As experts call for increased physician participation in the election, historical data suggests many physicians do not vote, Medscape reports.
Here's what you should know.
1. The University of Pennsylvania's Katrin Armstrong, MD, and David Grande, MD, published data from the 1996 and 2002 elections that show physicians vote at a rate 9 percent lower than the general public. The data, published in Annals of Internal Medicine, suggests low physician voter turnout has been the trend since the late 1970s.
2. Several factors contribute to the lower-than-expected rate including:
- A high level engagement in professional lives
- Long work hours
- Overnight calls
- Lack of clinical coverage
3. Eitan Hersh, an assistant professor of political science at New Haven, Conn.-based Yale University, told Medscape that physicians don't vote because of a low interest in politics.
4. Dr. Armstrong and Dr. Grande said physicians should prioritize voting and encouraging others to vote. The duo suggested the use of peer pressure as a means to get physicians to the polling place.
5. Historical data suggests when physicians do vote, they vote liberally. The shift is different from prior decades when physicians were heavily aligned with the Republican Party.
6. A majority of physicians are democrats, but when broken down by specialty, physicians in surgical specialties are favor Republican, while those in infectious diseases, psychiatry and pediatrics favor the Democrats.
7. In this election, Mr. Hersh believes physicians would align with the Republicans who wouldn't vote for Donald Trump, and is predicting an "overwhelmingly Democratic vote."