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Kayla C's avatar

This is the caliber of people we are dealing with?

"If your party overwhelmingly comprises the federal bureaucracy, you hold onto the levers of power even through electoral losses. This has been the story of The Democrats for my entire life. It's also the best explanation for the Democrats' current desperation and hysteria." - Abigail Shrier

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Margaux's avatar

I don’t understand this comment. Can you explain? How does the Democratic party comprise the federal bureaucracy? Where is the evidence that Americans holding federal jobs are all Democrats?

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Stephanie's avatar

It’s also worth nothing the republican party has been cutting gov jobs for sometime. Most of us that have dedicated our career to civil service and understand its value, aren’t going to give money to a party that doesn’t believe is us or our work.

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Kayla C's avatar

Of course they're not all Democrats and there's no way to know definitively, but just follow the money. Upward of 95% of all political donations from federal employees are to Democrat candidates.

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Margaux's avatar

Can you share your source? I found an article mentioning 95% of donations going to Hillary Clinton in 2016, but in 2020 it was only 60% to Biden. The same source says 84% to Kamala Harris in 2024. How many donated? Is it 84% of 20% of the workforce or 84% of 100% of the workforce? The n matters.

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Jessica C.'s avatar

If I am understanding Kayla’s comments correctly between this thread and the thread in the “Is Bipartisanship Dead?” article, this is the link she shared to support her claim:

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/american-federation-of-government-employees/totals?id=D000000304

I asked for clarification because I truly don’t understand it, but I never received a response. I’d really appreciate an explanation because I am genuinely curious.

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Margaux's avatar

Thanks for sharing. The numbers in that do not make sense to me with regard to the percentages listed. For example, in 2024 if the total is over 2.6 million given but Dems gave 96.39% why does it say Dems accounted for about 800K. 96% = 2.5 million. Regardless, if you have a workforce of 100,000, and 100 gave $ and all that $ went to Dems then you might think all federal workers support Dems. In reality 1% of the workforce supported Dems. The n matters a lot, and the source doesn’t share how many individuals the $ amount represents. Therefore, one cannot conclude anything about the political affiliation of the workforce. If we want to play the game of follow the $ we could take a deep dive into Elon Musk. That would tell us a lot.

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Kayla C's avatar

We can extrapolate this data in the same way we use small sample sizes in political polling. I firmly disagree we "cannot conclude anything." Does it mean 96% of the federal workforce is liberal? No. But, even from your own research, you found most donations go to Democrat candidates. In what way could we possibly conclude the federal workforce is majority conservative when all available evidence suggests otherwise?

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Margaux's avatar

I did not say or imply it was majority conservative. If it was 60/40 for Biden is it all Dems? We can’t say that either. Maybe the Dem leaning ones like to give $ and the R leaning ones don’t. Your original message painted the federal workforce with a broad brush as all Dem. I still don’t see good evidence to support that claim.

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