Democratic leaning non-college educated whites

[Indy Texas]

In my anecdotal experience at least a segment of the minority of non-college whites that still vote Democratic are culturally very different from the majority that vote Republican. They're more likely to live in cities and in many cases have a bohemian sensibility and didn't go to college or may have dropped out to pursue a career in music and the arts.

I also do find it annoying that polls tend not to differentiate lower income whites from non-college educated whites because while the former group may appear to have trended overwhelmingly Republican if you just look at the sorts of homogeneous counties in Appalachia which they dominate I question weather or not that's the case elsewhere. I'd be interested to see a partisan breakdown of non-college whites divided by income.

To be fair, a lot of lower-income whites are simply college students or otherwise younger meaning that their class background may be middle-class with incomes to reflect that once they inherit the parents' wealth and/or advance in their career paths. That said, I agree Dem leaning college whites are demographically distinct and disproportionately urban as well as heavily secular. I suspect most whites among the urban precariat are still liberal-the retail workers or Uber drivers.

I think we overestimate this because most of the people who post on here are in college or went to college from ages 18-22 at a full-time residential 4-year school when in fact most Millennials and Zoomers are not doing those things. They're probably taking a few community college classes here and there in fits and starts, or spent a semester at a lower tier public university and then withdrew because their high school woefully underprepared them to successfully complete college coursework or they had money issues.

[Indy Texas]

But yeah, I wonder how many of the younger US posters (regardless of race or family income) are residential, 4-year college students, or set on that track if they’re still in high school.

The majority do not do that. And remember that what the political commentator class and what the upper 10-25% of Americans regard as the "normal" college experience is basically the experience that you only get if you go to a fairly selective university.

Most people aren't taking liberal arts or humanities classes beyond 100-level requirements that are basically just a repeat of high school. Most people do not do a senior thesis or anything resembling meaningful "research" during college; the closest they get is the occasional 10 page paper that they mostly Wikipedia'd their way through.

I'm thinking of the college experiences of some of my extended family who are close to me in age and they include:

1. Went to mediocre public school (Texas State University) for a year and then left because of poor grades and "not knowing what he wanted to major in." He took classes at community college part-time the next year because his parents made him but then he gave that up and they didn't force the issue. He was working as a waiter at that time and after he left college he eventually became the general manager of a restaurant (no idea what he's up to now what with COVID going on).

2. Went to mediocre public school (University of Texas-San Antonio) for a year and, as above, left because of poor grades and general lack of direction. She worked at a locally based retail chain and then moved over to their corporate office to be an office assistant. Then they basically told her they liked her and she was doing well but if she wanted to get promoted any further she had to have a college degree because reasons. So she went back to school part-time (University of Houston) to get a degree in human resources management, finishing when she was about 30 or so. Now she's a human resources manager.

Basically, that's a closer approximation to what college is actually like for most people than someone going to, say, the University of Texas-Austin, majoring in philosophy/political science, being a research assistant, doing an internship at Brookings, writing a senior thesis and graduating Phi Beta Kappa. That is what college is like for the sort of people who write about politics on Twitter and in mainstream media.

[Indy Texas]

Non-college white people are a blind spot for media types more generally, which is absurd because the modal American voter is a white person who didn't get a college degree.

Who is the base of small town/rural county Republican politics? It's not hedge fund managers. It's the guy who owns the car dealership, the guy who sold some of his family's farmland to the state to expand the highway and then parceled out the rest for exurban McMansions, the guy who owns a small factory that makes HVAC parts.

I think where this loses a lot of people is that these are, paradoxically, often high-wealth, low-status careers. The work itself is boring and so is the product. You live in a small flyover town; maybe you built yourself a McMansion next to a golf course but when your kids want to go to the mall, they have to drive an hour and a half to the nearest city/suburb, there is no museum or symphony, and certainly no independent films being shown in the local theater. You have plenty of money but you buy your groceries at Walmart because that's basically all there is.

https://twitter.com/tomscocca/status/1320741825955696640?s=20