yes, it's a highly replicated result. kemmelheimer was the best at explaining this phenomenon imo. he shows that, in states with low political involvement, where debates are rarer and politics is not as heated of a debate, conservatism is linked to higher verbal ability. in states with higher involvement, where you are forced to rethink your positions constantly, conservatism is negatively correlated with verbal ability. conservatives and liberals are also more intelligent than centrists.
so, basically: if you don't think about politics or takes the moderate position on everything, you're an idiot.
if you are surrounded by npcs who never try to drag you to the right but end up in the right wing anyway, that's a sign of high verbal ability.
if you're being constantly challenged on your positions and still position yourself to the right, chances are your verbal ability is lower.
% state involvement x % of democrat lawmakers had a very strong correlation with state iq (?R^2 = 0.8), so active liberalism (as opposed to npc liberalism) explained 80% of the variance between the IQ of different states.
I think that, if they added more sophisticated extreme ideologies, they would find less correlation between leftism and IQ, although I still think that certain kinds of marxists would rank higher, than, say, premodernist reactionaries, who are also quite sophisticated.
also, remember that intelligence and truth are not the same thing. people who are more intelligent are not at all more likely to find out the truth about a subject. if anything, we're more likely to create bullshit reasons why our incorrect guesses make sense.
