Question: if you are a Republican, would you rather have a 68-20 lead among under-educated white people or among educated white people? Even if it is a smaller demographic, I'd rather have the educated whites. Educated white people can convince under-educated white people and can assuage concerns of minorities. Under-educated white people can convince only each other. They don't get much respect from ethnic or racial minorities. If anything, educated white voters might be able to make cogent reasons for not voting for Donald Trump -- and convince erstwhile Trump supporters that he will disappoint them.* Donald Trump, by doing so badly among educated white people by the standard of any Republican since Goldwater, practically ensures that such support as he now gets is all that he gets.
Well, in Florida, this cycle looks to be the first time the state's white electorate was majority college educated, which represents a rapid decline in non-college white voters nationwide. Given that, I'd rather have college-educated whites.
I'm very interested in how much this coalition realignment sticks past this election. Republicans have already essentially forfeited the fastest growing demographics
(non-whites), and now they seem to have traded the fastest growing portion of the white electorate
(college educated) for the fastest shrinking part
(not college educated). Strategically, this is terrible if it even partially sticks. It's like abandoning the RMS
Carpathia for the RMS
Titanic. The only benefit I see is that it
may allow them to hold the House longer due to college-educated whites being more geographically compacted.
