More Educated = More Liberal?

[Mechaman]

I think some people put too much weight on the "education" argument.

For one, as much as this will disturb the paternalists who want to think they are naturally better than everyone (ie those who can't just be in a better moral position than those they disagree with), there are a lot of degreed jobs that are just naturally biased towards certain political philosophies.  Speaking firsthand as a left wing Accounting major, I can't imagine that there will be any serious trend amongst General Business types to vote Democrat.  Considering how many jobs there are in business environments that involve degrees like Marketing, Advertising, Finance, yada yada it's not surprising why there is a high number of Republican graduates.  And given the amount of student loan debts many have, I doubt there is that much incentive for a business grad to further their education beyond the typical "license" tests like the CPA exam or what have you.  Likely, they'll just get their 150 hours down, take the test, and then call it a day.  Many people don't see the point of having a Masters in Accountancy when a CPA license will make them 70% more sellable to employers at a fraction of the cost.  But of course, you also need a years worth of workplace experience before you get the license so I digress.

I imagine that for fields like Liberal Arts or advanced sciences that a Masters degree or higher is a lot more of a necessity, thus probably why postgrads are so Democratic.

What I'm seeing isn't really measurement of intelligence between parties, just the difference between the parties on the economic front.  A Psych major is likely going to approve more of lenient debt policies than a Marketing major because a Pscyh student is more likely going to need more debt than a Marketing student in order to get into their field.

Just my two cents.

[Mechaman]

Europe already went through that.

Before, more you were educated, more you were right-wing.
In the recent years, it took a smile shape. Very uneducated and very educated people voted for the left, the averagely educated to the right.
And now, it's becoming more you are education, more you're left-wing, more or less.

Different factors must be factored too: race, religion, income, unions...

Being well educated in Europe before 1945 implied that one was almost certainly part of the Establishment. High levels of education were the norm only for entrenched elites, and working people (who were generally socialists except under fascist regimes) were usually thrown to the wolves in the economic order, often at an early age.  After WWII entrenched economic elites became less powerful if they were allowed to remain (a distinction between Romania and Italy), and as a rule post-WWII governments encouraged advanced education for anyone who could benefit from it. If there was an Einstein or Freud whose parents were industrial workers the educational system might find him and give him a chance -- especially after the people who gave the world Einstein and Freud were largely exterminated.

In the US  much the same process happened in the early 1960s, when high-grade universities quit using class identity as a criterion for acceptance or rejection. School board scores began to matter greatly and family connections (he is at the bottom of his prep-school class but a couple years at Ivy might do him some good) didn't matter so much. Why have someone like that at Ivy when you could have some middle-class Jewish or Italian-American kid from Brooklyn who takes learning seriously and has the grades and board scores? The results from such choices looked increasingly good, and they stayed in place. The kid who might use a couple years at Harvard ended up going to some 'alternative choice'.

The Republican Party used to have the advantage with educated people because the under-educated, bigoted white people of the South voted Democratic and often well-educated Northern moderate voters despised those people and identified with Eisenhower and Rockefeller. The Republican Party began to court those under-educated, often bigoted white voters hostile to highly-educated people and lost the well-educated Northern moderate voters to the Democratic Party.

The Republican party has been pandering to anti-intellectual white people; by such it lost the chance to pick up a rapidly-growing (and well-educated) Hispanic middle class that seemed set to drift increasingly into the Republican Party. But by disparaging formal education the Republican Party has lost many of the sorts of people who voted Republican at least until Dubya.

Just look at an overlay between elections involving Dwight Eisenhower and Barack Obama. In 2008 President Obama won 365 electoral votes -- all but 15 from states that Eisenhower lost. In 2012 Barack Obama didn't win any state that Dwight Eisenhower ever lost.      

      

This is a really good non-biased post that recognizes the northern affluent WASP "moderate" Republican class for the Civil Rights crusaders and open minded angels that they really are.  It's good that we have well informed non-hack posters like pbrower to set the record straight instead of someone coming on here and pointing out that those highly "educated" affluent Republicans often held bigoted paternalistic views towards non-protestant working class people of Irish, Italian, Polish, German, Jewish, (insert other non-"respectable" European ethnic group here) descent.
. . . . . . . oh wait.