Why is Austin so liberal?

[PoliticalShelter]

I love how people are acting like Trump is somehow the first time the GOP has fully embraced anti-intellectualism.
I mean the GOP was attacking Aldai Stevenson as a egghead over 60 years ago and nearly every GOP presidential candidate over the past 50 years has portrayed themselves as someone who stick it to the liberal eggheads in Washington.

[PoliticalShelter]

Because educated!

Obvious sarcasm, but it actually plays more than just a little role.

Right, but it's not the education that is the deciding factor, IMO.  Austin is a large urban center with a huge public university.  Those factors alone lead to public infrastructure and livlihood concerns that lend to Democratic voting.  Add in a natural inclination toward social liberalism, and you get a few more points.  Additionally, Travis County is only 50% White ... don't you think that plays a massive role in its margins?

I mean, you have Denton County (suburban Dallas), which has very similar educational statistics, yet it voted for Trump by 20%...:

TRAVIS COUNTY
16.3% Postgrad
44.9% Bachelor's or higher
50.5% College degree of some sort

DENTON COUNTY
12.4% Postgrad
40.4% Bachelor's or higher
48.4% College degree of some sort

I just think red avatars on this site (possibly out of a sense of elitism, possibly out of just hearing the narrative too much, I don't know) are acting like it's this inherent exposure to education that leads one toward liberalism, and that's ridiculous.

Obviously there are many factors, and education is far from the only factor and it may not even be the biggest factor.  It's a sizable factor, especially on certain social issues such as LGBT rights, which Travis County sharply contrasted itself from the rest of Texas in 2005 on a gay marriage ban amendement (passed statewide with 76%, carrying every county but Travis, which rejected the ban with 60%).  There a a lot of highly educated homophobes, but people are more likely to support such civil rights issues if they have experience in intellectual, urban, and diverse settings than if they stay in small towns (I know that sounds elitist but oh well). Then again, you're not against LGBT rights and may not even consider it a left vs. right issue, but there's a reason the LGBT community tends to favor Democrats.

Maybe education is not that indicative of economic populism, but Austin is not the the most populist place; it seems to have a libertarian-ish streak.

The recent trend of Democrats winning among the well-educated began before Trump, but it has accelerated with the rise of the not-so-intellectual blowhard.  Not every Repubilican is Donald Trump, but Trump is the current leader of their party, and the spirit of Trump won't leave the GOP that easily in the near future.

As for Travis County being only 50% white, I agree that belonging to a minority is much more indicative of Democratic support than education.  However, Austin has quite a disproportionate share of Texas's white liberals.  Its share of blacks is smaller than the national average and most of its minorities are Hispanic, and there are quite a few Asians in Austin too.  Many Hispanics and Asians are not US citizens and are ineligible to vote, so I'm not sure if minorities make up that large if a share if the county's electorate.

Shhh. Don't say this too loudly or you'll get the people who will continue to insist "DONALD TRUMP IS NOT A REAL REPUBLICAN AND DOES NOT STAND FOR OUR VALUES" types. Either way, the Republican Party embraced anti-intellectualism with his nomination, whether they like it or not, and that will remain an indictment against them by educated people for a time to come.

Obviously Trump is as much of a Republican as anyone else, and he won the primaries (I have written at length about why I think there's a perfectly obvious reason why this doesn't necessarily translate to a plurality of Republicans agreeing with his individual policy stances or the clear indication of a successor, but I digress), so he's the leader of the party right now.  Period.  At the same time, many prominent Republicans regularly criticize him in public and have openly agreed with some of his political positions, so I'd say it's fair to say that the GOP isn't exactly united behind Trump.  Additionally, while 2018 might look totally different, House Republicans did several points better among college graduates than Trump did, and they won White college graduates by 10 points.  So, in the short term, it does look like a statistically significant percent of "educated" voters are willing to separate their Congressional Republicans from President Trump.

They're only willing to separate GOP from Trump as long as it's still viable that Trump doesn't lead the GOP.   I don't see any possible scenario where the GOP's voter base "doesn't" go full on nationalist/populist in the future (IE Trumpism).

I can think of a few scenarios.

Probably the most likely one (once trumps gone) is that as the democrats become more populist and less technocratic in their character and policies, the partisan instinct to oppose whatever the Democrats are doing will kick in and Republicans will position themselves as opponents of the economic populism of the democrats.