Presidential elections by state education

[Sbee]

Here are the top 5 and bottom 5 states in college education and how they have voted in presidential elections, outliers are bold. for some odd reason, colorado loved W, Bill Clinton carried some southern states (mainly Arkasas) but it's a pretty strong correlation here. I'm using presidential elections because they're all voting for the same candidate, there is a big difference between Rick Snyder and Sam Brownback at the state level



Massachusetts
2012 61%
2008 62%
2004 62%
2000 60%
1996 62%

Maryland
2012 62%
2008 62%
2004 56%
2000 57%
1996 54%

Colorado
2012 51%
2008 54%
2004 47%
2000 42%
1996 44%

Connecticut
2012 58%
2008 61%
2004 54%
2000 56%
1996 53%

Vermont

2012 67%
2008 68%
2004 59%
2000 51%
1996 53%

least 5 educated % votes for GOP presidential candidate

West Virginia
2012 62%
2008 56%
2004 56%
2000 52%
1996 37%

Mississippi
2012 55%
2008 56%
2004 60%
2000 58%
1996 49% (this carried the state, perot split the vote)

Arkansas
2012 61%
2008 59%
2004 54%
2000 51%
1996 37% (carried by native son Clinton)

Kentucky
2012 60%
2008 57%
2004 60%
2000 56%
1996 45%

Louisiana
2012 58%
2008 59%
2004 57%
2000 53%
1996 40%

 

[Gulo Blue]

OK, sure. I'll repeat myself over here. Correlation does not equal causation. This is an excellent example actually. At the state level, you see a correlation between education and voting habits. However, you also see correlations between urban/rural conditions and voting habits and rich/poor and education. Cities are both concentrations of urban conditions and money, however, the wealth typically commutes. So it isn't necessarily the higher educated people with the rep/dem voting tendency. It just appears that way when you look at it from the state level. When you look at individual voters, it's not so clear.

Romney won the college educated vote (small margin), while Obama won the no high school, completed highschool, and grad degree vote.

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2012/11/10/opinion/marshpdf.html?ref=sunday-review

I changed to the NY Times link because it has the numbers. Really, Obama won big in the extremes, the rest was close.

Highschool grad, Obama +3
Some college, Obama +1
Finished college, Romney +4

Not a highschool grad, Obama +29
Grad school, Obama +13

 

[Sbee]

OK, sure. I'll repeat myself over here. Correlation does not equal causation. This is an excellent example actually. At the state level, you see a correlation between education and voting habits. However, you also see correlations between urban/rural conditions and voting habits and rich/poor and education. Cities are both concentrations of urban conditions and money, however, the wealth typically commutes. So it isn't necessarily the higher educated people with the rep/dem voting tendency. It just appears that way when you look at it from the state level. When you look at individual voters, it's not so clear.

Romney won the college educated vote (small margin), while Obama won the no high school, completed highschool, and grad degree vote.

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2012/11/10/opinion/marshpdf.html?ref=sunday-review

I changed to the NY Times link because it has the numbers. Really, Obama won big in the extremes, the rest was close.

Highschool grad, Obama +3
Some college, Obama +1
Finished college, Romney +4

Not a highschool grad, Obama +29
Grad school, Obama +13

it's not good to just look at one election, in 2008 Obama was +8 with voters with an undergrad degree, he was +18 for voters with a post graduate degree.

if you peel it back a little further, the white voter who didn't graduate college was +17 McCain


really the truth is that the low income/less educated voters in these red states vote consistently against their own economic interests. in those lower educated states it behooves the republicans to run a culture war campaign and don't discuss the socioeconomic impacts of their policies.

 

[Michchamp]

just going to college and getting a BA... eh... I mean that's a bit of a stretch to call that "educated."

I'm thinking of the dumb rich white kids I went to high school with, who went to ASU and worked as mortgage brokers or RE agents during the housing boom.

it does seem a bit silly for the same reason, when you see Rick Santorum or Rush Limbaugh attack leftist college students.

 

[Gulo Blue]

it's not good to just look at one election, in 2008 Obama was +8 with voters with an undergrad degree, he was +18 for voters with a post graduate degree.

if you peel it back a little further, the white voter who didn't graduate college was +17 McCain


really the truth is that the low income/less educated voters in these red states vote consistently against their own economic interests. in those lower educated states it behooves the republicans to run a culture war campaign and don't discuss the socioeconomic impacts of their policies.

That's your response? You want to go back more than one election...so you go just 1 additional election and cherry pick from there. Maybe we should keep going back. When did the "Solid South" break up?

"really the truth" is that the education picture you want to paint isn't that clear. The grad school people that write papers on the topic have been biased pro-Democrat for the past 2 elections according to these pols so you would think they'd love to write that paper if it existed. If there was a strong case the other way, I bet someone out there would love to write that paper too.

"really the truth" has more to do with the stereotype formed by anti-intellectual soundbytes from stupid Republicans than any actual relationship between education and voting partisanship.

I'm ready to flip my tune on this subject if I read a few good studies that shows the trend, but I haven't seen it yet.

 

[Spartanmack]

Please explain how West Virginia is an "all red, all the time" state - they just elected their first Republican senator since 1958 and the current and last three governor's are Dems and the office has been dominated by Dems throughout it's history. I know you need to ignore statewide elections in order to fit the data to your narrative, but how about you just explain this one? Are they closet republicans - uneducated, country bumpkins voting against their own economic interests for POTUS but voting in their economic interests in statewide elections? Or is it maybe that, although a Democrat state to the core, West Virginia is in the heart of coal country and every Dem Presidential candidate since Gore has been openly hostile to the coal and other fossil fuel industries? So these low-education, blue collar dems, elect coal friendly dem senators and Governors and vote against Presidential candidates that openly threaten to kill the industries that put food on their tables?

Louisiana is similar given it's large energy production and import/export industries. See, national politics aren't one size fits all and if you ever took the time to look beyond a headline number, you'd see it's not as black and white as you say. Go back to the other thread and you'll see that based on statewide elections, which are far more telling than national politics, your top/bottom 10 aren't as decidedly Dem/Rep as you say they are. In fact, it's not even close to being skewed one way or the other.

 

[Sbee]

That's your response? You want to go back more than one election...so you go just 1 additional election and cherry pick from there. Maybe we should keep going back. When did the "Solid South" break up?

"really the truth" is that the education picture you want to paint isn't that clear. The grad school people that write papers on the topic have been biased pro-Democrat for the past 2 elections according to these pols so you would think they'd love to write that paper if it existed. If there was a strong case the other way, I bet someone out there would love to write that paper too.

"really the truth" has more to do with the stereotype formed by anti-intellectual soundbytes from stupid Republicans than any actual relationship between education and voting partisanship.

I'm ready to flip my tune on this subject if I read a few good studies that shows the trend, but I haven't seen it yet.

my post at the top here went back to 1996, it gives you a good idea of trends in presidential elections. there were a few outliers like Colorado voting for GWB twice, Arkansas voting for Clinton, but for the most part it was right down the line, the bottom 5 were consistently republican and the top 5 consistently democrat

 

[Sbee]

Please explain how West Virginia is an "all red, all the time" state - they just elected their first Republican senator since 1958 and the current and last three governor's are Dems and the office has been dominated by Dems throughout it's history. I know you need to ignore statewide elections in order to fit the data to your narrative, but how about you just explain this one? Are they closet republicans - uneducated, country bumpkins voting against their own economic interests for POTUS but voting in their economic interests in statewide elections? Or is it maybe that, although a Democrat state to the core, West Virginia is in the heart of coal country and every Dem Presidential candidate since Gore has been openly hostile to the coal and other fossil fuel industries? So these low-education, blue collar dems, elect coal friendly dem senators and Governors and vote against Presidential candidates that openly threaten to kill the industries that put food on their tables?

Louisiana is similar given it's large energy production and import/export industries. See, national politics aren't one size fits all and if you ever took the time to look beyond a headline number, you'd see it's not as black and white as you say. Go back to the other thread and you'll see that based on statewide elections, which are far more telling than national politics, your top/bottom 10 aren't as decidedly Dem/Rep as you say they are. In fact, it's not even close to being skewed one way or the other.

sorry, all red all the time wasn't correct, saying that the lower education states tend to vote for republicans consistently was more accurate.

can you just agree that lower education states heavily favor republicans in presidential elections and higher education states strongly favor democrats?

 

[Gulo Blue]

sorry, all red all the time wasn't correct, saying that the lower education states tend to vote for republicans consistently was more accurate.

can you just agree that lower education states heavily favor republicans in presidential elections and higher education states strongly favor democrats?

Can you just agree that the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has gone up as the number of students attending MSU has increased?

But more seriously, why would you look at state-level data after a per-voter look at education vs. partisanship refutes the story the state level data suggests?

Things very often appear related that aren't; people think they see trends that are really different ways of saying "rich people get the good stuff." Wealth, race, and population density are 3 big ones people fail to properly account for. Tone is difficult, I'm being facetious when I compare Spartans and CO2 levels, but I'm not trying to be condescending with this issue because people in positions that should know better get this stuff wrong all the time. Sometimes, it's really difficult to see the 3rd factor.

A common one is to conflate race and wealth in America. You can put together all sorts of negative, but completely factual statements about minorities. But controlled for income, the picture looks different.

In the case of voting partisanship and education at a state level, both population density and wealth come into play. Why not report these numbers at a county level instead of a state level? When you lump stats together at the state level you're saying more about places with big cities (+40 Obama) than you are about education.

We can add up the people that saw some college, graduated college, and went on to do grad work. Looking at it that way, it's 48% Romney, 50% Obama of voters that attended some college or better and 46% Romney/ 53% Obama for people that stopped at or didn't finish highschool. Not that big a deal.

After you know that on a person-by-person basis there's no correlation between education and voter partisanship, it's misleading to then hang on the state numbers.

 

[Spartanmack]

sorry, all red all the time wasn't correct, saying that the lower education states tend to vote for republicans consistently was more accurate.

can you just agree that lower education states heavily favor republicans in presidential elections and higher education states strongly favor democrats?

No because saying that implies that education is the driver when as Gulo has been pointing out it is merely a correlation. national politics are not one size fits all for either party. There's more to the political makeup of a state than the Presidential race. And when you look at statewide elections in the 10 most/least educated, there isn't a consistent pattern that these 10 are consistently blue while the other 10 are consistently red. And in some cases where state politics are consistently Dem/Rep, that's not always a good predictor of which way the state will go in a Presidential election - like with West Virginia and Louisiana.

Making sweeping statements like that based on a cursory review of headline numbers is irresponsible and often leads to the wrong conclusions.

 

[Sbee]

No because saying that implies that education is the driver when as Gulo has been pointing out it is merely a correlation. national politics are not one size fits all for either party. There's more to the political makeup of a state than the Presidential race. And when you look at statewide elections in the 10 most/least educated, there isn't a consistent pattern that these 10 are consistently blue while the other 10 are consistently red. And in some cases where state politics are consistently Dem/Rep, that's not always a good predictor of which way the state will go in a Presidential election - like with West Virginia and Louisiana.

Making sweeping statements like that based on a cursory review of headline numbers is irresponsible and often leads to the wrong conclusions.

there is a consistent pattern if you look at the numbers over the last 20 years, there are only a few outlier cases. I understand Gulo's point, more educated states have larger urban centers, larger urban populations are more educated and have higher median incomes and vote for democrats. do they vote for democrats because it's an urban area or because of income/education? that's a little tougher to measure and a lot has been written about the subject trying to find conclusions.

 

[Spartanmack]

there is a consistent pattern if you look at the numbers over the last 20 years, there are only a few outlier cases. I understand Gulo's point, more educated states have larger urban centers, larger urban populations are more educated and have higher median incomes and vote for democrats. do they vote for democrats because it's an urban area or because of income/education? that's a little tougher to measure and a lot has been written about the subject trying to find conclusions.

You keep trying to say educated people vote democrat. That's not what he or the numbers say. The point is not that that large urban populations are educated, they're not - the suburbs of the large urban populations have higher rates of college and graduate degrees. But the urban centers, where education is lower votes democrat and they outnumber the more educated suburbanites and folks out in the country. New York State w/ New York City is the perfect example of this.

And for the last time there isn't a pattern here. States like West Virginia and Louisiana have been mostly Dem in elections except for President and it's a pretty recent phenomenon driven by national Dems' unfriendly energy policies. It's also like that for Tennessee - Al Gore didn't carry his home State after being a long time Senator and VP for 8 years because he wrote a book condemning coal and campaigned against fossil fuels.

 

[Gulo Blue]

there is a consistent pattern if you look at the numbers over the last 20 years, there are only a few outlier cases. I understand Gulo's point, more educated states have larger urban centers, larger urban populations are more educated and have higher median incomes and vote for democrats. do they vote for democrats because it's an urban area or because of income/education? that's a little tougher to measure and a lot has been written about the subject trying to find conclusions.

That's still not it. States with big urban populations have more money to pump into education. That doesn't mean they pump it into the urban schools. There's a recent trend of highly educated people moving to urban centers, but that's just recently. Are urban centers more highly educated? I don't know of a study, but my impression is that historically, it's the wealthy suburbs around the urban center with the good schools, not the urban centers themselves.

 

[byco42]

538 has this

 

[Gulo Blue]

538 has this

That's interesting. A shift in Iowa in the last two years. I'm not sure it explains why Iowa has a history of being different, but they do have a history of pushing education. It's weird, this link says they have a lot of non-college educated voters in Iowa, but they're #7 nationally in education attainment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_educational_attainment

So what does that mean? College educated people in Iowa don't vote as much as they do elsewhere?

 

[Spartanmack]

That's interesting. A shift in Iowa in the last two years. I'm not sure it explains why Iowa has a history of being different, but they do have a history of pushing education. It's weird, this link says they have a lot of non-college educated voters in Iowa, but they're #7 nationally in education attainment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_educational_attainment

So what does that mean? College educated people in Iowa don't vote as much as they do elsewhere?

Or non-college educated people in Iowa vote at a higher rate than they do elsewhere.

 

[tinselwolverine]

Or non-college educated people in Iowa vote at a higher rate than they do elsewhere.

That's only because they vote first, so the liberal media covers the Iowa election more than any other and keeps reminding them that's election day.

By the time the election rolls around to California, unless gay marriage or legal pot or some (Kenyan Muslim) black guy is on the ballot running for president, we're gonna be all, like, "meh, fuck it..."

 

[Gulo Blue]

That's only because they vote first, so the liberal media covers the Iowa election more than any other and keeps reminding them that's election day.

By the time the election rolls around to California, unless gay marriage or legal pot or some (Kenyan Muslim) black guy is on the ballot running for president, we're gonna be all, like, "meh, fuck it..."

We need a good California/East Coast wedge issue to shake things up. Pit NYC vs LA.

 

[Gulo Blue]

Or non-college educated people in Iowa vote at a higher rate than they do elsewhere.

That would make sense.

 

[tinselwolverine]

We need a good California/East Coast wedge issue to shake things up. Pit NYC vs LA.

You could rig shit so that every World Series, Stanley Cup, Super Bowl and NBA Final Series is between a NYC team and Los Angeles team.

I know you never would, for the same reason that you won't go back in time and assassinate Hitler.

But we both know you have the ability.

The only posters to this board who will know this isn't a joke are Vic, MichChamp and byco.