Why were college towns so Republican before the 70's?

[Benj]

Colleges, along with professors and the college-educated, were bastions of the social and economic elite in an era when the elite were overwhelmingly Republican. Today, the elite are more politically diverse, and colleges are also more socially and economically diverse.

[Benj]

Except that there is more to the game than just lowering the voting age to 18, as I assume everyone here knows. The cultural leitmotif of the parties evolved, the issues changed, private sector unions, and the attendant strikes, largely died, and on and on. Meanwhile, a higher percentage of college graduates who want jobs doing what they want to do, and even more so with those with higher degrees, look to government jobs, or the spinoff of the fruits of government mandates and programs, as the way to fulfill their dreams and aspirations.

Indeed. While I expect Kennedy and Johnson would have done well with 18-21-year-olds, it would be pretty surprising to me if college students would have voted for Adlai Stevenson or Harry Truman. Or, for that matter, for FDR, as pre-WWII college was very much territory of the privileged classes alone.

And, given the abysmal turnout in dorm precincts prior to 2008, it's also the case that most voters in liberal college towns in 1972 or thereafter were not college students themselves but rather graduate students, professors, and other people affiliated with the university in some way. So college students not voting could hardly explain the dramatic shift.

[Benj]

I remember reading once that FDR in 1936 was the first Democrat to carry the student vote in a presidential election (and even then it was much lower than the national average)... Of course being a student in 1936 was quite different to being a student now.

Also, I have to agree with what Torie said.

Interesting. Of course, if FDR narrowly won college students in 1936, he probably lost them in 1940 and 1944, and they probably voted for Dewey in 1948. None of which is much of a surprise, really.

Sure, sure, sure. It's very easy to exaggerate the impact of franchise changes, particularly when they might provide almost 'too easy' an explanation. But it's better not to overreact and to act as though it's a minor issue.

Yes, of course. It's also true that, while there was enormous turnout among newly enfranchised voters in 1972, according to the exit polls (and I believe McGovern actually won them, or at least came close), turnout dropped off dramatically in 1976 and never came close to 1972 levels again until 2008. So the initial impact might have been quite significant while being less relevant later on.

[Benj]

A lot of this is focusing on New England/Northeast college towns. I'm curious how non-Northern state colleges voted. I would imagine it depends a lot on the state.

It's equally true in the Midwest. Look at results in Washtenaw County, MI or Athens County, OH or Monroe County, IN or Champaign County, IL or Johnson County, IA. That only accounts for public colleges, of course. There are no counties in the Midwest dominated by private colleges, and there aren't that many outside of the Northeast anyway. If you could find precinct results for colleges like Oberlin or Kenyon or Carleton, or even more urban campuses like Northwestern, Case Western or the University of Chicago, they'd probably be uber-Republican in the 1950s and earlier.

You're right that southern college counties were not Republican strongholds, but that should hardly be surprising since the Democratic Party was as dominant among the Southern elite as it was among the general white population until the Civil Rights era anyway (when the elite switched to the Republican Party faster than the general white population). You can see that Athens County, GA was one of Carter's weaker counties in the state in both 1976 and 1980 and was one of Nixon's few counties in Georgia in 1968, a sign of that distinction.

[Benj]

It's astonishing to see that 41 percent of voters in Berkeley were Republican as late as 1962.

I'm pretty sure Stanford was a Republican college then, as Palo Alto was a strongly Republican town. And Corvallis (Oregon State) definitely was, as Benton County was the most Republican county in the Pacific Northwest in that period, too.

Oregon State was a pretty small school for a long time. I think it was just an agricultural college, but not sure if that had changed by the 1960s. Lane County (University of Oregon) was also for Nixon in 1960, but narrowly--then again, it has the complicating factor of the state capital, which even in that era usually meant more unions and more Democrats. Also, there was a lot of logging there, and logging meant Democrats back then.

Of course, Oregon's politics were very different in the 1960s. Multnomah County voted for Nixon!

[Benj]

A tale of two college towns and two counties:

Amherst, MA:
1936 - 66% Landon
1948 - 69% Dewey
1960 - 60% Nixon
1972 - 67% McGovern
1984 - 74% Mondale
2004 - 85% Kerry

Hanover, NH:
1936 - 58% Landon
1948 - 75% Dewey
1960 - 62% Nixon
1972 - 57% McGovern
1984 - 54% Mondale
2004 - 76% Kerry

Tompkins County, NY (Ithaca):
1936 - 64% Landon
1948 - 68% Dewey
1960 - 66% Nixon
1972 - 59% Nixon
1984 - 51% Mondale
2004 - 64% Kerry

Washtenaw County, MI (Ann Arbor):
1936 - 51% Landon
1948 - 64% Dewey
1960 - 61% Nixon
1972 - 52% McGovern
1984 - 51% Nixon
2004 - 64% Kerry

Fascinating.  My guess is a mix of the following:

1.) Professors were always a Democratic group overall, but it was more mixed.  Moderate Republicans were a significant force and the GOP was less openly anti-intellectual and explicitly Christian then.  Humanities and social science professors always leaned Democrat, as did natural scientists but there was a stronger Republican minority in the past.  Even engineering and business professors probably vote Democrat now but they were Republican in the 1960s.

If we're talking pre-1960s (for many of those results), professors would have been overwhelmingly Republican, as any demographic consisting exclusively of people who graduated from college was.