It should come as no surprise that educators tend to be more liberal than the general public. But it is less well-known just how liberal they are, how much professors differ from K-12 teachers, and how much the ideological inclinations of educators vary across states.
In this analysis, we examine 437,783 campaign contributions made by K-12 teachers and university professors during the 2022 election cycle to gain a better understanding of the political orientation of the people who teach our children. The results show that university professors lean much more to the left than do K-12 teachers, and this monolithic support for Democratic political candidates among professors hardly varies with the partisan composition of the state in which they are located. While decidedly liberal, K-12 teachers are less so than professors, and the extent of their leftward tilt tends to vary with the partisan make-up of each state.