FEATURED
ANALYSIS: Review of all 30 full-time faculty finds 11 primary-voting Democrats and zero Republicans
Republican students at the Georgia Institute of Technology do not have a single clearly identified Republican professor in the school’s public policy program, according to a new College Fix analysis of primary voting records.
The Fix reviewed the voting records of the 30 full-time professors in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy and could not identify a single Republican. The determination of political affiliation is based on the most recent primary ballot pulled.
The public policy school is the closest equivalent to a political science department at the school.
Instead, The Fix identified 11 Democrat professors, 14 who could not be determined, and 5 nonpartisan voters. A nonpartisan professor means the voter took a ballot that only included questions about referenda or judges, but did not include candidates with an explicit political party.
Indeterminable means The Fix could not match the professor with a voter registration, because they are not registered to vote or live in a different county from the university.
Public policy school officials did not respond to emails and phone calls in the past several weeks, seeking comment on the findings.
Georgia Tech’s public policy program has offered courses on “Gender, Science, Technology, and Public Policy,” “STEM Diversity,” and “ Inclusive Policy Innovation.” More conventional options include ancient philosophy and research methods and problem solving.
Past events hosted by the school’s lecture series include talks on “Public Health and Racial Inequality: The Links Between Covid-19 and the Summer BLM Protests,” “Research to Action: Three Climate Solutions for Georgia,” and “Community-Based Design Practices for Health Equity.”
Other talks focused on technology and artificial intelligence.
Georgia Tech public policy department is not alone in having no identified Republican political science professors. The Fix has also reviewed the registrations for six Pennsylvania universities and found four political science departments lacked a single Republican.
The results come from an overall analysis by The College Fix that reviewed the voting patterns for 97 political science professors at University of Georgia, Georgia State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Kennesaw State University. Only full-time professors, not adjuncts or instructors, were reviewed.
Of the 97 investigated, 49 professors’ affiliations were determined as either Republican, Democratic, or nonpartisan.
In total, The Fix identified 29 Democrat professors, 5 Republicans, and 15 nonpartisans. When broken down by party, 85 percent of identified professors are Democrat, while only 15 percent are Republican.
Methods for determining registration
Georgia has an open primary system, where anyone can vote in the primary of their choosing. Peach State voters do not register with a party when registering to vote, so the Fix used the most recent primaries instead.
The Fix determined a professor’s affiliation based on the most recent primary election in the county where the school is located, although in some cases The Fix had additional voting history available.
The voting records came through a paid public records request for the voter files in specific counties, obtainable through the Georgia Secretary of State’s office. Professors who could not be determined may be registered in a different county or not registered to vote at all.
Voter registrations were matched using a program called Anomaly AI that provided both confirmed matches and ambiguous situations, such as multiple registrations with the same name.
In these cases, The Fix manually tried to match identifying information from curriculum vitae and other public sources to determine the best matches. A researcher for The College Fix also manually ran a first review on a majority of the registrations.
Because many of these registrations rely only on the 2026 primary, it is possible professors identify with a different party but chose the opposite party for strategic reasons.
