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Notes -
Can you expand on this a bit? It runs very counter to my impression, given that conservative discourse is full of self-defense, gun-ownership, homesteading, build your own business, build your own mannerbund, a focus on individual heroic virtue, etc. These things all seem focused on building and developing personal, as opposed to institutional or collective agency. What are you looking at/seeing which leads you to draw the opposite conclusion?
I could just as easily ask where you see that. This sounds like a fantasy version of conservatism peddled by 4channers who haven't seen the sun in weeks. Mannerbund? I have never heard any normiecon talk about this. If you were to ask the average Midwestern conservative what that was, they'd assume it was a niche beer.
It is true that conservatives often fancy themselves rugged outdoors types, and nevermind the fact that they're an insurance salesman who lives in a Dallas suburb. This has about as much credence as the pseudo-intellectual pretensions you get from a lot of college-educated liberals, i.e. none.
It is also true that conservative political narratives tend to play up reactive grievance - Trump was/is present as a natural reaction to disdain from 'coastal elites' - while playing dumb about the phenomenal amounts of bile spewed towards others. And this is what I mean. Conservatives have this bizarre tendency to posture as if they had no choice, as if the unbearable rudeness and condescension of liberals forced them into their positions. And we're expected to take them seriously for some reason.
For example: the quote I quoted. Other things in this genre: McCarthy blaming Democrats for Speakership chaos, as if it were the Dems responsibility to sort out GOP coalition woes. The endless Diner Safaris are another prime example. Or, for that matter, the fact that large swathes of rugged, independent Deep Red America are basically collective welfare cases that would've died out long ago if not for Federal transfers and spending.
Right here, in mainstream polling: a majority of Republicans have a firearm in their household. About 25% of Democrats do. (Independents just below 50/50).
Right here, in mainstream consulting research: Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 2:1 among respondents in a poll of hunters and anglers.
Right here, in mainstream social science: conservatives live happier, more fulfilled lives, with fewer divorces, less mental illness.
I think that gross polling averages like this often obscure more interesting dynamics. But there's a reason that conservatives have the "rugged individualism" discourse that Supah mentions - they are more likely to have an inner locus of control.
Do we know to what extent these are rural/urban differences vs rep/dem?
I think it depends on the specific question we're looking at – for instance, I could see rural/urban being much more predictive than political affiliation for guessing if someone hunts or fishes. But on the other hand, for another example, a lot of benefits are provided by religion, independent of conservatism, so some of what I describe above is differences in religious belief – but it also seems like together they are a very potent combination (for instance religious conservatives are less likely to report they are mentally ill than equally religious liberals; see my third link above.)
But overall, since rural areas are more conservative than urban areas, I think it shakes out to being close to the same if we're just curious about Team Red and Team Blue.
I'm glad you're asking these sorts of questions, though. Personally, I think there's more than two (or three) "tribes" in America, and there's a lot of interesting work to be done untangling them.
For example, Skibboleth could argue (and he might be right, although I suspect, at least by some metrics, that there are many more hunters and fishermen in the United States than insurance salesmen) that a conservative is more likely to be an insurance salesman than a hunter or an angler. But that doesn't stop the hunter-fisher breakdown from skewing red. And while some people are interested only in the degree to which Red Tribe is comprised of hunters and anglers, I think it's interesting to ask what Hunter and Angler Tribe looks like. The United States is a big place, with room for more than two teams.
I've posted on this before, but the red tribe is really a catch all term for three main groups and a bunch of small ones- they'd call each other the church crowd, the country music crowd, and the red dirt crowd. The first is kind of obvious, the second is the party-hearty 'conservatives' who don't go to church but admit they should, if only Sunday wasn't the best day to take the powerboat out, and the third genuinely have ties to rural communities.
Hunting and fishing are high status in all three and more popular than in America as a whole, but probably most popular in the red dirt crowd.
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You can be both an insurance salesman and a hunter. I knew quite a lot of people like this growing up (admittedly, in the upper Midwest, not Dallas). It was entirely normal for white-collar suburbanites to put on an orange vest, get a little drunk, and sit in a tree during deer season. Significantly, this is a sporting hobby. They may eat the deer meat, but they're doing it for some combination of social reasons, trophy hunting, and just liking hunting. Also significantly: this does not make you a rugged outdoorsman. If you were to make these people to survive in the woods, they would die.
I think it is probably true that the average homesteader is pretty conservative. The average conservative, however, is a suburbanite, and their nods towards that sort of lifestyle are affectation. (And again, lest it seem like I am beating up on conservatives, I think these affectations are mostly harmless and liberals certainly have their own set of silly affectations). They are not cultivating mannerbund or heroic virtue, or even trying to. They are grilling and shitposting on the Hawkeye Report forums.
IIRC hunters who get lost in the woods have a much higher survival rate than hikers, but selection effects based on the kind of hunting are probably part of that. Agreed that lots of the people at deer camp are fat accountants who don't know how to build a fire without gasoline.
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