Education Attainment Levels and US Political Party Affiliation

There's a lot of data out there - census data, polling center data, voter exit poll data, and academic research. Sometimes two or more sets of data may agree with one another, but no one is there to see it, especially if the implication is provocative or controversial. I wanted to submit what I feel may be two sets of data that may combine to become more than the sum of the parts of the whole. A 2010 Gallup party identification poll and a 2009 Census Bureau abstract on education attainment levels by state, including the District of Columbia.

I'm going to try to avoid arguing causality in any direction in the opening post. I'm giving the states in descending order of Democratic support from the top / increasing order of Republican support from the bottom, along with the states' percentage of individuals age 25 and older who hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and where the state ranks among the 20 states that are above the national average in degree holders (27.58%).

District of Columbia: 75% Democratic-leaning/11% Republican-leaning: 48.5% Bachelor's or better: Rank #1
Vermont: 53/27%: 33.1%: #8
Maryland: 54/32%: 35.7%: #4
Massachusetts: 52/32%: 38.2%: #2
New York: 51/32%: 32.4%: #9
Connecticut: 51/33%: 35.6%: #5
Rhode Island: 48/30%: 30.5%: #14
California: 47/33%: 29.9%: #15
Illinois: 48/35%: 30.6%: #13
Delaware: 49/36%: 28.7%: #19
Hawaii: 46/33%: 29.6%: #16
New Jersey: 47/35%: 34.5%: #6
New Mexico: 49/37%: 25.3%: N/A
Oregon: 48/36%: 29.2%: #18
Michigan: 46/37%: 24.6%: N/A
West Virginia: 46/39%: 17.3%: N/A
Pennsylvania: 47/40%: 26.4%: N/A
Ohio: 46/39%: 24.1%: N/A
Washington: 45/38%: 31%: #12
Wisconsin: 45/39%: 25.7%: N/A

States from the top 20 Education Attainment rate list not appearing in the top 20 Democratic leaning list:

Colorado: 42/42%: 35.9%: #3
Virginia: 41/42%: 34%: #7
New Hampshire: 39/45%: 32%: #10
Kansas: 38/48%: 29.5%: #17
Utah: 26/58%: 28.5%: #20

15 of the top 20 most Democrat-leaning states are also 15 of the top 20 best educated states. Three of the remaining five best educated states are repeat offender swing states. I understand the connection between Utah, Mormonism, and higher education, but like Thomas Frank, I can't help but wonder how Kansas joined Utah as on of the only two statistical outliers in the education/democrat correlation.

Any way, ATS, I respect a lot of opinions here, and I'm really hoping for some thoughtful insight from all relevant perspectives. But I'll admit I'm more than a bit worried that this could nose dive into Red vs. Blue thread, and while there's more than a twinge of implication in this data, I'm hoping we can all be civil in its handling.

www.gallup.com...
www.census.gov...

Could you put it into some nice pretty graphs for us?

This page has done something similar...
pp.org

And people are going to claim what from this?

there's a few choices:

1. The uneducated are dumb folks who aren't likely to get the sophistication of liberal views.

2. Those who are educated care more about getting things done NOW. (Conservative, slower changes, if at all.)

3. Liberals are brainwashed.

Come on, who else can add some fuss to this list?

Republican ideology is by definition a conventional point of view. it resists change and seeks to stabilize society by means of an external authority.

Democratic ideology seeks an internal authority and posits an equivalence to all such authorities. in a hierarchical sense, they are either PRE-conventional or POST-conventional.

PRE-c liberals and conservatives, therefore, have very little need for education.

it is only when a person has become successfully indoctrinated into the "external authority program", and rejects it, that a more complete and satisfying explanation of the dynamics of reality becomes possible.

if you are not POST-c liberal when you start a degree, you likely will be when you finish.

Good thing I started my degree work late. I'm a moderate conservative that will have a Bachelor's Degree (and Master's eventually). One thing that "study" doesn't say: what are these liberal Democrats' majors? Any that are Liberal Arts don't count, as that is the "I just wanted to help the world, but have zero clue what I really want to do with my life" degree.

/TOA

So what you are saying is the College grad are really more indoctrinated into the liberal way of thinking, Because from what I've seen they sure aren't any smarter than the average Joe. They go 100,000 dollars in debt for a job at Walmart and then cry about it.

More exposure to universities, especially ivy-league universities, means more exposure to socialist philosophies. There is also the "gun-toting hick" element. I don't see that as positive or negative, but if you have a lifestyle including guns you are much more likely to sympathize with second-amendment rights and the conservative position. It is also cultural. The politically uninformed, being around those of a certain political disposition, will tend to adopt some of their arguments.

Left-wing, right-wing. Both brainwashed. Both should be ashamed of themselves.

Show me the demographic of people who have actually risen above the partisan war and started thinking for themselves. I think it's like, me and a few hundred other people.

reply to post by alfa1


Alfa, thanks, I dug around a bit to see if anyone else had weighed in on this, but I came up empty handed. PPI was willing to put the situation a lot more black and white than I was too. Plus, you know, scatter plots! The link claims that for every one percent change in bachelor's degree holders, there's a 0.75% shift in that state towards voting democrat. That's a pretty big trend.

reply to post by Bullcookies


"indoctrinated"?

would you be willing to consider the possibility that there is some type of underlying organization in the distribution of ideas and idealisms.....say, some&hing similar to evolution but for memes instead of genes?

from that angle, there is no indoctrination necessary...just a natural progression of human personality.

Originally posted by Observer99
More exposure to universities, especially ivy-league universities, means more exposure to socialist philosophies. There is also the "gun-toting hick" element. I don't see that as positive or negative, but if you have a lifestyle including guns you are much more likely to sympathize with second-amendment rights and the conservative position. It is also cultural. The politically uninformed, being around those of a certain political disposition, will tend to adopt some of their arguments.

Left-wing, right-wing. Both brainwashed. Both should be ashamed of themselves.

Show me the demographic of people who have actually risen above the partisan war and started thinking for themselves. I think it's like, me and a few hundred other people.

I totally agree with you. Technical degrees at least have less offensive socialism but you still have to take gen ed courses which may or may not have some ideology mixed in.

reply to post by ThirdEyeofHorus


the word "socialism" is typiically abused by giving it a demonozing context. but using it to describe education is petty and redundant and shows how truly shallow you are. for the reason being that...

...the exchange of information is inherently socialistic. no-one owns an idea. or, oppositely, everyone owns an idea. we are all equal players in the realm of conceptual discourse.


if you participate in the exchange of ideas, you are practicing socialism. oh nooooooo!!!


so much for transcending the paradigm and "thinking for yourself". the two of you have revealed your true intentions.

reply to post by tgidkp


Uh-oh, "sharing" of ideas! What's next? Sharing houses, clothes, children? We need to nip this socialist threat in the bud!

Seriously though, so far the only alternative theory to why such a strong and penetrative trend would be in the data is the idea that democratic beliefs are subliminally indoctrinated to unwilling students to further some bizarre socialist agenda. I have a hard time believing that as education levels increase, susceptibility to brainwashing increases as well, and I'm rather inclined to feel the opposite should be true, as critical thinking and researching skills are honed progressively (no pun intended) throughout post-secondary education tiers.

Does anyone have something else to offer or a better defense of what was previously suggested?

Urban areas are far more likely to be Liberal (poor Urbanites are far more likely to vote Democrats for the handouts)

The top 20 states happen to be the 20 highest population density.

What you fail to actually show is what percentage of Bachelor Degree HOLDERS are Lib/Conserve

What you are showing is (for example) DC has a high college grad population .. 48% but 75% of the entire population voted .. Liberal.

So if we assume EVERY College grad voted Dem it would still fall short of 27%. If we assume half of college grads vote Dem 51% would be "uneducated" democrats.

In statistics that's a fallacy.

But then again, if you've ever taken statistics at all you'd know the entire subject is the definition of fallacy.

(PS ... saying a degree = intelligence or political awareness is the height of ignorance.)

reply to post by cointelprofessor


The education system has been indoctrinating the serfs into the values of the globalist oligarchy for more than 60 years . . .

and,

at an increasing intensity and increasing overtness toward the satanic, nhilistic values of the oligarchy.

Small wonder that the Dems would collect more on that end of the spectrum.

Or, it's no surprise that such value orientations would collect in the Dem camp.

Many folks are merely educated idiots--with more 'knowledge' than horse sense.

As a PhD, I can attest that it's a wonder some PhD's know how to tie their own shoes.

Many PhD's are afflicted with great tunnel vision. They know little outside their field of expertise. They have an extremely poor, if any, 'vision of the whole.'

Many 'educated' folks are extremely poor at anticipating the long term consequences of individual choices and behaviors.

Many 'educated' folks have bought into the intermediate globalist values that big government is a nice substitute for God. . . . and the related value that the big breast of government is great for everyone to suck-up to.

Government largess to major educational institutions has come with heavy indoctrination and brainwashing--as well as fairly strict limits on the freedom to think creatively, outside-the-box. 'Educated' folks have been long and well trained to march lock-step according to the puppet-masters' demands.

It has become increasingly hazardous to impossible for educated individuals of Faith-based (e.g. Christian) values to survive in such purportedly 'lofty' Ivory towered contexts. Certainly it is difficult for such Christians to have an equal hearing for their views compared to the globalist party lines.

It is somewhat similar to the ATS context. The Christians are a minority hereon. And the dogpiling assaults on their person as well as their beliefs and practices--their cosmology--persistently crowds the T&C limits. Sometimes even mods join in the assaults.

It's that way and too often worse in academia. The Dem party line is often spouted verbatim in efforts to silence and even remove Christians from their positions (of typically excellent performance) in academia.

At this point, the Dem party line is little different from the more or less pur globalist party line.

Yes, I'm aware that globalists have used both the Dems AND the GOP in a typical good-cop/bad-cop charade, game, vise with which to squeeze and manipulate the clueless populace of serfs and slaves.

Originally posted by tgidkp
reply to post by ThirdEyeofHorus

 

the word "socialism" is typiically abused by giving it a demonozing context. but using it to describe education is petty and redundant and shows how truly shallow you are. for the reason being that...

...the exchange of information is inherently socialistic. no-one owns an idea. or, oppositely, everyone owns an idea. we are all equal players in the realm of conceptual discourse.


if you participate in the exchange of ideas, you are practicing socialism. oh nooooooo!!!


so much for transcending the paradigm and "thinking for yourself". the two of you have revealed your true intentions.

Well ok I guess Mises is petty then. And Hayek too

Why Intellectuals Still Support Socialism
Intellectuals, particularly academic intellectuals, tend to favor socialism and interventionism. How was the American university transformed from a center of higher learning to an outpost for socialist-inspired culture and politics?

More generally, US higher education often looks like a clear case of the inmates running the asylum. That is, the students who were radicalized in the 1960s have now risen to positions of influence within colleges and universities. One needs only to observe the aggressive pursuit of "diversity" in admissions and hiring, the abandonment of the traditional curriculum in favor of highly politicized "studies" based on group identity, the mandatory workshops on sensitivity training, and so on.

A 1989 study for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching used the categories "liberal" and "conservative." It found that 70 percent of the professors in the major liberal arts colleges and research universities considered themselves liberal or moderately liberal, with less than 20 percent identifying themselves as conservative or moderately conservative.[1] (Of course, the term "liberal" here means left-liberal or socialist, not classical liberal.)

Why do so many university professors — and intellectuals more generally — favor socialism and interventionism? F. A. Hayek offered a partial explanation in his 1949 essay "The Intellectuals and Socialism." Hayek asked why "the more active, intelligent and original men among [American] intellectuals … most frequently incline toward socialism." His answer is based on the opportunities available to people of varying talents.
Academics tend to be highly intelligent people. Given their leftward leanings, one might be tempted to infer from this that more intelligent people tend to favor socialism. However, this conclusion suffers from what empirical researchers call "sample selection bias." Intelligent people hold a variety of views. Some are lovers of liberty, defenders of property, and supporters of the "natural order" — i.e., defenders of the market. Others are reformers, wanting to remake the world according to their own visions of the ideal society.
Hayek argues that exceptionally intelligent people who favor the market tend to find opportunities for professional and financial success outside the Academy (i.e., in the business or professional world). Those who are highly intelligent but ill-disposed toward the market are more likely to choose an academic career. For this reason, the universities come to be filled with those intellectuals who were favorably disposed toward socialism from the beginning.

mises.org...


Got it?

reply to post by ThirdEyeofHorus


on the face, this argument from mises seems plausible. however, it relies on an inaccurate assumption.

from your source:

Some are lovers of liberty, defenders of property, and supporters of the "natural order" —i.e., defenders of the market. Others are reformers, wanting to remake the world according to their own visions of the ideal society.

it sounds as though the label of "natural order" is being reeserved for those who support a "survival of the fittest" ideology exclusively. however, the argument I am trying to establish is against this notion of social Darwinism. as I have clearly pointed out in my earlier posts, the development of the human personality, human intellect, and exchange of information ingeneral is not subject to selective pressures.

in fact, we have words to describe the enforcement of Darwinism on ideologies, such as "propoganda" and "censorship".

therefore, being that the "natural order" for human development seems to extend upward and beyond (in a hierarchical sense) mere Darwinism, free-thinking individuals will tend to gravitate toward a socialist point of view.

this does not undermine the importance of the structural-reinforcing character of the conventional ideology. both are important and both have their flaws.

also, it is extremely important to acknowledge that the academic environment can be a hiding place for PRE-conventional liberals. the philosopher Ken Wilber referred to this as "boomeritis", emphasizing the disease-like aspect of it. if you truly wish to rise above the paradigm, I suggest you begin to distinguish between PRE-conventional liberals and POST-conventional liberals....

....and stop being so Pavlovian about the word "socialism".

reply to post by Rockpuck


I think that you are misreading the statistics.

it looks like you are trying to read the numbers as categorically nested populations. in that case, you are correct that the numbers reported cannot establish a significant relationship.

however, if you perform an ANOVA analysis of the populations (which, granted, I have not done), it appears that the population means are varying with a significant correlation.


thus, the numbers do support the conclusion that mean population degree holders varies directly with mean Democratic votes.


but even that conclusion is wide openfor interpretation.

reply to post by tgidkp


I didn't see the word "Darwinism" in that article. That is certainly how you interpret it. It is usually the liberal atheist scientists who go for the Darwin thing anyway. So your premise really doesn't work here. Are you really sporting for that old "liberals are smart and conservatives are stupid" argument? The point being made in the article is that libs tend to be collectivist and socialist leaning and tend to go for the education system, whereas market oriented people tend to go into business. But make no mistake, there are lots of libs in the market taking their "fair share" of it.

Perhaps this is more in line with what the author was discussing,


en.wikipedia.org...

Natural law, or the law of nature (Latin: lex naturalis), is any system of law which is purportedly determined by nature, and thus universal.[1] Classically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature and deduce binding rules of moral behavior. Natural law is contrasted with the positive law (meaning "man-made law", not "good law"; cf. posit) of a given political community, society, or nation-state, and thus serves as a standard by which to critique said positive law.[2] According to natural law theory, the content of positive law cannot be known without some reference to natural law (or something like it).

Or this more likely, which you interpret as Darwinism
www.thefreedictionary.com...

Noun 1. natural order - the physical universe considered as an orderly system subject to natural (not human or supernatural) laws

In philosophy, the natural order is the moral source from which natural law seeks to derive its authority. It encompasses the natural relations of beings to one another, in the absence of law, which natural law attempts to reinforce.

en.wikipedia.org...

or this

what he calls the natural order, a system free of both taxation and coercive monopoly in which jurisdictions freely compete for adherents. In his Introduction to the book, he lists other names used elsewhere to refer to the same thing, including "ordered anarchy," "private property anarchism," "anarcho-capitalism," "autogovernment," "private law society," and "pure capitalism."[1]

en.wikipedia.org...:_The_God_That_Failed

reply to post by cointelprofessor
Looks to me more of a repudiation of our educational system rather than its validation.
Beez

So why are all these smart states bankrupt?

Philosophy doctorates cant balance their checkbooks?