On Friday, the Economics Wright Chair Series welcomed Cody Tuttle, assistant professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin, to give a presentation on his forthcoming paper, “Police Work and Political Identity,” which he co-authored with University of California, Los Angeles Assistant Professor of Economics Felipe Goncalves.

While the paper remains in progress, the presentation gave a detailed analysis of the demographics and voting behavior of police officers. After proving the notion that police officers tend to vote Republican, the paper attempts to determine the degree to which that is due to selection in police hiring or the effects of the job. 

The presentation took place in Chalmers 320 and drew a crowd of about 15, mostly made up of economics students and a variety of professors from the political science and economics departments.

Tuttle’s paper used data from civil service exams, voter files and payroll records from the 2010s in Columbus and the state of Florida. It compared outcomes of a variety of demographic factors to determine the consistency of the trend toward Republican voting in police departments. The paper tracked the trajectory of those who did not pass a civil service exam on their first attempt to see whether they similarly trended Republican. The answer was yes, but to a noticeably dulled degree. 

The researchers found that passing the civil service exam made a potential police officer 1.6% more likely to register as a Republican. But since passing the exam doesn’t guarantee a job (It only increases the chance of becoming a police officer by 30%.), the study scales this figure up. The authors conclude that actually becoming a police officer increases the likelihood of registering as a Republican by 5.4%. 

Neither selection nor treatment could fully explain the Republican tendency in police. Tuttle’s paper finds that “about 40% of the overall difference can be explained by treatment and 60% can be explained by selection.”

To determine whether the effect of this treatment was unique to police work, Tuttle and Goncalves analyzed available data for Florida firefighters, a population that is also disproportionately Republican. The study found no evidence that working as a firefighter increased the likelihood of Republican affiliation. The comparison suggests the ideological shift is uniquely tied to the nature of police work. The paper suggests that the shift may be due to daily interaction with the public and exposure to conflict, rather than to the experience of a public-sector job alone. 

Tuttle has also reaffirmed that there is a distinction in how police officers from both sides of the aisle do their job, using results from a survey. “Specifically, Republicans are approximately 30% more likely to believe that courts do not deal with criminals harshly enough and 33% more likely to say that allowing a guilty person to go free is a worse mistake than convicting an innocent person,” the paper determined. In 2018, 23.7% of Americans aged 16 or older had some contact with police. 

Since the paper is still in progress, Tuttle encouraged the audience to interrupt him with questions and comments. The audience made liberal use of that privilege to discuss his approach to data analysis. In particular, attendees speculated about the observed increase in the difference in Republican registration after two years from passing the police civil service exam. One attendee asked whether the third-year bump could be due to a particular event’s effect on the data, whether that could be some political or economic event that greatly impacted a certain group after their third year — in other words, an outlier class. 

Associate Director of the Center for the Study of American Democracy Nancy Powers asked if Tuttle had explored a potential association with a probationary period in police departments. The trend, she suggested, could potentially be explained by officers reconsidering their political affiliations after achieving some job security.

Powers’ comment reflected an understanding among the audience that the relationship between police work and political identity is not strictly static, ideological or explainable by any single factor. Tuttle’s presentation illuminates the unique ways in which police work interacts with institutional structures and individual communities. Professor of History Glenn McNair, who spent five years as a police officer in Savannah, Georgia, and seven as a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, wrote to the Collegian, “Someone from the Left might focus on poverty as an explanation for the behavior of a violent criminal, whereas a police officer sees an individual who made a choice that devastated a family and a community. The 30,000-foot view is replaced by the look on the face of a mother who has lost her child.”

Debates about law enforcement continue, and research like Tuttle’s invites closer examination of how public-facing professions influence political beliefs. Friday’s presentation offered attendees an early look at findings that intersect economics, political science and public policy in ways that affect communities beyond the classroom.