In the spirit of debate (and further data), I post a spirited riposte that I received from Jeremy Bloom of “It is Written” on Jim Lingren’s comments (which I passed along earlier):
But there’s a fallacy here. Do we really care what the average education level is? Of course not – it’s no more relevant than the ‘average’ tax break. Why? Because large numbers at the bottom of the scale can throw off an average – if you have a lot of working class and poor people in the party, the average education is going to be lowered.
What really counts: within the cohort of the most educated, who votes for whom?
According to the CNN/Gallup poll of August 23-25 (sorry, I couldn’t get more recent), the answer to that was straightforward:
Education
Post-graduate
Kerry 54
Bush 41
Other 3
College graduate
Kerry 53
Bush 41
Other 2
Some college
Kerry 42
Bush 50
Other 4
High school or less
Kerry 43
Bush 47
Other 5
Surprised? You shouldn’t be – the Republican party is as much the party of poor, rural southern whites as the Democratics are the party of poor urban blacks. And it appears that for every 4 highly-educated voters who somehow believe that ‘voting their pocketbook’ includes voting for the party that has presided over the most profligate spending and the worst economic performance in the history of the country, there are 5 highly educated people that have looked into the facts and view things differently.
It may be that Jim and Jeremy’s data can be reconciled if Bush-Kerry is anomalous and does not track long-term trends–Jim’s data is on long-term party affiliation and Jeremy’s is on this election. If that is true, that may be an even more interesting question–which is why the traditional pattern doesn’t apply here (perhaps there is something about the national security and war issues that skew the issue?).
I also thought I recalled reading in prior polls that that Republican affiliation generally rises steadily with education level until it reaches post-graduate degrees, at which point it falls off, so that PhD’s and high school graduates were the two most Democratic groups. I confess that I may be wrong and I cannot find where I read that, so if anyone knows (or knows that I am wrong), please let me know where I can find it.
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