"Little is known about the association between measured intelligence and how people participate in democratic processes," says a current Intelligence journal study led by Ian Deary of Scotland's University of Edinburgh, in a wee bit of an understatement. "There is debate about the importance of intelligence in relation to whether people vote in elections, and there is currently little information on how people with different levels of intelligence choose to vote in elections," according to the report.
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Doyle, who was not part of the study isn't so sure, noting the United Kingdom has small political parties, the Greens and Liberal Democrats, as well as nationalist parties that play a larger role in political life than small U.S. parties. "My only concern is that when examining the association between intelligence and voting they only adjust for sex and social class. Normally, voting models control for a range of other individual characteristics that are known to predict vote choice such as trade union membership and, most importantly, education," adds Doyle, by email. "They really need to test this assumption to see if there relationship between intelligence and vote choice remains when they include education."
Her own work in the United Kingdom suggests that "that higher intelligence scores are associated with Conservative voting on average." But "those with very high level of intelligence are less likely to vote Conservative and more likely to vote Labour," Doyle adds.
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