The people who are good at figuring stuff out (e.g., engineers) don’t tend to like politics. This is (one reason) why we have a lot of crappy policies.

From Why Are Some Fields More Left Wing? by Michael Huemer.  Speculative.

People who are more strongly interested in politics tend to be more left-wing. So moderates tend to be found in non-political fields, e.g., business or engineering.

• You might hypothesize that this is because politically engaged people tend to gather a lot of evidence about political issues, and the evidence actually supports leftism, so they become leftists. My knowledge about reality, though, suggests that this is false; politically engaged people tend to have lots of BS in their heads and don’t care about being accurate. So I have a different explanation:
• People don’t get interested in politics for practical reasons – almost everyone knows that their own contributions will never make a noticeable difference. It is also not mainly intellectual curiosity, because there are more intellectually stimulating topics to study. The main motivation for doing a lot of reading and talking about politics is entertainment, constructing a desirable self-image, bonding with others, and stuff like that.
• So the people who are strongly politically engaged tend to be the ones for whom those motives are especially strong, compared to other people.
• Those sorts of motives tend to support left-wing beliefs. I.e., left wing beliefs do better at giving you a desirable self-image, letting you bond with other intellectuals, etc.

He concludes the longer piece:

This explains why highly politically-interested people tend to be left-wing. There are a variety of motives for holding left- or right-wing beliefs, and a person’s actual beliefs are the resultant of these different motives. It happens that the motives supporting leftism overlap a lot with the motives for spending time on politics.

Unfortunately, the motives for being politically engaged have little to do with finding truth or helping society, so the people who have most influence also tend to be wrong a lot. The people who are good at figuring stuff out (e.g., engineers) don’t tend to like politics. This is (one reason) why we have a lot of crappy policies.

Obviously not an easily proved argument but I suspect directionally correct.