Anyone know anything about education level and political leaning?

[Onlooker]

Does anyone know of a table that shows education and political leaning? I think I've read that the more educated a person is, the more likely they are to be liberal, but I can't find anything on the subject? Anyone have a link?

[NJCher]

1. I recall a table

This table showed that the more educated the person was, the more likely they were to vote for Kerry. It really kicked it at the Master's degree level and above.

But where to locate that table? Wish I could remember.




Cher

on edit: I also recall a table that showed blue states were higher in educational level than red states.

[Igel]

2. With those that didn't finish high school also

being dem.

I think repubs tended to cluster at high-school-graduate level and several years of college. At least I think that's what I remember.

[Salviati]

3. Karl Rove does:

"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."


—Karl Rove, senior advisor and chief political strategist for George W Bush, quoted in The Daily Texan, 19 March 2004



My gut feeling, trying to make sense of some of the polling data I've found is that how liberal you are is related to the ratio of your education to household income, (education)/(household $).

That is to say a highly educated but low income person would likely be very liberal, whereas an uneducated but financially sucessful person would likely be conservative. A highly educated high income person would more likely be liberal than thier uneducated but financially sucessful counterpart.

[JHB]

4. I'll see if I can find a link, but that's actually backwards

I recently saw numbers that pointed out that historicly persons with higher education were statistically more likely to fall for official BS.

[Selatius]

7. From what I remember, that's true. (See my post below) n/t

[JHB]

8. Here it is: It's more a measure of who's "against the war" than "liberal"

...but there is some overlap there, I'm sure you'll agree.

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001037.html
Wha--? This must be some crazy anomaly, right? Everybody knows the far-left, highly-educated elitists hated Vietnam, while the bedrock real Americans hung in there to the end!

Actually, no. Here's James Loewen writing in his book Lies My Teacher Told Me (from which the 1971 Gallup poll is scanned):

These results surprise even some professional social scientists, {but} {s}imilar results were registered again and again, in surveys by Harris, NORC, and others... Throughout our long involvement in Southeast Asia, on issues related to Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, or Laos, the grade school-educated were always the most dovish, the college-educated the most hawkish.

Huh. That makes you wonder what equivalent polls are saying about Iraq today. Here's Gallup about six weeks ago:
-----------------------
Full article at the link.

[warrens]

5. I'd love a breakdown by occupation

Sawdust-stuffing used car salesmen - 98.7 percent GOP

Swindling telemarketers - 96.9 percent GOP

Multi-level marketing scamsters - 100 percent GOP

Child-molesting clergymen - 98.8 percent GOP

And so on.

[Selatius]

6. From what I remember, a person was likely to become more conservative

It is only when they reach post-graduate level that they really start shifting leftward. If you talk to a lot of college students, you find not a small number of them being, for example, against raising the minimum because they say it tends to stoke inflation in the local economy. We are seeing that they are starting to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms found within the economy.

However, post-graduate students tend to adopt big-picture views on economic issues; they have further developed their understanding of the economy. They come to realize social spending and a progressive tax code are the ways to keep people out of poverty. The minimum wage is only one part of a bigger equation, and they generally concentrate on the big things like education, health care, infrastructure, etc. "From each, according to ability, to each, according to need" starts making more sense among post-graduate students as they develop a better understanding of the economy.

Of course, if they are greedy SOBs, then they don't give a damn either way and will not change no matter how much the evidence supporting social spending may be.

[LA lady]

9. Here

VOTE BY EDUCATION BUSH KERRY NADER


No High School (4%) 49% 50% 0%

H.S. Graduate (22%) 52% 47% 0%

Some College (32%) 54% 46% 0%

College Graduate (26%) 52% 46% 1%

Postgrad Study (16%) 44% 55%

High school, some college and grad school went to Bush
no High School and Post grad to Kerry

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html

[Selatius]

13. It seems to back up what I had seen in the past

It is the post-graduate students who heavily swing towards the left though, not the undergraduates.

[Phx_Dem]

10. article

....
In the process, some of the nation's best educated and highest income communities have become Democratic bastions, and some of the nation's poorest white counties -- especially in southern border states -- have turned into GOP strongholds.
....
In 2000, the voters in 17 out of 25 of the nation's most affluent counties -- all with high percentages of people with advanced degrees -- cast majorities for Al Gore, sometimes by more than 70 percent.
....
The changes have not produced a full-scale reversal of the two parties' traditional constituencies. In the bottom half of the income levels, the Democratic Party remains strong among African Americans, Hispanics and white union members, while GOP support has swelled among nonunion whites. In the top half, there has been a realignment of white, well-educated professionals (lawyers, doctors, scientists, academics), now one of the most reliably Democratic constituencies. But Republican loyalties have strengthened among small-business men, managers and corporate executives.
....
For non-college white men, the differences were more dramatic: Their positive view of the Republican Party was 54 percent to 27 percent, and their assessment of the Democratic Party was negative: 38 percent to 41 percent.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56905-2001Mar25?language=printer

[shain from kane]

11. Number of books read in a year? What does that prove? n/t

[Nozebro]

12. Less educated are more influenced by wedge issues. Therefore, they

are more likely to "hold" (go along with) right-wing politics.

[conflictgirl]

14. Let me look at the General Social Survey

It's a pretty neat database used in the social sciences. I love the GSS. I just did something for a course recently in which I found that people are less likely to believe the Bible is the literal word of God with the more education they have. Fun stuff.

Let me check the GSS and I'll post back.

[conflictgirl]

16. According to the GSS, there's a slight correlation

Not a very strong one, but people with advanced degrees are slightly more likely to be Democrat than Republican. People with only a high school education are also slightly more likely to be Dem than Repub. But the weird part is the in-between - people with some college up to a Masters degree (equivalent - the GSS measures years of education rather than by degree completed) - are almost equally Dem and Repub. The GSS takes the opinions of thousands of people every year and compiles it in a database. In itself it doesn't draw any conclusions, but you can put in different factors to see if there's a statistical correlation.

I'm getting carried away with this but I always thought this next thing was interesting. They've done this survey every year since 1972 and always kept tabs on which candidates people voted for in the Presidential elections. Except...the last election in which they reported those results were 1996. Why did they suddenly stop asking this question starting with the 2000 election?

Furthermore, Kay Bailey Hutchison proposed a bill in which the National Science Foundation would no longer cover the social sciences. Guess how the GSS is funded?

[keepCAblue]

15. Blue state vs. Red state data ...

http://tinyurl.com/kfzka

(various sources quoted) Educational differences (as well as IQ, drop out rate, etc.) begin on page 25 of the 33 page report.