Elections 2022: The Educational Divide

The base of the Reoublican Party of my youth and young adulthood valued education, tended to be more affluent than its Democrat alternative and there was a reason for the term "country club Republicans."  There were lots of them and in many cicles the uneducated and evangelical were looked at with some degree of horror.  Fast forward to 2022 and the make up of the two parties' bases have transformed and now Democrats are the favorites of the college educated while the GOP attracts the less educated and religious extremists who reject objective reality on a daily basis.  A piece in Politico looks at the phenomenon which will continue to make it more difficult for the GOP to win majorirs )the situation will only get worse as younger votrs begin to vote in larger numbers.  Here are article highlights:

Control of the House is still up for grabs several days after Election Day — defying historical trends and the pressure of high inflation and President Joe Biden’s unpopularity that threatened the Democratic majority with big losses.

Republicans’ difficulty flipping key swing districts across the country can be explained in part by American politics’ increasing polarization along educational lines, as well as the party’s failure to make inroads in districts populated by groups other than non-college-educated white voters.

The last few election cycles have been marked by an increasing divergence in outcomes based on education levels, with Democrats making serious gains with college-educated voters while Republicans win far greater shares of non-college educated white voters.

Already, the pattern is clear: Democrats continued to perform best in districts where more voters have a bachelor’s degree, while Republicans won more districts where fewer voters are college-educated.

And while not all votes have been counted, these figures largely continue a trend that was already strongly in force in 2020. After the last election, the 15 districts with the greatest share of adults with college degrees were all represented by Democrats — and they will be again in 2023.

The lack of dramatic swings among major voting blocs helps explain the GOP’s struggles in taking back the House, which remains uncalled as of Saturday.

The educational divide has been building for years but accelerated dramatically during the Trump era. As recently as the 2012 presidential election, for example, college-educated voters were narrowly split, with college-educated white voters favoring GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

But in the 2020 presidential election, Biden won 68 percent of congressional districts where at least 30 percent of adults have a bachelor’s degree. Donald Trump won 64 percent of districts where less than 30 percent are college-educated

To win back the House this year, Republicans needed to gain back some of those voters or make inroads with non-college educated voters of color. But they ultimately failed to make major improvements with either group. Democrats mostly held on in educated suburban districts where the party ran strong a decade ago, such as Kansas’s 3rd District, where Rep. Sharice Davis held on, as well as districts with a significant share of non-white college educated voters, such as Texas’s 28th Congressional District, where Rep. Henry Cuellar won reelection.

Republicans did flip a few toss-up seats in highly educated areas, including New York’s 3rd and 17th districts, both of which have more than 45 percent of voters with at least a bachelor’s degree. But they failed to win back many of the races they targeted with highly-educated voters.

Republicans also did not make significant gains in districts populated by non-college educated voters of color. They won only one of the three battleground seats in the Rio Grande Valley, while Democrats flipped New Mexico’s 2nd District, a majority-Hispanic district where just 20 percent of voters have a bachelor’s degree, and prevailed in Colorado’s 8th District, a seat newly created through redistricting where 25 percent of voters are college-educated.

Non-college educated white voters still make up a significant voting bloc, and success with these voters gives Republicans a high floor when it comes to winning House seats. But winning a majority will require them to win a few more districts with different demographic makeups.