According to a 2018 Gallop poll, liberals are much more likely to be vegetarian (11%) or vegan (5%) than conservatives (2% vegetarian, 2% vegan). Furthermore, Americans who makes less than $30,000 a year are much more likely to avoid eating meat. I have a pet theory for why this would be.
I hypothesize that it has something to do with privilege. Katia Savchuk of Forbes wrote an article that shows that the wealthiest families tend to donate to Republicans, and it’s my observation that even Republicans who aren’t wealthy will, in what I think is vicariously identifying with conservatives who are, vote against their own economic self-interests in favor of the rich, somehow seeing themselves as rich as well. Liberals have a more realistic view of their socioeconomic position. Conservatives think that poor folks are getting their just deserts in some social Darwinian survival of the economically fit, while liberals think that all American lives matter.
These same worldviews extend across species, I suspect, which is where vegetarianism and veganism come in. I suspect that conservatives are more likely to see themselves as the ecologically most fit species, as well as the socially and economically most fit people, and therefore think that they deserve to exploit their position as the top of the food chain, whereas liberals take into greater account the morality of consuming other sentient animals (and also extending their “bleeding hearts” to the otherwise inhumane conditions of factory farming).
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