Take this with a grain of salt, since I don't remember which poll measured this, but I recall reading in 2012 that for every two Obama 08 voters that he lost, Obama gained one McCain voter.
Who would those have been? They couldn't have all been PUMA's.
Presumably more fiscally conservative voters who saw that Obama was actually very moderate and didn't appreciate the direction that the Tea Party was taking the GOP.
In 2008, it was still seen as acceptable for well-educated people to support the Republicans. A great deal of damage was done to the party's credibility with the rise of birtherism and the rhetoric that the GOP used in the lead up to 2012.
You guys really do have an amusing view of your coalition. Educated people voted GOP in 2014, did they not?
Postgrads voted for Dems 53-44, according to this:
http://www.cnn.com/election/2014/results/race/house/#exit-pollsRepublicans won (non-postgrad) college grads 54-44, some college voters 54-44, and high school grads 53-44, but Dems won voters without a high school diploma 54-44 (a category which I strongly suspect is disproportionately non-white).
But remember that while the Dems continue to win the lowest-income voters - regardless of education - by substantial margins, their performance among lower and middle income
white voters (broadly speaking) has had a considerable decline in recent decades, especially in the last few presidential
and congressional elections. Meanwhile, Democrats' advantage among postgrads has only grown (though obviously much of this can be attributed to the rapid growth of women and minorities as a share of this demographic).
The income and education correlations with voting and ideology (both of which have also become more correlated in recent years) can be summed up with the observation that high-income voters with only (or not even!) a high school education or "some college" are the most conservative/Republican, while low-income postgrads have become one of the most reliably liberal demographics (and thus, reliably Democratic - though this group also does very well with candidates like Ralph Nader in 2000 and this year, Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries). Furthermore, less-educated (white) middle and upper income voters have moved far to the Right in their voting habits, while conversely, more-educated lower and middle income voters have moved far to the Left.
All of that being said, the Democrats continue to draw much of their strength among lower and middle income voters (particularly minorities) while the Republicans continue to draw much of their strength among (white) middle and upper income voters. The fact that lower income voters are considerably less reliable in elections (particularly in the midterms) than middle and especially upper income voters - when combined with the fact that
the segment of college-educated/postgrad voters who are the most Dem are highly concentrated in the major metro areas of safely Democratic states - goes a long way toward explaining the Democrats' geographic and structural problems these days.
