mvd10
YaBB God
Posts: 3,709
Political Matrix E: 2.58, S: -2.61
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« Reply #1 on: May 23, 2018, 04:16:24 AM » |
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I don't think any party can win 80% of the college-educated, so I'm inclined to agree with RFayette. I do think the Democrats will have a strong advantage with postgraduates (people with 'just' a 4-year college degree actually usually vote Republican), I guess postgraduates will be 55/60% Dem while college graduates are pretty much tied. But winning 80% of college graduates implies a huge victory among wealthy voters, and I can't think of many elections where the wealthy voted to the left of the national average (Italy 2018? But the left there reduced taxes and deregulated the labour market). Class voting in the US is much less strong than in other countries (I believe class voting is strongest in Scandinavia and weakest in the US and Canada), so I guess if it happens anywhere it would be in the US. But the economically left-wing party has never overperformed with wealthy voters and I doubt it would happen in the future, especially if the Democrats follow the Bernie route (which is entirely possible now people like Gillibrand endorse all kind of leftist proposals). Even Trump won voters earning over $250k, and what possible Republican nominee could do worse than Trump among those voters in a non-landslide (and do Democrats have someone who can do better than Hillary Clinton)?
Wealthy voters and educated voters are 2 entirely different groups though. Plenty of people go to university and study something they really love, but which doesn't have good job prospects (or they'll go into teaching or whatever). Since almost everyone goes to college now there will be even less of a correlation between wealth and having a college degree, and college grads might take over jobs that usually are done by non-college grads. Postgraduate-educated people with socially liberal values and no money vote for the Democrats en masse. So maybe the Dems winning massive majorities with college-educated voters is possible is the majority of these college-educated voters end up in sh**tty service jobs (with the GOP winning wealthier college-educated voters and rural non-college grads). We shouldn't forget that college grads voted to the right of the nation in 2012 btw, so the Republicans don't even have to abandon all of their principles to win those voters back. If the GOP is to expand its coalition the lowest-hanging fruit probably will be wealthy voters who abandoned the GOP for the Democrats in 2016/2020. What else could the GOP do? Try to win lower income inner city minorities? Getting to 85% with non college grad whites (who are shrinking as a group)? Good luck lol.
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