Bacon's Rebellion

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UVa Employee Donations Down to a Mere 91% for Dems

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by

James A. Bacon
in ,

The percentage of campaign donations from University of Virginia employees fell from 95% in 2020 to only 91% this electoral season, according to data compiled from Federal Election Commission records by Walter Smith, a member of The Jefferson Council.

Polls show that Hispanics, Blacks and suburban White women are deserting the Democratic Party in droves this year. Of course, there aren’t many of those constituencies at UVa. The university population represents in its purist form the Whites-with-advanced-college-degrees demographic. When you lose 4% of those people, you know the Dems are in trouble!

What else do these numbers tell us? We already knew in 2020 that, among the university faculty, staff and other employees who made contributions, only 5% swam against the anti-Trump tide of that year. This year we discover that UVa has a swing vote amounting to 4% of employees employee donors.

If campaign donors are representative of the broader UVa population, these numbers suggest that at least one out of eleven UVa employees can be classified as a conservative, libertarian, moderate or independent!

Woohoo! That’s real intellectual diversity for you!

Not.

If you find yourself bitterly disappointed by eroding political support for lefties at UVa, there’s always the University of Richmond. Ninety-five percent of UR employee donations still went to Democrats this year, Smith says.

— JAB

Update: The original version of this post inadvertently implied that 91% of all University of Virginia employees donated to Democrats. We have amended the text to make it clear that among employees who made donations, 91% gave to Democrats.

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59 responses to “UVa Employee Donations Down to a Mere 91% for Dems”

  1. Lefty665 Avatar
    Lefty665

    My god! What’s happened to U of R? It was long a hot bed of white, right wing, Repub frat boys like Virgil Goode. They needed to moderate, but 95% donations to Dems and more Dem than UVa? That’s hard to believe.

    1. James McCarthy Avatar
      James McCarthy

      The data as reported by the researcher require further definition to arrive at the conclusions offered in the explanatory piece by JAB.

      1. Lefty665 Avatar
        Lefty665

        Doesn’t surprise me that you think numbers “require further definition”, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 0 are so terribly undefined for you. You are fortunate you found work where innumeracy was not a barrier to employment.

        1. James McCarthy Avatar
          James McCarthy

          Then perhaps you can advise how many individuals at UVa including non-faculty made contributions. I know silly of me to want that data to clarify 95% of something. You may think I suffer from innumeracy but I am not illiterate.

          1. Lefty665 Avatar
            Lefty665

            You confuse me with someone who cares about that.

            As you were advised above, go do it your own self, after you learn enough about those number thingies that you don’t need “further definition” of what they are.

          2. Lefty665 Avatar
            Lefty665

            You confuse me with someone who cares about that.

            As was suggested above, go do it your own self. You will likely get more useful results if you wait until after you learn enough about those number thingies that you don’t need “further definition” of what they are.

          3. James McCarthy Avatar
            James McCarthy

            OK. If you’re satisfied with 95% of an unknown number of employees making contributions from UVA and Richmond, accept the message as presented.

          4. Lefty665 Avatar
            Lefty665

            Fools and their money are soon parted.

            You’re the one who didn’t understand the numbers.

          5. Lefty665 Avatar
            Lefty665

            Fools and their money are soon parted.

            You’re the one who didn’t understand the numbers and wanted “further definition”.

          6. James McCarthy Avatar
            James McCarthy

            Once again from Smith’s report, how many individuals including non faculty at UVA contributed to Rs and Ds? Not contributions but number of individuals.

          7. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            yep. misleading as heck…

          8. Lefty665 Avatar
            Lefty665

            You’re too lazy to figure it out for yourself, but continue to bleat about it here. Seems like a personal problem.

          9. James McCarthy Avatar
            James McCarthy

            Try reading my comments. I have figured out that the data and info as presented is misleading. Didn’t take more than reading skills.

  2. James McCarthy Avatar
    James McCarthy

    What is the value of “n” in this analysis? Total of donors to # of employees? Does “employee” include non-faculty? What’s the number in the 4% “swing vote”? Other than a casual inference how does the data indict “intellectual diversity”?

    1. Virginia Gentleman Avatar
      Virginia Gentleman

      I think he is suggesting that educated people vote for Democrats. No?

      1. f/k/a_tmtfairfax Avatar
        f/k/a_tmtfairfax

        Largely because most people with advanced degrees work either for the government, nonprofit organizations or entities receiving substantial funding from taxpayers. They may be wacko but they’re not stupid.

        1. James McCarthy Avatar
          James McCarthy

          Let’s rephrase: A large share of people with advanced degrees are wacko but not stupid and vote for Democrats. The converse: another number of people without advanced degrees perhaps working somewhere may be stupid and vote otherwise. Hmmnn!!

          1. walter smith Avatar
            walter smith

            Good luck when your AC breaks.
            Elitist snob much?

            Hey…how did you so-called smart people do on Covid policy? Still waiting for that ONE THING RIGHT…

            How about overwhelmingly voting for SlowJoe (and cheating in a million ways to drag him over the line)? Gas prices? Inflation? Yay for smart people like Nancy and McCarthy!

          2. James McCarthy Avatar
            James McCarthy

            UVa employees are repairing AC now? ONE THING RIGHT is my family has been made safe.
            Do you have a data table with the cheating in a million ways or are you saving that for the AG’s Election Integrity Unit or to discuss with Amanda Chase?

            As usual all these are somehow connected to the contributions conspiracy at UVa. It may be that obsession like ideology causes blindness or myopia.

          3. walter smith Avatar
            walter smith

            You’re as bad as Larry – just repeat the Narrative. Cheating never happens…except when Republicans win. LBJ won the 1948 Senate and JFK Pres in 1960 with no cheating…
            You are a fact denier, but you have to be to be a Leftist…

          4. James McCarthy Avatar
            James McCarthy

            You’re as bad as Walter Smith — incessantly citing non sequitors and incomprehensible, unconnected notions.

          5. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            and that’s the better parts… 😉 AND JAB thinks his “views” are worth blog posts!

            Wackadoodle Land.

          6. walter smith Avatar
            walter smith

            OK Larry. Do your own “research” and write your own “articles”
            No, you just mindlessly recite The Narrative and ignore facts you don’t like.
            Still waiting for the ONE THING RIGHT from Govt Covid Policy.
            So far, no one has put it up.
            Nor did any one ever rebut the language of the EUA statute.
            Nor the Nuremberg Code.
            Nor EVERY SINGLE health system’s statements of patients’ rights, which all say the patient has the right to accept or refuse medical treatment. (Many of them during Covidiocy did do their best to obfuscate that right…they changed the language from obvious to hinted at…but there is no government influence in any of this! Stop looking you evil government haters!)

            It’s easy to carp. Put up or shut up with your own work.

          7. Eric the half a troll Avatar
            Eric the half a troll

            “Still waiting for that ONE THING RIGHT…”

            Asked and answered…

          8. f/k/a_tmtfairfax Avatar
            f/k/a_tmtfairfax

            Wacko or not, people with advanced degrees seem to be leagues ahead of journalists. Gallup found that a mere 7% of Americans polled have “have “a great deal” of trust and confidence in the media.” https://news.gallup.com/poll/403166/americans-trust-media-remains-near-record-low.aspx

            Imagine a situation where a mere 7% Americans had a great deal of trust in doctors. And the former profession continues to write and broadcast for itself.

            It reminds me of Major General Ambrose Burnside’s 14 charges at Marye’s Heights.

          9. James McCarthy Avatar
            James McCarthy

            Spot off response. The data and info reported in this article cannot be trusted. The nation is already experiencing mistrust in elections and voting as a result of a massive, assiduous campaign. That people with advanced degrees, as you note, are leagues ahead of journalists. That observation seems to belie your original one. Spot off!!!

        2. Nancy Naive Avatar
          Nancy Naive

          Yes. Precisely because they are NOT stupid; meaning the stupid ones vote for… c’mon think… you can do it…

        3. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
          Dick Hall-Sizemore

          That’s a pretty broad statement. There are an awful lot of MBA’s in corporate American, not to mention corporate attorneys. Of course, there are also all those personal injury and criminal attorneys in private practice. Next thing to keep in mind, only a small minority of government workers have advanced degrees–in fact, many don’t have a bachelor’s degree. Think correctional officer, fiscal tech, highway worker.

        4. how_it_works Avatar
          how_it_works

          Not like there’s much opportunity in Virginia for someone with an advanced degree to do anything OTHER than work for government, nonprofit organizations, or entities receiving substantial funding from taxpayers.

          It’s become clear to me that if I want a job that isn’t flipping burgers or government contracting, I’m going to have to move out of this wonderful state.

        5. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          well but, I think you might be sawing on the limb you’re sitting on here…

        6. ARL Avatar
          ARL

          “Most people with advanced degrees work either for the government, nonprofit organizations or entities receiving substantial funding from taxpayers.”

          I’m struggling with this statement. Do you have a source?

      2. James McCarthy Avatar
        James McCarthy

        Heaven forbid!!! The data is meant to prove that UVa is in the grip of Dems and maybe a few others.

        1. Nancy Naive Avatar
          Nancy Naive

          UVa is in the grip of baby groomers. (Please mentally substitute snark font)

    2. walter smith Avatar
      walter smith

      If you must know, in the spreadsheet, lines 3 to 11943 are D for a total of $437,740.20
      Lines 11947-11953 are L for $285 (6 different people)

      Lines 11957-12619 are R for a total of 45,949.58, an average of $69.31 per contribution.
      434 of the R contributions were to WINRED, and may be skewed by ONE professor from UVA-Wise. I debated excluding him. I could play with the numbers and make it worse! By removing UVA-Wise. C-ville may STILL be 95%

      Of the D contributions 9890 were ACTBLUE. The average donation was $36.66. Again, the one UVA-Wise professor had a $2900 and a $500 in my quick look, so he alone added at least $5 to the R average.

      Finally – I had 3 coded X – they were PACs attributed to Cheney and Kinzinger. One poor guy or gal made those contributions and I did not think I could fairly attribute it to D or R!

      For the 2020 cycle, UVA had 46,000 donations, with the # of contributions and the $ running 95% to D

      1. James McCarthy Avatar
        James McCarthy

        Your data remains questionable. What is the individual number of contributors Ds and Rs. Not the number of contributions which may be multiple (e.g. monthly) from a single individual. IOW, what is the “n” of total employees vs. contributors including non-faculty in D and R categories?

        1. walter smith Avatar
          walter smith

          Why don’t you count it yourself?
          I could do like Dems and manipulate data to make it look much worse. On the R side, nearly half of the contributions and 80% of the money was from TWO people.
          One Dem made 1200 contributions, but was “only” 8% of D total.
          I almost wonder if these high numbers are some kind of laundering of who is giving…
          It takes hours to sort over 13000 entries, eliminating professional association PACs and false hits like West Virginia and Uvalde and the like, and then looking up all the D or R campaigns.

          1. James McCarthy Avatar
            James McCarthy

            9890 – 1200 = 8690 contributions by how many? You and JAB are claiming 95% of some number by UVA personnel demonstrates its Dem ideology. Gadzooks!! If laundering is at work, the actual number of individual contributors could be very small. But the that would belie your claims. Woe to you.

          2. James McCarthy Avatar
            James McCarthy

            9890 – 1200 = 8690 contributions by how many? If 174 other individuals each made 50 contributions, the total number of individuals would be 175. If that is 95% of all UVA employees, your report would be accurate. You and JAB are claiming 95% of some number by UVA personnel demonstrates its Dem ideology. Gadzooks!! If laundering is at work, the actual number of individual contributors could be even smaller. But then that would belie your claims. Woe to you.

          3. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            yep. standard operating procedure here in BR…sometimes…

          4. walter smith Avatar
            walter smith

            Do the work yourself. I don’t work for you. If you had a legitimate point to make, do your homework and make it.
            I will eliminate the 2 Rs who are suspicious as outliers and that one D and then the money is 400k to 10k.
            Obviously, the universe of donors is less than all of the employees. Now you tell me why it should not be considered representative. Do math. Do distributions. Cite all the rampant conservatism as the Student Council, the Cavalier Daily, the Faculty Senate, the Daily Regress, the Washington ComPost all are terrified of Bert Ellis.
            No, you won’t do that, because it destroys your narrative. Just like actually looking at the Pelosi tape and police reports would destroy that narrative. Hey, did you hear about Lee Zeldin being attacked? The person trying to shoot him when his daughters were the only ones home? The attempted attack on Don Bolduc? Kavanaugh? Scalise?
            You are just doing the Dem Covid trick to deny reality – who cares if VAERS reports are off the charts, it is inaccurate and you evil miscreants are cheating (like Dems do, but we have lives because our religion isn’t Leftism). And now I have to go to church and practice “Christian Nationalism” and burn Leftists at the stake…

          5. Eric the half a troll Avatar
            Eric the half a troll

            “…all are terrified of Bert Ellis….”.

            As are the students he is known to harass every now and again…

          6. Eric the half a troll Avatar
            Eric the half a troll

            “I almost wonder if these high numbers are some kind of laundering of who is giving…”

            Speaking of defamation…

          7. walter smith Avatar
            walter smith

            Troll – you do not know anything. Do the work yourself, but that would require…work! Instead of mindless, feigned superiority snark, which is just disguising insecurity over your undeserved status.

          8. Eric the half a troll Avatar
            Eric the half a troll

            Wow, Walt… defensive much…?! And which status do you think I claim yet do not deserve, Sport? Do tell…

      2. James McCarthy Avatar
        James McCarthy

        Ah, good to know that UVa Republicans are not smart enough to realize that much of the WINRED $$$ lands in the pockets of Trump lawyers. Rs failed to create a true competitive system like ACTBLUE. Never imitate as it might be perceived as flattery.

        PTL for researchers like you who were woke enough to eliminate RINO contributions from the R totals. That musta been close.

  3. M. Purdy Avatar
    M. Purdy

    Elite college in deep blue part of Virginia supports Dems. Big surprise!

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      like Duh!

  4. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Somebody is just waaaaay too obsessed with a place they left in the 1970s. Disgruntled students should be limited to only those who had to borrow to attend, or at least had to use their OWN money. Future inheritance doesn’t count.

    There’s another reason that intelligent, well educated people don’t give money to Republicans. See if you can guess why, James.

    Now impress us with how much money you have given Trump since 2016.

    1. walter smith Avatar
      walter smith

      Why don’t you do your own FEC search and find out, instead of making your useless snarky comments?

      1. Nancy Naive Avatar
        Nancy Naive

        Beats doing useless research.

      2. Eric the half a troll Avatar
        Eric the half a troll

        He seems to simply be returning in kind, Walt…

  5. democracy Avatar
    democracy

    Hmmm. An interesting take by Mr. Big Jimmy. Maybe he knows, or not, that most polls have a relatively small sample of Latinos. However, as the NY Times reported in late September on a NYTimes-Siena College poll,

    “one of the largest nonpartisan surveys of Latino voters since the 2020 election — found that Democrats had maintained a grip on the majority of Latino voters, driven in part by women and the belief that Democrats remained the party of the working class…Hispanic voters are more likely to agree with Democrats on many issues — immigration, gun policy, climate. They are also more likely to see Republicans as the party of the elite and as holding extreme views.”

    Pew Research reported this in late September:

    “When it comes to the Democratic Party, the survey finds majorities of Latino adults express positive views of it. Some 71% say the Democratic Party works hard for Latinos’ votes, 63% say it ‘really cares about Latinos,’ and 60% say the Democratic Party represents the interests of people like themselves.”

    Why that is? Because Republicans ARE way out of touch with the public on everything from abortion and voting rights to climate change action and common-sense run regulations. Oh, and Republicans are also the party of white supremacy and sedition.

    Anyone donating money to or voting for Republican candidates now is endorsing voter suppression, racism, and sedition. No way around that. Indeed, as Yale historian David Blight wrote in the NY Review of Books two short years ago,

    “Changing demographics and 15 million new voters drawn into the electorate by Obama in 2008 have scared Republicans—now largely the white people’s party—into fearing for their existence. With voter ID laws, reduced polling places and days, voter roll purges, restrictions on mail-in voting, an evisceration of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and a constant rant about ‘voter fraud’ without evidence, Republicans have soiled our electoral system with undemocratic skullduggery…The Republican Party has become a new kind of Confederacy.”

    Who would contribute monre to or vote for that?

    Oh wait….

  6. Eric the half a troll Avatar
    Eric the half a troll

    Hey, JAB! Why can’t old Walt write his own BR pieces…??

    Also, what process did old Walt go through to become a “member” of The Jefferson Council…? I’m sure it was rigorous, eh…??

    1. James McCarthy Avatar
      James McCarthy

      When you rely on colleagues as trusted sources, the potential for disappointment increases exponentially.

      All that has been demonstrated – not proven – by the incoherent data reported is that in the 2020 cycle 95% of UVA employee contributions were made to Democratic candidates, not necessarily by Democratic registered voters. Another take is that UVA “smart money” was not donated to the R candidate.

      Finally, in the absence of a given number of UVA employees – non-faculty included – the inference of a leftist employee cohort cannot be drawn. At best, the data and information presents a distorted set of conclusions. At worst, the presentation is deliberately intended to distort.

  7. walter smith Avatar
    walter smith

    I will issue a new challenge to the Lefty Magpies (you know who you are) since you can’t answer the Covidiocy ONE THING RIGHT challenge.
    Find ONE Higher Ed School not named Liberty or Hillsdale that has 50% or more contributions to Republicans.

    Meanwhile, I’m sure these are just flukes, as flawed as the raw numbers from the FEC data for UVA (and what good is the Fed Govt if VAERS and FEC data suck so much?)

    https://www.thecollegefix.com/96-percent-of-election-contributions-from-michigan-faculty-go-to-democrats/

    https://www.thecollegefix.com/95-percent-of-north-carolina-professor-donations-went-to-democrats/

    1. James McCarthy Avatar
      James McCarthy

      It ain’t the data that’s flawed, Auntie Em. 50% more in contributions to Rs in any organization does not equal a conclusion of political party membership or domination. As you acknowledged, one contributor at UVA made 1200 contributions of 9890. Differences in aggregate data may reflect financial status; “smart money” bets; pessimism by Rs particularly in 2020 among a few factors. Some measuring devices clearly broken are known to be correct twice per day. ONE THING RIGHT.

      1. walter smith Avatar
        walter smith

        And that isn’t a rebuttal.
        You do your own work.
        You won’t be able to find it, and you did not address Michigan or UNC. Because the law of large numbers and general math distributions…like how does this persist over all these schools means the general point is correct.

        Then you and Nancy and Troll will deflect with “cuz we’re so smart” (actually revealing your insecurity and fear of loss of status and an actual hatred of the working man instead of your vaunted virtue-signal compassion).

        And, if you really had intellectual curiosity (which is doubtful because you wouldn’t be a Lefty with any real intellectual curiosity), you could examine political contributions over time at academic institutions over time…
        You might find that the universities have gone from almost none to incredibly numerous. And from sort of balanced to wildly unbalanced. But that might be too factual for you and mean those mean conservative critics could be right about kids being indoctrinated…and I have to ignore the McCarthyite DEI loyalty oaths, too, cuz…

        Nice try. I ain’t biting. Do your own homework (but you won’t because you know it would prove the general assertions of imbalance)

        1. James McCarthy Avatar
          James McCarthy

          Well then, we await the analysis from MI and UNC compared to your favs. To what “balance” do you refer? $$$$; number of employees? Y’all ain’t made any assertion except that $$$ contribution totals at UVA to D candidates exceeds that to Rs. Don’t consider the possibility that the alleged imbalance may mean the conservative or R side is not favored. From that perspective, the distribution may reflect accurate selection. Ya gotta get a grip on your paranoia.

          And if you insist upon presenting data to draw conclusions, have a statistician assist you.

          1. walter smith Avatar
            walter smith

            And if you continue to deny what is obviously true, then YOU pull down the stats and do it. Just go to the FEC database, and put in University of Virginia and UVA as employer. Then eliminate the ones that do not belong like “Uvalde” and UVAS in NH, etc. Then eliminate the professional PACs which are largely from the Med School (and this might favor Ds as well, but it was my sorting choice). Then arrange all the recipients so you can say D or R. And then, if you really wish to, you could sort the subsets alphabetically within D and R (L was easy – 6 people). You won’t like the results and the results may be even worse for you. Then you will deflect by saying that it is only a subset of employees. Which would be one of the few true statements you might ever make, but you won’t be able to explain why it should not be viewed as a fair representation of UVA employees overall.

            Put your money where your mouth is and show why the statistics don’t mean anything. I could manipulate (like Dems do) and make it worse. I gave raw numbers. Which was based on DATA and I made an inference. That is how SCIENCE! works, right, Larry? I have asserted a thesis. In real SCIENCE! prior to Covidiocy, one makes an assertion and then others follow up to check for any holes. Do your own work. It sure is funny how different people come to the same sort of numbers…or the ones where the professors have party identification in public records and it is over 90% for Ds…

            Just SO MANY statistical anomalies and shut up you mean people who don’t believe me! I’m a smart lawyer from NY who has TDS and wanted to get the VSB to disbar any VA lawyer who worked for Trump…

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