Education and Elections

General Questions
#1

I was looking at a map showing poll results for the upcoming US election, and I got to wondering how the educational levels in the various areas broke down. Not saying that areas with better educational levels would tend to go for one party over the other, but thinking more along the lines that areas with better education would tend to go for one particular candidate over another. (In some years that would be a Republican, in other years, that would be a Democrat.) A little googling has turned up listings of the top ranked colleges in the US, but no maps showing areas of the country with better educational systems, and no pverlays of that map, with comparisons to either current polling or past elections.

I realize that its ultimately meaningless (since you can have an election like Reagan vs Mondale, where 49 states went for Reagan) as a predictor of elections, but it would be interesting to see. Has anyone done this?

#2

IQ and the Wealth of Nations lists a state by state breakdown of intelligence as reported by Raven APM, at least according to a 2004 email discussed by the Economist magazine and snopes. com [1]. The email sets that data alongside 2004 electoral returns.
Separately, here’s a pile of education stats:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/education.html

Look at the ones listed “By State”, eg:

Profiency Levels on Selected NAEP Tests for Students in Public Schools, by State: 2005
Educational Attainment by State: 1990 to 2006
Public High School Graduates by State: 1980 to 2005
Public Elementary and Secondary Schools-Number and Average Salary of Classroom Teachers, 1990 to 2005, and by State, 2005
Public Elementary and Secondary Estimated Finances, 1980 to 2005, and by State, 2005

I can only assume that this rich data source can provide a wealth of fascinating and wholly spurious correlations: go to it! :smiley:

(If you were serious about this, btw, you could still use the Reagan data if you worked with vote shares. New York and California may have gone for Reagan, but by smaller margins than Alabama, say. But an even better method might control for the unemployment and the like. I’ve been wanting to write a blog post that commented on the true Presidential blowouts after WWI, once various economic conditions were taken into account. (It would simply comment on the residuals in Ray Fair’s analysis.) Of course first I have to set up a blog site. :dubious: :slight_smile: )

[1] Status: false.