When you're dealing with the lower end of the intellectual spectrum, Democrats and Republicans tend to become pretty similar.  Their reasons for voting are often equally uninformed or irrational.

At the higher end though, there is a distinct difference based on what I've seen.  Democrats tend to rely much more on third party analysis for their political opinions.  It's pretty rare to see the "stats freaks" arguing for liberal or Democratic positions.  Instead, the Democrats tend to be much more inclined to quote a source they "trust".  One might call this lazy political intellectualism or another might put it as efficient use of analysis.  But no matter how ou slice it, these Democrats are only as good as their trusted analysis sources.

On the other side, Republicans, and particularly conservatives, tend to be much more inclined to NOT trust those who do analysis (again, at the higher end of the intelligence spectrum here, "ditto heads" on the right are no different that the Moore-ons on the left in their political IQ).

The stats freaks, the ones who actually skip the analysis and go look up the actual statistics or the actual original report are almost always Republicans or at least conservatives. This isn't necessarily a better way.  It can be time inefficient and lead to wacko conspiracy theoris when a right winger starts drawing strange conclusions form the data.