Did the 2008 recession delay education polarization?

[darklordoftech]

During the 2008 primaries, nominating Obama was seen as ceding whites without a college education to McCain. Then in September 2008, the stock market collapsed, the banks went bankrupt, and Obama shot ahead in the polls. Obama went on to win in the entire Rust Belt and did so again in 2012, while the recession was still going on. In 2016, when the recession had ended, whites without a college education swung right and Hillary lost the entire rust belt.

[Bootes Void]

If anything it seems to have supercharged it as alot of white collar voters may have changed their minds on the republicans being the best party for their own interests

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

I don't think so, I think that a high enough number of white non-college voters were always willing to vote for a black candidate, more then most people thought. Education polarization was not an inevitability, at least not to the degree that it's taken place.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Polarization was generally less extreme, so the Fishtown Effect was more pronounced.

[Skill and Chance]

I think yes, honestly.  It kept people voting on economic issues for 1-2 more cycles than they otherwise would have.  Knowing what we know now, there's just no way Obama wins Florida without the housing crisis.

[Indy Texas]

The GOP flubbed in 2008 by nominating a guy who was basically a one-trick foreign policy pony only to have the country plunge into economic crisis a few weeks after the convention.

Then in 2012 they nominated a guy who was a uniquely bad messenger for a party trying to make more inroads with blue collar whites - a French-speaking, Harvard-educated private equity executive who openly bragged about how he "likes firing people" and whose career had left a track record of economic carnage in its path (which his GOP primary opponents drew considerable attention to and helped to define him as a candidate early on).

[buritobr]

According to the data presented in Piketty's "Capital and Ideology", the answer to this question is YES.

In 2008, the difference between the % of Democratic vote of the very educated voters and the % of Democratic vote of the not very educated voters was lower than it was in 2004.

We can see the chart here https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/175203

[Sir Mohamed]

Actually a very good point I never really thought of. I'd say, yes. Obama's election and presidency, however, as bizarre as it sounds, may have fueled the education polarization post-2014 though. Mainly driven by cultural issues and the lack of economic recovery among these Rust Belt communities.

[Vosem]

Oddly enough, I think 9/11 did. There were huge jumps in educational polarization between the 1988 and 1992 cycles, and another between 1996 and 2000, but after that there seems to have been a brief period when the polarization machine went into reverse. 2002 was a remarkably unpolarized election even by the standards of midterms of that era (much less polarized than 1994 or 1998; more like a 1980s midterm), 2004 was merely a rerun of 2000, and then 2006/2008 saw incredibly broad-based Democratic landslide. After the recession, so starting with 2010, some of the 1990s patterns returned with a vengeance.

I still sort of wonder whether a world in which Gore beats Bush, and the War on Terror comes to be seen as a Democratic priority, isn't a world in which the Trump alignment comes around sooner, perhaps by 2008 itself.

(Conversely, I still wonder what would've happened in the world where the Democrats nominated a true non-leftist -- either an actual fiscon like Tsongas or a right-populist like Perot -- in 1992. I wonder if 1994 is avoided, or in a Democratic-President-Perot world isn't a much more upper-class and suburban backlash, where you see guys like Michael Huffington and Harris Wofford winning.)

[darklordoftech]

Oddly enough, I think 9/11 did. There were huge jumps in educational polarization between the 1988 and 1992 cycles, and another between 1996 and 2000, but after that there seems to have been a brief period when the polarization machine went into reverse. 2002 was a remarkably unpolarized election even by the standards of midterms of that era (much less polarized than 1994 or 1998; more like a 1980s midterm), 2004 was merely a rerun of 2000, and then 2006/2008 saw incredibly broad-based Democratic landslide. After the recession, so starting with 2010, some of the 1990s patterns returned with a vengeance.

I still sort of wonder whether a world in which Gore beats Bush, and the War on Terror comes to be seen as a Democratic priority, isn't a world in which the Trump alignment comes around sooner, perhaps by 2008 itself.

(Conversely, I still wonder what would've happened in the world where the Democrats nominated a true non-leftist -- either an actual fiscon like Tsongas or a right-populist like Perot -- in 1992. I wonder if 1994 is avoided, or in a Democratic-President-Perot world isn't a much more upper-class and suburban backlash, where you see guys like Michael Huffington and Harris Wofford winning.)

Interesting. I figured that Guantanamo Bay and the Iraq War would appeal more to voters without a college education than to voters with a college education.