Can Democrats keep Hillary margins with wealthy/college educated whites while...

[mvd10]

All depends on the Republican candidate. Against Trump/Moore/McDaniel? Absolutely. Against Jeb!? Probably not. But postgraduates who identify with the Democratic party actually are the most liberal voters (the higher educated a self-identified Democrat is, the more left-wing he/she is). Within the Republican coalition there isn't really a correlation between education and economic views though (except on questions about the "system"). So overall high-educated voters actually are quite supportive of a left-wing economic agenda.

But wealthy voters and high-educated voters are 2 entirely different groups, I suspect a very left-wing Democratic party would still do pretty well with postgraduate whites but it would do much worse with wealthy whites. You already can see this in a lot of countries (including the US) where high-educated voters usually lean slightly to the left while wealthy voters lean clearly towards the right even though most high-educated voters tend to be wealthy and vice versa. I think during the 2017 elections in the UK Labour (led by literal socialist Jeremy Corbyn) won the university educated vote 49-32 while the Tories still won 60+% of the very wealthy voters (I guess Labour got 20% or so). I guess this is the effect of wealthy old people who never attended university voting Tory and young poor people who got into university voting Labour.

[mvd10]

No. The swing against Trump with college educated whites, especially women, was primarily due to his personal flaws (temperament, Access Hollywood, etc) as opposed to a fundamental rejection of his policy proposals or the GOP at large. That's part of why so few republican incumbents lost their House seats in normally lean R districts where Trump narrowly lost or ran even.

What about what happened in Virgina? Incumbency didn't save most of the Clinton college educated suburban districts.

2016 was supposed to be a Republican leaning year but Donald Trump nearly screwed it up. 2018 and 2020 won't be so favorable towards these republican incumbents.


Also reminder that a socialist unseated a republican in a wealthy educated district.

I think people really underestimate just how little policy can matter in some elections. Not to say it's completely meaningless, but America's electorate is not filled with people who sit down, carefully analyze their choices and make choices independent of partisan considerations. Absolutely not. It's more like, "I've chosen my team, and I'm going to say I'm open to all candidates but that's bs." Like Griff said - if these voters do end up sticking around in 2020, odds are a lot, imo most, will not just snap back in the future. Policy is not going to matter, just like it doesn't seem to matter for millions of Republicans who constantly puzzle liberals by seemingly voting against their self-interest for years and years. At best, it'll probably be a situation where certain demographics do end up trending the other way, but it's a generational movement and not people suddenly waking up and thinking, "hey, I'm going to vote Republican/Democrat."

I'd also note that this is why I don't really like the progressive argument of "we need WWC because upscale/college educated whites are going to screw us on policy." I just don't see it playing out like that.

But if policy matters so little, then why did these voters (who presumably voted for the Republicans in nearly all elections pre-2016) change their votes in 2016? I guess Trump's behaviour played a bigger role than his policies but if these voters weren't tribalistically Republican enough to vote Trump in 2016 I doubt they will become tribalistically Democratic to the point they're not even going to vote for a Pence/Cotton/Haley anymore even though they would have voted for such a candidate in 2016. The only way I see these people remaining Democratic is if they like some progressives fear "screw us on policy" (and at that point I'd probably also become a Democrat ).

[mvd10]

But if policy matters so little, then why did these voters (who presumably voted for the Republicans in nearly all elections pre-2016) change their votes in 2016? I guess Trump's behaviour played a bigger role than his policies but if these voters weren't tribalistically Republican enough to vote Trump in 2016 I doubt they will become tribalistically Democratic to the point they're not even going to vote for a Pence/Cotton/Haley anymore even though they would have voted for such a candidate in 2016. The only way I see these people remaining Democratic is if they like some progressives fear "screw us on policy" (and at that point I'd probably also become a Democrat ).

It's quite possible a lot of the ongoing change is related to white Millennial grads continuing to displace older white college grads. Last I recall from an Atlantic piece, the education divide is strong among Millennials as well, so it makes perfect sense to think that as they grow up, it would shift white college graduates along with them. As for white college grads that were previously Republican-leaning, it's also not a stretch to think that their connection to the GOP was already on tenuous ground pre-Trump, kind of like Democrats and some WWCs. Obama being president and rather unpopular most of the time made it easy for them to maintain that connection. Now that that is no longer the case, and the spotlight is on a deeply unpopular and personally repulsive Republican president, it's allowed the separation between various white college grads and the party to solidify. It's similar to how in Virginia, many Republican delegates held Obama/Clinton districts - some even double digit Obama districts, and yet they kept winning because an unpopular Democratic president demoralized Democrats and made it hard for Virginia Democratic candidates win over other voters. Now that the script has flipped, a massive correction occurred and districts Republicans were destined to lose finally fell.

I actually posted an article with some polling data on Trump supporter's extensive malleability with policy preferences, depending on what they were told Trump supported. The gist was that if Trump supported more liberal policies, these voters would also support more liberal policies, and vice versa. This isn't a new concept, either. It's been shown that many voters will take cues from the political leaders they support. You may think of it along the lines as, "I support the Republican Party, and I'm not a policy expert. If they say this will help, I believe them." Of course, there are some exceptions. Immigration seems to be one for some voters, although I'm not sure to what extent. For instance it doesn't seem most Trump supporters care about his wall, and I think most even supported a pathway to citizenship.

I was referring to longtime Republicans who defected in 2016. I agree that most college-educated young whites who hated Bush and Trump will mostly remain Democratic, though I do belief they will shift somewhat to the right, the Republican party has to do something to try to appeal to them or they're screwed in the 2030s. See it as the invisible hand of the political free market (but I agree that the vast majority of them will remain D for the rest of their lives, which should worry the Republicans).

Normally I'd say that the political future of college-educated whites depends on the hot-button issues of the future. If cultural issues are important they trend D, if economic issues are important they trend R. You can see this pattern a lot in Europe (including in the Netherlands). I'm not sure whether this pattern holds true to the US though. The 2012 election was dominated by economic issues and college-educated whites actually trended R more than the WWC 2008-2012 (51%-56% vs 58%-62%), and the wealthy also trended R hard (49%-55% vs 49%-52% for people earning $50k-$100k and 38%-38% for people earning under $50k). But the wealthy already trended D hard 2004-2008 so that probably just was a regression to the mean. And the 2008 election also focused heavily on economic issues, so by my theory 2008 also should have seen the wealthy trend R. Then again, Obama is the literal opposite of rural whites in VA/WV (a black eloquent Harvard-educated lawyer) so perhaps his mere presence was a cultural issue (and by 2012 people would be more used to a president like Obama).

Anyway, these college-educated whites saw what Trump was saying (or how he was saying it) and they were independent enough to vote D even though they probably had voted Republican in all elections except perhaps 2008. I don't think they'll blindly follow Bernie after this. It depends on the Republican nominee post-Trump. If it's LePage or Palin these people probably will become solid D (and Clinton basically was a gateway drug), but if it's Pence I can see the majority of them flipping back. But realigning presidents usually have to be succesful presidents, I can't see Trump being a successful president (instead he'll likely end up discrediting "Trumpism") so I don't think the GOP will become a right-wing populist party in the European sense after Trump leaves with a 35% approval rating.

And I'd like to say one more time that wealthy voters are very different from college-educated voters even though there is a lot of overlap. I can see the Democrats doing very well with college-educated voters even while trending to the left, I definitely can't see them winning the wealthy under Bernie or Warren (except if they face Trump/someone dragged down by Trump with his 35% approval rating, but they'd still be significantly more Republican than the national average).

[mvd10]

Exit polls said Trump won them 48-45 or so. Still an abmysal performance from the Republican candidate, and if Trump doesn't stfu soon it will be worse in 2020. Luckily Hope Hicks or some other Trump aide will save the country and we'll have Magic Mike aka smarter Dubya aka 55% of the college-educated white vote soon .