The Bifurcation of the American Electorate

[schmidlap]

There so much info missing from your data that the lists could be very misleading.

For example w/ wealth and party affiliation the question can come up as to who are richer, republicans or democrats? The list of 10 wealthiest states does not say if we're talking about the total wealth in the state or are we talking about the median income for the population.

Same w/ 10 most educated states. A state can't be educated, but rather it's the people who live there who get the education. Then we get into the kind of education --someone who gets a bachelor of science in engineering has to do a lot more work than someone w/ a liberal arts in community service. Women study the humanities and men study business and engineering (from here). Men vote republican and women vote democratic (from here).

You can review the metrics that determine the ratings.

 

[schmidlap]

Way back when I was switching my major from liberal arts to engineering, I considered getting a bachelor of arts in physical science, but instead I took the hard route to engineering because I knew the pay would be better.

All my general ed classes were done so I took four years of just degree classes in engineering. It was hard work.

If everyone became engineers, there would be a surplus of engineers.

Dedicated liberal arts undergraduates often find their education prepares then for a variety of specializations in law, government, etc.

Of course, accruing knowledge enhances one's quality of life in itself.

 

[MarathonMike]

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How the Diploma Divide Is Remaking American Politics​

Education is at the heart of this country’s many divisions.

Blue America is an increasingly wealthy and well-educated place.​

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Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Americans without college degrees were more likely than university graduates to vote Democratic. But that gap began narrowing in the late 1960s before finally flipping in 2004...​

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A more educated Democratic coalition is, naturally, a more affluent one. In every presidential election from 1948 to 2012, white voters in the top 5 percent of America’s income distribution were more Republican than those in the bottom 95 percent. Now, the opposite is true: Among America’s white majority, the rich voted to the left of the middle class and the poor in 2016 and 2020, while the poor voted to the right of the middle class and the rich.​

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There are worse things for a political coalition to be than affluent or educated. Professionals vote and donate at higher rates than blue-collar workers. But college graduates also comprise a minority of the electorate — and an underrepresented minority at that. America’s electoral institutions all give disproportionate influence to parts of the country with low levels of educational attainment. ​

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And this is especially true of the Senate. Therefore, if the coalitional trends of the past half-century continue unabated — and Democrats keep gaining college-educated votes at the expense of working-class ones — the party will find itself locked out of federal power. Put differently, such a development would put an increasingly authoritarian GOP on the glide path to political dominance...​

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Education polarization is not merely an American phenomenon; it is a defining feature of contemporary politics in nearly every western democracy. It is therefore unlikely that our nation’s white-supremacist history can fully explain the development. And though center-left parties throughout the West have shared some common failings, these inadequacies cannot tell us why many working-class voters have not merely dropped out of politics but rather begun voting for parties even more indifferent to their material interests.​

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... [E]ducation polarization cannot be understood without a recognition of the values divide between educated professionals and working people in the aggregate. That divide is rooted in each class’s disparate ways of life, economic imperatives, socialization experiences, and levels of material security. By itself, the emergence of this gap might not have been sufficient to trigger class dealignment, but its adverse political implications have been greatly exacerbated by the past half-century of inequitable growth, civic decline, and media fragmentation...​

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Across national boundaries and generations, voters with college degrees have been more likely than those without to support legal abortion, LGBTQ+ causes, the rights of racial minorities, and expansive immigration. They are also more likely to hold “post-material” policy priorities — which is to say, to prioritize issues concerning individual autonomy, cultural values, and big-picture social goals above those concerning one’s immediate material and physical security. This penchant is perhaps best illustrated by the highly educated’s distinctively strong support for environmental causes, even in cases when ecological preservation comes at a cost to economic growth...​

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[https://nymag.com/intelligencer/202...ma-divide-democratic-party-working-class.html]​

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The Republican Party's abandonment of its libertarian proclivities and embrace of authoritarianism is attracting the less-educated.

What can the Democratic Party do to win them back?

Oh FFS poor uneducated minorities are the life blood of the Chinacrats, get a clue.

 

[Oddball]

If everyone became engineers, there would be a surplus of engineers.

Dedicated liberal arts undergraduates often find their education prepares then for a variety of specializations in law, government, etc.

Of course, accruing knowledge enhances one's quality of life in itself.

And others go to trade schools, or do apprenticeships, to become welders, mechanics, masons, and engage in other well-paying trades....Only for them to then have haughty, smug, snob peckerheads like you look down on them for being "uneducated".

 

[expat_panama]

You can review the metrics that determine the ratings.

The reasons that you didn't are (my guess) the same reasons that I didn't.

 

[expat_panama]

And others go to trade schools, or do apprenticeships, to become welders, mechanics, masons, and engage in other well-paying trades....Only for them to then have haughty, smug, snob peckerheads like you look down on them for being "uneducated".

LOL!!! Things are rough all over I guess, on top of everything else schmidlap also has to put up w/ people calling him names on threads like these.

 

[Oddball]

LOL!!! Things are rough all over I guess, on top of everything else schmidlap also has to put up w/ people calling him names on threads like these.

There's no "calling names"....He's a fucking snob, and his own attitudes in this thread are proving it.

 

[expat_panama]

There's no "calling names"....He's a fucking snob, and...

LOL!!!!!

Isn't cognitive dissonance wonderful!

 

[Lisa558]

I'll give you a free clue:

Get the fuck over yourself, fucking snob.

Exactly! What OP is saying is that Democrats have abandoned the hard-working and self-supporting lower-middle class and are now comprised of snobby elitists (who want the lower-middle class to pay off a portion of their student loans). He conveniently ignores that the other big segment comprising the Democrat Party are the low-income and welfare recipients voting for their next handout.

(And actually, the average income of Republicans is HIGHER than the average of Democrats because the bottom-of-the barrel welfare types pull the numbers down.)