More Educated = More Liberal?

[ElectionsGuy]

Over time, people have been stating that more educated are more liberal, but I've questioned that statement. According to the national exit poll....


No High School Diploma (3%): 64% Obama, 35% Romney
High School Graduate (21%): 51% Obama, 48% Romney
Some college (29%): 49% Obama, 48% Romney
College Graduate (29%): 51% Romney, 47% Obama
Postgraduate Study (18%): 55% Obama, 42% Romney

College Graduate (47%): 50% Obama, 48% Romney
Non-College Graduate (53%): 51% Obama, 47% Romney

Unless by Postgraduate Study that you mean "Educated" I really don't see how this is the case. I've been quite confused on this topic so I though I would ask about it. Overall the more educated someone is the more likely to vote republican. Waukesha County, a very well educated County is much more conservative than Milwaukee County, a less if not poorly educated county (overall). However that's just an example and not always the case.

There is a liberal "State" point where less educated states vote more republican, but I found that black communities in particular are less educated than white communities. Southern Whites aren't well educated either, but it's making a point. There are plenty of educated liberal places too like Massachusetts and Montgomery County, MD, but I really think people abuse the Post-Graduate Study info to say that liberals are more educated and smarter overall, but I find that not to be the case and as the exit poll showed, all together people with no college degrees are more democratic than people with college degrees, and every higher rank of education gets more conservative with the top Post-Graduate being the exception.

What's your opinion on this? and How will this trend into the future? Feel free to disagree or argue against me.

[MaxQue]

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...

[HansOslo]

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...

I think that depends on the education in question. People with higher education in fields like political science and sociology might be more likely to be liberal. But that isn’t necessarily the case if the education is in engineering, medicine, economics and the law. That is at least my impression from Northern Europe.

[memphis]

Once you correct for race/ethnicity, education and income, don't matter all that much. Both extremes of education have a lot of minorities.

[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.

[Franknburger]

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...

I think that depends on the education in question. People with higher education in fields like political science and sociology might be more likely to be liberal. But that isn’t necessarily the case if the education is in engineering, medicine, economics and the law. That is at least my impression from Northern Europe.

I think we already have established in the "Liberal Cities" thread that Northern Europe is somehow problematic as a benchmark here, as the whole party spectrum tends to be more liberal than in the US or the rest of Europe. In other words: The typical higher-educated "socially liberal, economically moderate" voter may in Northern Europe find adequate centrist options, that do not exist in many other European countries, and definitely not in the US.

Having said that, I feel the subject background does indeed matter, but I think the breakdown needs to go deeper. Within engineering, you should find left-leaning specialisations (IT, environmental technologies) as well more 'conservative' ones (civil engineering, vehicle building). Lawyers are, at least in Germany, pretty "green", but here again, specialisation may matter (e.g. family law vs. corporate law).
Economists - already back in the 1980s, when working at Shell Germany during semester holidays, I found quite a number of Greenpeace members among younger economists there. Polls among German top managers typically find the CDU at slightly below 50%, and some 12% support for the Greens. If you correct that for age (essentially, you hardly find Green voters that are older than 50, but a lot of older top managers), I tend to say that in Germany, economists overall are probably slightly leaning to the right, but only barely so. Sector splits should be quite pronounced here, with industry leaning rightwards, while services, including banking, are more liberal.
As for medicine - quite a number of doctors here are in 'alternative medicine', however, doctors (as many other free-lancers) are also traditional FDP clientele. No idea how that works out overall. I am, however, pretty sure that dentists are leaning to the right, as are pharmacists.

Another important feature is gender. Higher-educated females (one of the fastest-growing sub-demographics)  have a strong Dem preference in the USA, and are a core support group of the German Greens.

[ElectionsGuy]

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.

Most basically Post-Grad jobs favor democrats because of policies. Thanks for your opinion.

In short here's what I think this would be like in an election:

Poorly Educated: Solidly Democrat
Average Educated: Lean R
Very Well Educated: Toss-Up (Which is statistically including Post-Grad)

[bedstuy]

I don't think the education numbers from exit polls, by themselves, really show anything about the dynamic relationship between voting and education.  Here's why:

A higher percentage of white people have attained a college degree.  A white person is about twice as likely to have attained a bachelor's degree compared to a black or Hispanic person.  So, education is correlated with whiteness.  Whiteness is correlated with voting for the GOP.

A person with a college degree or higher earns higher wages than an a high school graduate.  So, education is correlated with income.  Higher income people tend to vote for the GOP.
 
So statistically, you would have to have some control for those type of variables.

[Linus Van Pelt]

The following is from Andrew Gelman. The whole chart is for whites only, and each graph represents a single education level, with Republican vote share on the y axis and income on the x axis.

[opebo]

Unless by Postgraduate Study that you mean "Educated" I really don't see how this is the case.

WC, people 'with a college degree' are not very educated in America, as far as I have noticed.  So, yeah, I'd say 'educated' means post graduate - at least a master's degree.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Once you correct for race/ethnicity, education and income, don't matter all that much. Both extremes of education have a lot of minorities.

It's different minorities of course. The lower end includes a lot of Blacks and Latinos, while the higher end is disproportionately Asian (and Arab, though the Census counts them as white IIRC)

[Franknburger]

Trying to find some more detailed breakdowns (I was especially looking  for crosstabs on education vs. age, to eliminate current college students from the "some college" group), I came across some inconsistencies that make me think the whole exit  poll data is seriously flawed when it comes to education.

Below, I compare official US census educational attainment rates for the US population above 18 years, and the group's shares in the exit polls:

                       Census     Exit Poll
No HS                 13.2          4
HS                      30.0         21
No college           43.2         25
some college        28.6        29  [included associate degrees (9.2%) for census data here]
College grad.       18.4         29
Postgrad               9.8         18
College & higher   28.2        47

Now, it is plausible that people with low education are under-represented among voters, and high-educated are over-represented, but by such margins?  It rather seems to me that you may get more honest answers when asking Americans about their smoking and drinking habits, then when asking about their education.

As interesting this discussion would be, I feel we don't have reliable data to base any conclusions upon.

[Franknburger]

Some state-level checks, to see whether differences between exit  polls and educational attainment statistics may be explainable by turnout. The best state-level source I could find is the 2011 American Community Survey (total population over 18), accessed via American FactFinder. For convenience reasons, I just report / compare data for "no college" (no HS / HS grad) and "college grad." (Bachelor & higher). First figure is ACS share, second one exit poll share.

MN (76.1% turnout)
No college        35.4       22
College grad.    29.7       47

Even at 100% college graduate turnout, which would imply 66% turnout among non-college graduates, their share in all voters does only go up to 39%. This means that at least 8% of all exit poll respondents, or over 20% of those reporting themselves as "college graduates", must have 'misunderstood' the education question.

WI (73.1% turnout)
No college        43.0       26
College grad.    24.3       42

100% college graduate turnout would make them 34% of all voters. Again, at least 8% of all exit poll respondents, and nearly a quarter of those reporting themselves as "college graduates", must have had comprehension problems on the education question.

CO (71.1 % turnout)
No college        33.8       21
College grad.    33.3       49

At 100% turnout, college graduates become 47% of all voters. Exit polls probably still overstate educational achievement a bit, but the figures are not completely implausible here. It is also worth noting that the ACS post-graduate share (12%) is consistent with exit poll data (14%) when assuming above-average turnout of post-graduates.  Exit polls have Colorado post-graduates going 60-40 Obama.

NH (70.9 % turnout)
No college        38.4       22
College grad.    30.7       52

100% college graduate turnout would make them 43% of all voters. To at least 9% of all exit poll respondents, or almost one out of five reporting themselves as college graduates, either British understatement must be a foreign concept, or they have a quite independent interpretation of the term "post-graduate" (ACS 11%, exit polls 23%).

IA (70.2 % turnout)
No college        41.8       28
College grad.    25,8       42

100% college graduate turnout would make them 34% of all voters, not 42% as per exit poll.

Bottom-line so far for the Top 5 turnout states: Pretty consistent pattern of at least 8% (probably more like 11-12%) overstatement of college graduation in exit polls, and one state (Colorado) in which exit poll data is half-way plausible, though some overstatement on educational attainment is still likely. 

[barfbag]

Before this topic gets out of hand with liberal partisans, let me say it depends on what you mean by educated. Too often is a solid education mistaken for academics at a state school. There are many ways to become educated such as wisdom, common sense, and life experience. My college education helped me to become a little more moderate, but I'm still pretty much the same type of political person I've always been. There are though many students who are brainwashed by their leftist professor's liberal agenda designed to influence the electorate and decimate those with traditional values. All in all, it depends on what type of education we're talking about. It is rather insulting to think of education in the narrow dogmatic way of liberal academia.

[illegaloperation]

Before this topic gets out of hand with liberal partisans, let me say it depends on what you mean by educated. Too often is a solid education mistaken for academics at a state school. There are many ways to become educated such as wisdom, common sense, and life experience. My college education helped me to become a little more moderate, but I'm still pretty much the same type of political person I've always been. There are though many students who are brainwashed by their leftist professor's liberal agenda designed to influence the electorate and decimate those with traditional values. All in all, it depends on what type of education we're talking about. It is rather insulting to think of education in the narrow dogmatic way of liberal academia.

How dare those professors teach about non-sense like global warming and evolution!

[eric82oslo]

Another reason which can explain the differences, would be that college graduates are possibly twice as likely (or more) to actually stop and take their time for an Exit Poll interview. The reasons and incentives for this might be various. High school drop outs might be hostile to surveys in general and kind of feel it like a privacy intrusion. They might also be reluctant to doing things for free that don't involve a money reward. Higher educated citizens are also a lot more likely to be engaged in voluntary political work in my opinion. There might be a lot of other reasons for this discrepancy as well.

[Hatman 🍁]

Like Max said, it's more of a smile shape. That's the way it is in Canada.

For the uneducated, they know it's in their best interest to vote left.

For the very educated they know it's in everybody's best interest to vote left.

For the  middle people, they resent the well-educated elites (jealousy) and the less educated for taking their tax dollars. Thus they vote for right wing parties.

[eric82oslo]

Before this topic gets out of hand with liberal partisans, let me say it depends on what you mean by educated. Too often is a solid education mistaken for academics at a state school. There are many ways to become educated such as wisdom, common sense, and life experience. My college education helped me to become a little more moderate, but I'm still pretty much the same type of political person I've always been.

Why do you think your education made you a little more moderate?

[barfbag]

Before this topic gets out of hand with liberal partisans, let me say it depends on what you mean by educated. Too often is a solid education mistaken for academics at a state school. There are many ways to become educated such as wisdom, common sense, and life experience. My college education helped me to become a little more moderate, but I'm still pretty much the same type of political person I've always been. There are though many students who are brainwashed by their leftist professor's liberal agenda designed to influence the electorate and decimate those with traditional values. All in all, it depends on what type of education we're talking about. It is rather insulting to think of education in the narrow dogmatic way of liberal academia.

How dare those professors teach about non-sense like global warming and evolution!

What are you saying or getting at? I don't believe I brought those up. There's nothing wrong with teaching them as long as they don't stand there and quote Democratic talking points like any professor I've heard of or had for class has done. Basically, anytime either topic is brought up, it turns into Bush being responsible for global warming and people like Bush who are in the way of science. Then they get off topic and start talking about tax cuts for the rich and Florida 2000. This is where the line should be drawn. They should stay on topic and so should you.

[barfbag]

Another reason which can explain the differences, would be that college graduates are possibly twice as likely (or more) to actually stop and take their time for an Exit Poll interview. The reasons and incentives for this might be various. High school drop outs might be hostile to surveys in general and kind of feel it like a privacy intrusion. They might also be reluctant to doing things for free that don't involve a money reward. Higher educated citizens are also a lot more likely to be engaged in voluntary political work in my opinion. There might be a lot of other reasons for this discrepancy as well.

There's something to be said for this. I've never met a fellow Republican who has talked to an exit poll person and neither have I. Exit polls always tend to favor Democrats with the exception of Rasmussen in the past two election cycles. In 2004 John Kerry was shown as being up by 20 in PA, 15 in FL, and almost double digits nationally and once the voting precincts had started to close we were looking at a possible Bush landslide. The results were somewhere in the middle.

[barfbag]

Before this topic gets out of hand with liberal partisans, let me say it depends on what you mean by educated. Too often is a solid education mistaken for academics at a state school. There are many ways to become educated such as wisdom, common sense, and life experience. My college education helped me to become a little more moderate, but I'm still pretty much the same type of political person I've always been.

Why do you think your education made you a little more moderate?

I'm sorry I might have overreacted a couple posts above. Originally, I was a political science major and my professor disguised himself, but as a young politician I could see he was a hardcore liberal. In the 100 level courses such as American Government, he was very one sided in terms of teaching which media sources to follow and which actions were corrupt. I tuned him out and did the assignments because they were very interesting. The next year, before becoming a religion and philosophy major, I took Elections and Campaigns which is a higher level course mostly taken by political science majors. In this level of academics he was very fair. A big reason for this is likely the fact that we're talking about students who are very well informed about politics. As he moderated he would also speak of the issues from a liberal point of view that actually made sense. Not to say I agreed with him very much, but I learned that Democrats outside of Democratic politicians weren't just pawns of their party. I already knew this about Republicans because I grew up in arguably the most conservative extended family to ever exist. As my education continued, I learned Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Unmovable Mover, and most importantly, scriptures which can be basically described as J, E, P, and D for Genesis- 2 Kings. This allowed me to see the Bible from a point of view where humans wrote a document with human error rather than "do this or else." From here on I became socially moderate in my politics and have still remained a social conservative in my personal life. As an adult, I've associated with people from all different economic and racial backgrounds whether through friends, work, customers, or neighbors. Working at a grocery store during and after college helped me to see that food stamps aren't simply a welfare handout, but can serve as an economic stimulant as long as we don't waste them or let them go to waste individually. I've seen people not be able to attend college because their parents didn't qualify for a loan and they only had a 3.0 GPA. Regardless of the arguments and ideas I could make to solve these problems from a conservative point of view, there is an importance to having a financially stable economy and educated individuals. I still vote my party because I see them as the lesser of two evils, but I've also laid out a lot of independent and center-right ideas in the political debate threads. As for this topic, certain education can make one more liberal and it can also make one more conservative depending on how one is raised and what they're being educated on.

[cheesepizza]

Before this topic gets out of hand with liberal partisans, let me say it depends on what you mean by educated. Too often is a solid education mistaken for academics at a state school. There are many ways to become educated such as wisdom, common sense, and life experience. My college education helped me to become a little more moderate, but I'm still pretty much the same type of political person I've always been. There are though many students who are brainwashed by their leftist professor's liberal agenda designed to influence the electorate and decimate those with traditional values. All in all, it depends on what type of education we're talking about. It is rather insulting to think of education in the narrow dogmatic way of liberal academia.

How dare those professors teach about non-sense like global warming and evolution!

Classic liberal strawman.  What us conservatives object to is the victimization of various groups and the oppressed/oppressor type history shoved down our throats.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Having said that, I feel the subject background does indeed matter, but I think the breakdown needs to go deeper. Within engineering, you should find left-leaning specialisations (IT, environmental technologies) as well more 'conservative' ones (civil engineering, vehicle building). Lawyers are, at least in Germany, pretty "green", but here again, specialisation may matter (e.g. family law vs. corporate law).
Economists - already back in the 1980s, when working at Shell Germany during semester holidays, I found quite a number of Greenpeace members among younger economists there. Polls among German top managers typically find the CDU at slightly below 50%, and some 12% support for the Greens. If you correct that for age (essentially, you hardly find Green voters that are older than 50, but a lot of older top managers), I tend to say that in Germany, economists overall are probably slightly leaning to the right, but only barely so. Sector splits should be quite pronounced here, with industry leaning rightwards, while services, including banking, are more liberal.
As for medicine - quite a number of doctors here are in 'alternative medicine', however, doctors (as many other free-lancers) are also traditional FDP clientele. No idea how that works out overall. I am, however, pretty sure that dentists are leaning to the right, as are pharmacists.

Re: medicine.....from what I can tell, in the U.S., primary care physicians and nurses are considerably more likely to be Democrats than specialists are  (though that probably depends on the specialty in question, too. )  

[barfbag]

Having said that, I feel the subject background does indeed matter, but I think the breakdown needs to go deeper. Within engineering, you should find left-leaning specialisations (IT, environmental technologies) as well more 'conservative' ones (civil engineering, vehicle building). Lawyers are, at least in Germany, pretty "green", but here again, specialisation may matter (e.g. family law vs. corporate law).
Economists - already back in the 1980s, when working at Shell Germany during semester holidays, I found quite a number of Greenpeace members among younger economists there. Polls among German top managers typically find the CDU at slightly below 50%, and some 12% support for the Greens. If you correct that for age (essentially, you hardly find Green voters that are older than 50, but a lot of older top managers), I tend to say that in Germany, economists overall are probably slightly leaning to the right, but only barely so. Sector splits should be quite pronounced here, with industry leaning rightwards, while services, including banking, are more liberal.
As for medicine - quite a number of doctors here are in 'alternative medicine', however, doctors (as many other free-lancers) are also traditional FDP clientele. No idea how that works out overall. I am, however, pretty sure that dentists are leaning to the right, as are pharmacists.

Re: medicine.....from what I can tell, in the U.S., primary care physicians and nurses are considerably more likely to be Democrats than specialists are  (though that probably depends on the specialty in question, too. )  

Yes the medical field is more divided than people think. It may change in another year.

[barfbag]

Before this topic gets out of hand with liberal partisans, let me say it depends on what you mean by educated. Too often is a solid education mistaken for academics at a state school. There are many ways to become educated such as wisdom, common sense, and life experience. My college education helped me to become a little more moderate, but I'm still pretty much the same type of political person I've always been.

Why do you think your education made you a little more moderate?

I'm sorry I might have overreacted a couple posts above. Originally, I was a political science major and my professor disguised himself, but as a young politician I could see he was a hardcore liberal. In the 100 level courses such as American Government, he was very one sided in terms of teaching which media sources to follow and which actions were corrupt. I tuned him out and did the assignments because they were very interesting. The next year, before becoming a religion and philosophy major, I took Elections and Campaigns which is a higher level course mostly taken by political science majors. In this level of academics he was very fair. A big reason for this is likely the fact that we're talking about students who are very well informed about politics. As he moderated he would also speak of the issues from a liberal point of view that actually made sense. Not to say I agreed with him very much, but I learned that Democrats outside of Democratic politicians weren't just pawns of their party. I already knew this about Republicans because I grew up in arguably the most conservative extended family to ever exist. As my education continued, I learned Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Unmovable Mover, and most importantly, scriptures which can be basically described as J, E, P, and D for Genesis- 2 Kings. This allowed me to see the Bible from a point of view where humans wrote a document with human error rather than "do this or else." From here on I became socially moderate in my politics and have still remained a social conservative in my personal life. As an adult, I've associated with people from all different economic and racial backgrounds whether through friends, work, customers, or neighbors. Working at a grocery store during and after college helped me to see that food stamps aren't simply a welfare handout, but can serve as an economic stimulant as long as we don't waste them or let them go to waste individually. I've seen people not be able to attend college because their parents didn't qualify for a loan and they only had a 3.0 GPA. Regardless of the arguments and ideas I could make to solve these problems from a conservative point of view, there is an importance to having a financially stable economy and educated individuals. I still vote my party because I see them as the lesser of two evils, but I've also laid out a lot of independent and center-right ideas in the political debate threads. As for this topic, certain education can make one more liberal and it can also make one more conservative depending on how one is raised and what they're being educated on.

You're a college graduate yet you've never learned about paragraphs?

That's all you got?