America's Growing Educational Divide

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What is the key to understanding our nation’s political divide? While differences in racial identity and religiosity continue to have strong correlations with political identity, we are seeing an emerging trend: there is a growing tendency for college-educated voters to identify as Democrats and conversely, non-college educated voters identifying as Republicans. This article will make the case that such changes predate the disrupting emergence of COVID-19 and the 2016 election of Donald Trump and that they have significant implications for the future of American politics and political coalitions. Furthermore, the consequences should be welcomed, as both parties have significant incentive to embrace these changes in their electoral coalitions.  

The recent California recall was the latest datapoint in an emerging trend where college education has become a defining factor in our political divide. According to the CNN exit poll, Newsom won 71 percent of white college-educated voters and 63 percent of minorities without a college degree. Notably, white voters with a college degree voted to the left of voters with a college degree, an outcome that would have been unimaginable even ten years ago. While it is tempting to make a wide-ranging analysis off of one exit poll, there is significant evidence that the trend isn’t limited to the recall. 

Pew’s Party ID data shows that since 2000, Republicans have gone from leading by 11 percent among college-educated voters to trailing by 3 percent in 2012, to holding a whopping 13 percent deficit in 2020. At the same time, polls have found a 12 percent increase in broad party-level support for the GOP among self-identifying blue-collar workers since 2010. This trend is not limited to white Americans; Hispanic blue-collar workers also increased their support for the GOP by 13 percent over the last 10 years. Exit polls support the trend. 

Another way of looking at the shift is precinct-level voting information. In the 2020 election, we saw educated, wealthy neighborhoods and counties—such as Buckhead in Atlanta, Highland Park in Dallas, and St. Louis County, Missouri—shift significantly towards Democrats. At the same time, traditionally blue-collar areas such as Zapata County, Texas, and Mahoning County, Ohio shifted towards Republicans. If anything, this precinct-level data better illustrates the emerging trends compared to exit polls. At a county level, the Wall Street Journal notes that Trump managed to win just 16 of the 100 most educated counties in the country. In comparison, Republicans won 49 of these counties in 2000. 

These trends can be attributed to numerous factors. The elevation of cultural issues by both parties is a key factor in the growing college/non-college divide. We see this starkly in the Democratic Party, where only 56 percent of Democrats without a college degree agree with their party’s position on abortion. Conversely, only 64 percent of college-educated Republicans agree with their party’s stance on abortion. As the Supreme Court prepares to consider a challenge to the 48 year precedent of Roe v. Wade this December, could we see further realignment among this divide? It seems likely. 

Take another wedge social issue: police brutality and the rise of activist movements like Black Lives Matter. While polling consistently indicates that blue-collar minorities support maintaining or increasing the level of police presence in their communities, white-collar voters, particularly white Democrats, are more likely to support police reform measures. The recent New York City mayoral Democratic primary is a classic example of this divide—working class neighborhoods overwhelmingly supported the conservative ex-cop Democrat Eric Adams, and wealthy, white-collar neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn supported lawyer and “defund the police” advocate Maya Wiley.   

Beyond the issue driven changes, there is significant incentive for both parties to embrace this growing trend. For the Democrats, a power base of white-collar workers will ensure that they expand their significant donor edge against the Republicans—a key part of political power in our post-Citizens United political world. Furthermore, with white-collar workers being more reliable voters than blue-collar workers, this change will allow the Democrats to weather the storm of challenging midterm elections in the coming months. Additionally, there are significant benefits to dominance over professional America in terms of institutional control. This is already present in the officer core of the U.S. military, an institution once considered to be reliably conservative but recently drifting away from this status, largely because of larger scale trends with college degrees. 

Republicans, too, have significant incentives to embrace these changes in their voting coalitions. For starters, given the decline in America’s non-Hispanic white population as a percentage of population, it seems certain that Republicans must diversify their electoral coalition to prevent future electoral annihilation. Pivoting to a multi-racial working class coalition is a great way to accomplish this. Furthermore, such voters are more likely to have bigger families and be more religious than white-collar voters, two additional predictors towards long term familial affiliation with Republican politics.   

This change is happening, and it will likely continue, as both parties have reason to believe it will benefit them politically. The Reagan Democrats (ethnic whites, often middle class) of the 1980s became the rank and file Republicans of the 2020s. Might we see a similar trend with the college-educated Biden Republicans? A key indicator will be the upcoming 2022 midterms. Even with Trump off the ballot, if the trend continues, it will have monumental implications going forward in American politics.