PhD holders that vote Republican

[Del Tachi]

Agriculture & Life Sciences

[Del Tachi]

Agriculture & Life Sciences

I very much doubt this is true for life sciences. If any thing, you’d expect biology PhDs to be more Democratic than, say, physicists, because they’re much more female.

"Agriculture & Life Sciences" are collectively the degree programs you'd expect to only see at land-grant institutions.  For example:  

--Agricultural Economics
--Animal Science
--Crop Management
--Food Science & Technology
--Forestry
--Horticultural Sciences
--Nutrition
--Poultry Sciences
--Rangeland, Wildlife & Fisheries Management
--Recreation & Tourism Sciences
--Soil Sciences
--Veterinary Sciences

All these fields have in common that they're concerned with the management of land, plants and animals for human use (i.e., agriculture.)  In contrast to biology, they involve an inherently interdisciplinary approach and tend to overwhelmingly attract students from agricultural/rural backgrounds (hence why they'd be Republican-leaning.)    

[Del Tachi]

Agriculture & Life Sciences

I very much doubt this is true for life sciences. If any thing, you’d expect biology PhDs to be more Democratic than, say, physicists, because they’re much more female.

"Agriculture & Life Sciences" are collectively the degree programs you'd expect to only see at land-grant institutions.  For example: 

--Agricultural Economics
--Animal Science
--Crop Management
--Food Science & Technology
--Forestry
--Horticultural Sciences
--Nutrition
--Poultry Sciences
--Rangeland, Wildlife & Fisheries Management
--Recreation & Tourism Sciences
--Soil Sciences
--Veterinary Sciences

All these fields have in common that they're concerned with the management of land, plants and animals for human use (i.e., agriculture.)  In contrast to biology, they involve an inherently interdisciplinary approach and tend to overwhelmingly attract students from agricultural/rural backgrounds (hence why they'd be Republican-leaning.)   

I don't get the impression that PhD holders in any of these fields outright lean R, at least in the Pacific Northwest. Then again I don't perceive Computer Science to be a particularly R field either.

This is probably true for new graduates.  But I get the impression that, at least in the South, departments like soil or poultry science have mostly Republican faculty.  Fields like ag econ and fisheries probably are outright D-leaning these days, but that's been a shift that has only happened in the last 10-20 years.

If you want to track this at the macro level, it's interesting to look at presidential results in counties with big land-grant colleges.  Brazos, TX; Riley, KS; Tippecanoe, IN; etc. are all quite a bit more Republican than college towns of comparable size, even if the recent trends have looked good for Democrats.