Charts Show The Political Bias Of Workers In Each Profession by Andy Kiersz and Hunter Walker. An interesting methodology.

Crowdpac, a non-partisan firm dedicated to political data analysis, used federal campaign contribution records dating back to 1980 in order to estimate where various officials and donors fall on the political spectrum. They scored individual donors as being more liberal or conservative based on what kinds of candidates they gave to.

The company's CEO and co-founder, Steve Hilton, told Business Insider this donation data "is the heart of the Crowdpac data model" because their "research shows that campaign contributions are the best predictor of how a candidate will behave in office."

Hilton also explained that the Crowdpac's main goal is to provide people "good objective, non-partisan information about the candidates on their ballot in a simple form that they can understand." The company believes this will help "boost the number of small donors and reduce the influence of big money in politics."

The research produced this result:

(Click to enlarge)

Nothing particularly surprising there. It has long been known and well measured that the Main Stream Media, academics, and Hollywood, are notably more liberal than others. It is also unsurprising that professions tied up with the regulatory state (Law and Lobbying) should be more liberal nor that industries which are highly regulated and dependent on subsidies or bailouts (pharmaceuticals and automotive) should be more liberal. Same on the other end of the spectrum. Who is surprised that people in the extractive industries are more conservative?

But sometimes data tells you more than you realize. I keep seeing posts and articles that link to, allude to, or incorporate this research and this graphic. I had originally noticed the cluster of liberal industries off to the left (Hollywood, academics, MSM, and online computer services) and had noticed the lack of continuity, i.e. there is a big gap between those four and the other industries.

After several viewings, it finally occurred to me that there is something new here and that is the size effect. No, it is not surprising that journalists are more liberal than miners. But what is striking (once you eventually notice it) is how much more liberal a journalist or actor is than a miner or farmer is conservative.

To take the extremes, Hollywood is 73% (7.1 - 4.1/4.1) more liberal than miners are conservative. Which raises an interesting question. Is the distrust and low regard with which Hollywood, MSM and Academia are held by the general public more to do with the extremity of their position than with the position itself? In other words, does the general public disparage them because they are extremists rather than because of the content of their ideology. Of course both might be true - they are disparaged as extremist advocates of bad ideology. However, I do suspect there is something to this size effect idea.

There have been two or three studies of commenter behavior in different forums in the past couple of years. The findings are generally that there are more language issues (swearing) and ad hominem attacks in partisan left forums than there are in partisan right forums. Always have take such research with a pinch of salt, but that would be consistent with the size effect observation, that the extremity of the view drives bad behaviors independent of the actual ideological content.