Correlation between education and party affiliation

Great Debates
1

Recently an acquaintance of mine made a blanket claim that Democrats are more educated than Republicans. When asked for proof, he said “I don’t have proof… it’s just what I think.”

Although I plan to vote for Kerry tomorrow, I’m not so blindly partisan as to just accept that sort of claim on faith. So I did some sleuthing, expecting to find evidence with which to contradict said acquaintance. On the web I found a site that has data from the 2000 census regarding percentages of state populations with college degrees and high school diplomas. And I used electoral-vote.com to gauge what states are leaning toward what candidates according to recent polls. Here’s a list of the top 20 states listed by % of the population with at least a bachelor’s degree, along with which candidate that state is leaning toward at the moment. It includes Washington D.C as a state:

  1. D.C. 39.1% Strong Kerry
  2. MA 33.2% Strong Kerry
  3. CO 32.7% Barely Bush
  4. MD 31.4% Strong Kerry
  5. CT 31.4% Strong Kerry
  6. NJ 29.8% Weak Kerry
  7. VA 29.5% Barely Bush
  8. VT 29.4% Strong Kerry
  9. NH 28.7% Tied
  10. WA	27.7%	Weak Kerry

  11. MN	27.4%	Weak Kerry
  12. NY 27.4% Strong Kerry
  13. CA	26.6%	Weak Kerry
  14. HA 26.2% Barely Bush
  15. UT 26.1% Strong Bush
  16. IL 26.1% Strong Kerry
  17. KS	25.8	Strong Bush
  18. RI 25.6% Strong Kerry
  19. OR	25.1%	Weak Kerry

  20. DE	25.0%	Weak Kerry

According to the electoral-vote.com site, there are 20 states that are “Strong Bush,” and only 2 of them are in the top 20 by this metric. 8 states are “Strong Kerry,” and all of them are in the top 20, with 5 of those 8 in the top 10.

If you look at the bottom of the list, the bottom 11 states are all pro-Bush. Only 4 of the bottom 20 are pro-Kerry, and two of those are Florida and Ohio, in the “Barely Kerry” category. (There are only 3 states in the “Barely Bush” category, and none of them are in the bottom 20.)

What does this mean, if anything? My gut says that there’s correlation here but no causation. For other reasons, states with more colleges also lean Democratic. Then people graduate from college and tend to stay in the same state, thus skewing the results. But that’s just a guess, and I’d like to hear other people’s opinions on why there seems to be such a clear correlation here. I know already I’ll be accused of bias or well poisoning or some such here, but I truly did this “mini-study” in an attempt to disprove someone else’s theory. In order to further deflect that sort of criticism, here’s another list:

The website with the census data also lists states by “smallest % of population without at least a high school diploma,” and here Republican states do much better. The most-educated 20 in terms of having at least a high school diploma are:

  1. AK 11.7% Strong Bush
  2. MN 12.1% Weak Kerry
  3. WY 12.1% Strong Bush
  4. UT 12.3% Strong Bush
  5. NH 12.6% Tied
  6. MT 12.8% Strong Bush
  7. WA 12.9% Weak Kerry
  8. CO 13.1% Weak Bush
  9. NE 13.4% Strong Bush
  10. VT 13.6% Strong Kerry
  11. IA 13.9% Weak Kerry
  12. KS 14.0% Strong Bush
  13. ME 14.6% Weak Kerry
  14. OR 14.9% Weak Kerry
  15. WI 14.9% Weak Kerry
  16. MA 15.2% Strong Kerry
  17. ID 15.3% Strong Bush
  18. SD 15.4% Strong Bush
  19. HA 15.4% Barely Bush
  20. CT 16.0% Strong Kerry

Pretty much an even split between parties (10-9-1), with Strong Bush states clustered nearer to the top. The eight Strong Kerry states are ranked #10, #16, #20, #22, #30, #36, #40, #41 – pretty much exactly average.

-P

2

Oh, come on, we can all see what this data tells us:

People who know what it’s like to not have opportunities know that Bush will give the next generation what they deserve!
This advertisment was approved by Halliburton

3

Well, according to this site, a Zogby survey in 2003 shows that “blue” states (the ones that tend to vote Democrat) have a higher percentage of the population with college degrees than do “red” states.

There’s also this quote allegedly from Karl Rove, though I’ll leave it as an exercise for someone else to verify its authenticity: “As people do better, they start voting like Republicans… unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.”

4

This is an incredibly weak correlation to be drawing such sweeping conclusions from. First of all, the difference between a ‘red’ state and a ‘blue’ state may be no more than five or ten percent of the population moving to the other side of the fence. So to take an entire state’s educational average and attribute the gain to that small group is ridiculous.

Plus, it may just be correlation anyway. It may be that the real factor is urban vs rural/suburban voters, simply because their needs are different. But it would also be true that Urban environments tend to be of higher IQ simply because that’s where the professionals and students tend to be.

In fact, Americans with less than a high-school education are overwhelmingly Democrats, 41 percent to 20 percent, while people who have just a high-school diploma are Democrats, 34 percent to 28 percent. People with some college training tend to be Republicans, 32 percent to 31 percent while those with at least bachelor’s degrees are Republican, 33 percent to 32 percent.

It is true that at the PhD level you will find more Democrats than Republicans, but at all other levels the correlation is that the tendency to be Republican goes up with the number of years of education someone has.

A huge chunk of the Democratic constituency is low-education blue collar workers and the poor.

Those are the facts.

Source.

5

A totally unscientific home made poll

Number of PHD’s I know:
8 in hard science (Math, Physics)
4 in other (Music, Education, English)

number of Pubbies:
7 PHD’s
2 other (1 with a masters in music , 1 with a masters in education)

number of Dems:
1 PHD (Physics. Though I have to say this particular lady is rather strange…she is only a dem because there is no party that fits better)
2 in other (1 masters in english, 1 masters in music)

Slee

6

I don’t have evidence for this right now…this is just something I learned about 10 years ago from an entry level American Politics class, but the higher somebody’s level of education, the more likely he is to vote Republican, until he has an undergraduate degree. After that, the higher someone’s level of education past the bachelor’s degree, the more likely he is to vote Democratic, all other things being equal.

7

I once saw a study (and this was several years ago in a sociology class so I have no idea how to search for it) that said that the more educated people are the more liberal they tend to be until they start making a lot of money, then they start getting fiscally conservative.

IMO, the stupider people are, the more conservative they tend to be on social issues. If they get the ignorance educated out of them they become socially more liberal but if they get money they vote their bank accounts.

8

Was is Buckminster Fuller who said that not all conservatives are stupid but all stupid people are conservative? That about sums it up I think.

9

Thus proving the wisdom of Alexander Pope’s observation: “A little learning is a dangerous thing.”

10

Some relevant data came out of the Pledge of Allegiance case, from a poll done by AP:

So, we have two statements:
(1) College graduates were more likely than those who did not have a
college degree to say the phrase “under God” should be removed.

(2) Democrats and independents were more likely than Republicans
to think the phrase should be taken out

Based on the above, my first intuitive feeling was that the above two points
lead to the conclusion
© The percentage of Democrats who are college graduates is
higher than the percentage of Republicans who are college graduates.

Then I thought that there may be some counter-example that disproves
the above conclusion.

However, after a couple of minutes of writing down the math
(the relevant equations and inequalities), I find that points (1) and (2)
do indeed lead to ©.

So, if you are a Democrat, it is more likely that you are a college graduate
than if you are a Republican.

As a corollary, since the number of Democrats and Republicans is roughly
equal (given the 2000 presidential election results), we also see that:
(C2)* If you are a college graduate, it is more likely that you are a Democrat
than a Republican.*

11

Don’t forget that University of Pennsylvania study which showed that folks who relied primarily on Rush Limbaugh for news were the most incorrect about current affairs. And that study from last month which showed Bush voters tended to be most incorrect in the facts regarding 9/11 and Iraq.

Just because Sam Stone doesn’t want to recognize the trend doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

12

John Stewart Mill, maybe? In his “Considerations on Representative Government”, (criticizing Disraeli for speaking against a reform bill proposed by the Liberals), he said:

13

Indeed, it was John Stuart Mill, but here’s the quote I was thinking of:

Maybe it’s from the same speech?

14

It’s not from that book, but it makes sense for Mill to have said it. (and, btw, it would be "most stupid people are Conservatives. Mill’s talking about the party here, not the ideological tendency.)

15

My own personal poll shows some extremely bright people who are Democrats. However, their numbers are cancelled out by some mind-numbingly ignorant and poorly educated people who are Democrats.

Same on the Republican side. I know some sharp-as-a-tack, well-educated Republicans, but their numbers are cancelled out by the (once again) mind-numbingly ignorant Republicans.

Sorry, I’ve just never seen this sort of thing lean more towards one Party more than the other. It also depends on where you’re from—I’m from the Los Angeles area, which leans more Democrat. I am currently exiled in Hooterville (unnamed Midwestern town), which is in a “Red” state. I know really smart people from both places, (and really, really ignorant ones too).

16

Here’s a Pew poll that strongly suggests that Dems do best at both ends of the education spectrum (post-grad, HS dropout) and Republicans do best in the middle (HS grad, some college, college grad) if we can use Bush/Kerry preferences as stand-in for party ID.

17

Like I said, a little learning is a dangerous thing.

18

The higher the education, the more likely you are to vote.

Don’t know if that helps anything.

19

Here’s how I break it down:

Smart enough to get a PhD: Democrat

Smart enough to get an MBA: Republican

Stupid enough to be delusional about reality: Republican

So stupid you’re poor: Democrat

20

So delusional you’re poor: Republican.