Why is Education Level the Best Predictor of Voting?

All prime examples of highly educated politicians manipulating poorly educated voters and by the way before I am accused of demeaning voters with less formal education it was Trump himself who referred to his supporters as "poorly educated".

 

Your post reads like everyone with a college degree votes D. Too funny. And in what measure is it the single best indicator? Seems it's still skin color as far as I can tell? Unless I'm reading it wrong.

From your article.

College educated favors D 55-43

in 2022.

African American favored D 93-5
Hispanic Favored D 60-39
Caucasian favored R 57-41

 

Notice that the wealthy and the powerful who insist that a college education is overrated, are all sending their kids to top schools.

 

Partial explanation for the Dems’ insistence on cancelling student loan debt? I would argue, however, that graduated students whining for debt cancellation are part of the “feeling left behind” group that allegedly is the Pub base now. Perhaps they feel they can’t make ends meet with their overpriced degrees that the Pub “left behinders” didn’t waste time and resources to pursue. Maybe the study should evaluate gainful employment and work ethic instead of degrees. Degreed doesn’t always translate to educated. I was astonished (in a bad way) at the low level of writing and communication abilities exhibited by a lot of students in a masters degree program that I was in several years ago. It appears some schools continue with passing/promoting students that haven’t picked up the obligatory skills right on up into and out of college.

But the bottom line to me is that the 45% vs 55% split isn’t that wide of a divide and tells me that there are plenty of folks on both sides of the political coin that have/don’t have degrees. The margin makes a difference in elections, but not necessarily in success in life.

 

This shift is a long time in the making. The college educated white professional class has become more Democratic, the white working class and wealthier non-college educated people more Republican.

 

Because the ruling class in the country are elitists from Ivy League schools. Bush, Obama, the Clintons etc are all from those schools, and their children go there as well. They put a R or D next to their name and herd cattle fodder to vote for them over silly, stupid things that get people's emotion up.

They protect each other with spending bills and foreign deals to keep their families rich and power for their children. Thats just how the US gov operates.

 

Maybe it depends upon what one thinks an education is? One can be pretty bright, parrot the liberal academia establishment, get a degree from a once prestigious institution or even any place calling itself a college/univesity - and voila, they enjoy the privilege of being an "educated" authority. Or, one can be pretty bright, go to trade school or mid-level university, start a business or otherwise contribute positively, and/or be willing to be denigrated by so-called academics at "top" universities for not "educated." Both have degrees, but the latter seems to deal with results and not rely on "diploma" authority. There is an old saw that liberals are educated beyond their intelligence and it seems to be a banner for the Democrat party these days. Funny how only 3-4 decades ago, the Left was the champion of the working class. Now the Left sees the working class as "uneducated" and corrosive. I'd rather consider the opinions of farmers, HVAC workers, business managers, etc. and not rely on the "-isms" championed by the "educated" elite these days.

 

Their assault on affirmative action at elite universities doesn't include legacies, I'm sure that was an oversight though

 

Not in this case. Education for this purpose just means obtaining a 4 year university degree.

 

Add to the mix - about 100+ years ago, children in middle school and high school were taught Latin and Greek. Now, freshmen in college are being taught remedial English. I'm a huge fan of getting a college degree - but a college degree that means something and isn't just a glamorized completion of high school which is what a lot of the current college degrees represent.

 

If you think real hard about it, you might understand why these numbers are not as impactful as the education gap.

I'm more concerned about education not being a top issue in any of the debates, political ads, etc. We don't need another DeVos and the voucher/charter/privatization movement is critical.

 

Education will evolve to AI guided instruction and will become alot cheaper. Charter schools and public schools, doesnt matter. In 50 years, they wont exist.

 

this trend is really a post Trump trend, that may have started with the Tea Party. Prior to that much of the professional class - college educated private sector tended to vote republican. Government, educators, lawyers etc tend to vote Democrat. I suspect Democrats were more popular among the non college educated.

 

"Impact" isn't the topic of the thread. I'm curious how the author determined education to be the "best indicator" of a voting pattern.

 

Predates Trump but he accelerated it for sure. I cant tell you how many people I know voted for Bush 1 time before finishing college and got sick of the evangelical/anti-science nonsense and are basically Democrats for life now.

 

Yeah, that isn't true at all. Setting aside that most students left school around 13 years old at the time, most education was oriented towards the memorization of the most basic tasks, including what would be considered "remedial" English.

 

It is probably true that that far back there was more emphasis on the classical rhetorical education which included Latin and Greek, but that was hardly something every kid got, more of a "college track" even then, since there wasnt anything like standardized testing until like the 1920s.